Troubleshooting

The first week knitting was certainly challenging. There wasn’t a single run that went off without a hitch. Much of the trouble we had, had to do with the initial reference run. We didn’t understand the exact parameters for the machine to complete this task correctly. Any following commands that were throwing errors were indirectly caused by this. We have a few resources, all of which we have utilized in one way or another, but access to them is not instantaneous either. We learned a lot, we solved problems, and we moved forward. That is what matters!

At this point we have knitted 12 swatches, including multiple types of Jacquard test swatches and seven colors of our alpaca yarn in a plain 2x2 rib structure. We encountered yarn breaks, stuck needles and incorrect settings on fabric take downs. Once the machine was out of cycle, we also learned that it retains a certain memory, so we ended up having to reset some settings. This week was incredibly helpful in understanding the machine and by the end of it, we ran sample after sample without errors. There are still critical programming steps we need to learn in order to produce a shelf ready product, and we are on our way.