Shima Seiki

Ive been lucky enough to be given the chance to go to Shima Seiki in Derby to do there week long basic knit training course. 

On the course it was me and another man who worked at John Smedley's 

The course was very full on, but as the week went on i got my head around it. 

On the course for the first 3 days we were on the Apex programming software which is like a very complex photoshop. 

To use the shima machines you have to programme everything on the Apex system.

The image above you can see is one of the first patterns, we were told the basics and just had a play around with patterns on the screen to see what we could do. 

Each of the colours at the bottom of the screen is a different action for the knitting machine to do, i.e the red background means front bed knit and the green means back bed knit and the red and green stripes at the bottom are for a 2x2 rib.

The coloured lines either side are called option lines which again each line is a different command to the machine so for example option line R3 means yarn carrier change which you would put if you wanted to change carrier to have a change of colour. 

For the first 3 days we were being taught all about what the different colours and option lines can do so it was very intense but i soon got the hang of it. To test us we were given knitted swatches and we were asked to make that swatch on the computer and then knit it. 

I found this quite easy as i am used to looking at knit structures so i was able to work out how they were made and reproduce them.

We were then shown how to thread the knitting machine, we were using the SVR122 machine which is a 7 gauge machine. 

Above are all the tension and yarn feeders that go into the machine and through to the carriers.

The yarn is threaded above though the yarn carriers.

These are some of my sample pieces which i had made from looking at an already knitted swatch.

Above you can see ive zoomed in so you can see what each colour means. This was a sample jumper front so you can see ive had to do the shaping with the colour white and purple but tell the machine to transfer a stitch to the left to create the shape.

Once we had got the hang of this we were allowed to make our own swatches and knit them on the machine, which was amazing to really get to grips with what the machine could do. 

Above is my certificate from shima to say ive passed the knit course which i am so proud and happy to have done and also met everyone at shima who have been amazingly helpful