Straight and circular knitting machine

Claim 1

A straight knitting machine comprising: a needle bed, needle means carried by said needle bed, a slide, cam means carried by said slide for selectively actuating said needle means for carrying out casting-on, loop-forming and stitch transfer, by lowering or lifing the needle means into or out of the needle bed so that a foot of each needle means completely or partially projects from the needle bed or is withdrawn completely into the needle bed, spring means for raising said needle means, rows of pressure strips for pressing the needle means into the needle bed, said pressure strips being mounted for staggered displacement on said slide which carries said cam means, a selector element selectively adjustable in several stages with respect to each row of said pressure strips and being operatively associated with each slot in the needle bed for transmitting control movements from the pressure strips to each needle means, intermediate members, each needle means comprising a shaft, the shaft of said needle means being mounted in a respective intermediate member without clearance above and blow, at least some of said intermediate members having feet arranged in a plurality of rows for engagement by one or more of said pressure strips said feet being immovably arranged on at least some of said intermediate members, and at least on movable foot being provided on each intermediate member for movement selectively into different row, the position at which the intermediate members in a needle compartment of the knitting machine are inserted being non-alterable, said cam means having no displaceable lifting parts for moving the needle means.