Thread-guiding mechanism for flat-bed knitting machine

Claim 1

In a knitting machine provided with a flat needle bed carrying a multiplicity of knitting needles, feed means for supplying thread to said needles, and reciprocating drive means for successively displacing an active group of said needles to draw the supplied thread into a row of loops during each machine cycle, the improvement wherein said feed means comprises: a plurality of slides each provided with a thread guide; support means enabling the displacement of said slides adjacent one another across said needle bed with entrainment of respective threads past said needles, each thread guide being movable on its slide between two positions relatively offset in the direction of slide displacement; a pair of end stops for each slide; transport means coupled with said drive means for entraining each slide during a machine cycle along a path limited by said end stops to extend over only a fraction of said row of loops, with presentation of the corresponding thread to less than all the needles of said group, the distances traveled by said slides complementing one another with limited overlap whereby said row of loops is formed from a succession of different threads; and switchover means on each slide controlled by the associated end stops for moving the thread guide thereof from one of said positions, advanced in the direction of slide displacement, to the other of said positions at the end of its path, with resulting removal of the corresponding thread from the reach of needles engaging the thread of another slide starting on a continuation of said path.