Show and Tell - let us know what you're doing!

[cropwell]

Not so difficult to do, I suspect - I visited a weaver in the Outer Hebrides a year or two back who was using a floor loom, but, in effect, bolted on the side there was a solenoid-operated mechanism for operating the heddle levers (sorry - full technical terms escape me!). The solenoids were operated by software running on an Apple Mac (I think it was). So, I'm waiting for the first Mach3-controlled loom to appear in this forum! Punched cards are so nineteenth century - use Mach3 and take a giant leap into the twentieth

I think they are just called warp lifters. You would need hundreds of solenoids though to get ant decent width of cloth.

There is some software out called Wovn, for designing and producing cloth on a hobby jacquard.

[Neale]

I think they are just called warp lifters. You would need hundreds of solenoids though to get ant decent width of cloth.

There is some software out called Wovn, for designing and producing cloth on a hobby jacquard.

Ah, yes, there are different levels of sophistication with the punched card systems. The Jacquard silk picture weaving does indeed use many individually-controlled warp threads. I admit that I was thinking more of conventional textile weaving using maybe 8-12 warp threads to form the pattern but repeated across the width of the fabric. The Harris tweed weavers with their Hattersley looms have some card-based (actually small metal plates linked into a chain) patterns that are only 4 "cards" long although some are much longer. I remember seeing a Jacquard silk loom at a museum in (I think) Manchester where the attendant told me that they were frightened to run it too much; it was working but if a thread broke or they eventually reached the end of the warp thread on the drum, there was no-one left who knew how to rethread it! Possibly an exaggeration, but I doubt that there would have been many people who could do it.

Anyway, this was the kind of thing I had in mind.

Nice little box, BTW, Rob.