DUT Dubied knitting machine and the Autocam Accessory

     Things have been hectic around here with orders being filled, fall sampling and a road trip to Fort Washington, but I wanted to post some information on some new equipment and what I've been up to. 
      I was contacted a few months back by the children of Margarita Macia, a knitter with a full studio of machines who recently passed away. The following images are of pieces or instructions to pieces I picked up from her workroom. 
It was lovely meeting her children, who told stories about her life in Argentina where she used a motorcycle to pick up yarn, deliver orders and visit clients. Later in Fort Washington she made custom pieces for women in the area. Aside from amazing stories she left a series of boxes brimming with samples and swatches in outrageous yarn colours which will keep me busy  for a LONG time. 
       The DUT machine came with the studio equipment and it represents a cusp technological development prior to electronic machinery where you the user are basically operating as a computer in tandem with punchcards and prisms. However, you are still manually moving the carriage and you still have to write out a pattern and operate levers at the correct point. I would liken it to a jacquard loom. 
        

     These last two images are of the autocam. A really neat device for N series Dubied machines which is similar to a conventional punchcard but in some ways more interesting. It consists of a drum in which you place knobs of various heights, so that rather than a hole on a punchcard instad you are placing a knob in a hole to ask the machine to tuck, slip, etc. The arms called A in Fig 2 meet the carriage at the end of each row thus advancing the drum one row onwards. On my autocam I have 24 rows . On another machine, with another autocam I have 36. It all depends on the make and capabilities of the machine. There are times when I make a complicated pattern and my brain cannot consistently a perfectly count the 6 steps required to make the pattern over 450 rows, so this helps a lot. I hope I have not lost you. These analog formats of selection are so fascinating. 
      I ended up digitizing the manuals for these and they are available here. With a further parts reference manual for NHF Dubied machine available on the knitting here. Stay tuned for more on analog technology and my experiments.