Moving Towards Adjustability

The move towards making the loom adjustable has undergone many alterations. The first sketches i came up with were quiet complicated and required several parts to be moved back and forth which was not really ideal. In thinking about more creative and alternate ways to not only make the loom adjustable but also efficient and easy to use, the idea about adjustability moved from attaching an extra loom to adding placers instead. The sketch can be found in the previous post.

During last week and this week, i focused on working out the hacks of the adjustable loom prototype by using Corel Draw and the laser cutter. The first cut was done on cardboard paper. The image above is a visual of what it looked like after it was cut. After seeing the physical representation of the adjustable loom idea, i realized that in order for the placers to work on this loom, a hole for a dowel should be placed on both ends of the prototype (initially, and as can be seen from this image, there was only one hole on one end). I preceded to add another hole for an extra dowel on the other end just as it was on the original prototype. In this way, 2 spacers would have to be constructed specifically for the ends of the loom to adjust for length and width and different sized spacers would be placed in the middle to adjust for level. The image to the left displays the adjustable loom pieces cut from the laser cutter in the lab.


In putting the pieces together, another opportunity for redesign became eminent. The dowel holes on the original loom are too far away from the edge of the loom. This will produce or create wide spaces in the knitted fabric. I will adjust the proximity closer to the opening side of the loom. The holes in the spacer were cut slightly larger than the holes in the original loom to allow them to be easily slipped over the original loom. The last figure displays the loom put together.

Whats Next? Cut the loom on acrylic perhaps and decide on how to design the dowels themselves so that the yarn does not easily slip off. Stay tuned...