lol

Yeah he needs to shave again. Could use it to feed the loom.

hahahahaha

How long it took and what is the cost

He still is. He simply made his beard in the loom

lol. It is true that this project in particular was so complex that I didn't know for sure if I'd be able to get it working. 100's of moving parts is always a danger sign! I didn't even show the iOS app I wrote to drive the loom. lol. Then again I spent a year and a half making it. I'm always amazed that many KZfaqrs can put out videos every week. So I can give the illusion of competence though throwing more time at the problem. ;]

Great welcome aboard! Wow, medical textiles must have its own interesting challenges. That sounds really interesting. That's not an area I know anything about. I guess I'd known that stents were make of of what seems like a woven mesh a bit like a finger trap, but I guess that's the extent of my knowledge. lol. What other applications are there? I assume there are big limitations on materials used. How do you even make something that survives sterilization?

Same here. No idea how this popped up, but absolutely love it! Well done!

@@retrotechjournal Indeed, there are several challenges associated; bio-compatibility, flexibility, and fatigue strength among others (depending on the device of course). You're almost right with the stent analogy, but it doesn't quite work as a finger trap would, despite the way it looks. Stents tend to be implanted via "Endovascular surgery" this means the implant is transported to the implant site via a delivery system and expands in the blood vessel. The stents themselves are made of Nitinol wire as the structure of the stent, - and coated in a woven fabric, normally PET, sometimes PTFE or polypropylene depending on the manufacturer. Nitinol is a fascinating material, you can deform it almost completely, and will revert back to its original shape with the application of heat. There are many applications, I can only speak for what we manufacture which would be; a knitted polypropylene mesh used for treating pelvic floor problems, a woven PET tube that is used for Vascular Grafts and Aortic Root Grafts, and a woven flat fabric that is used for a Heart Valve. The polyprop mesh is a warp-knitted fabric, it's a very open structure with the warp ends being threading at 12 gauge (12 ends, or threads, per inch). I'm trying to think of a comparison and the only thing that comes to mind is the mesh bags that one would get oranges in, that kind of structure, but much lighter. The yarn that we knit with is 80 microns in diameter. The woven tubular fabric is massively different. It's quite a fairly simple plain weave but the numbers are somewhat bigger than yours. We warp 160 ends onto 4 beams for a total of 640 these are threaded so that we have multiple ends coming through each heddle wire. If I remember correctly there are 16 heddle frames on the machine each with 40 or 50 or so heddle wires on each. The heddle frames are controlled by a pattern chain which moves it up or down and by controlling these in a specific way we can weave a tube. The weft yarn is crammed in at 45-50 picks per centimeter to give us a really tight weave. We use PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) for this weave. As for the heart valve, this is still in development, so can't really talk about it, but that is woven too but a much lighter fabric, using 20 dtex UHMWPE. We also do some manufacturing for a customer using PTFE yarn, which is a pain to process due to static. As far as sterilisation goes it's not actually as bad as one would imagine, there are multiple different methods for sterilisation (Heat, radiation, ETO, ....). Ours are processed using ETO (Ethylene Oxide). It has been used for years at this point so it's a known quantity as to what materials are suitable for the process. The sterilisation still needs to be validated though, along with everything else, from materials to processes. Pallets of product get sent for sterilisation and then tested for everything under the sun, from usability, and packaging to Bioburden testing. So sterilisation is usually the last of our worries. More importantly is creating materials that will last for decades after implant. The heart valves that are in development, for example, have to be tested over 600-700 million cycles, to examine the effects of fatigue. It really is quite fascinating. I hope you found reading that somewhat useful, I just kind of dumped a bunch of info without really trying to structure it properly, and I'm a bit high too. Hopefully it makes sense, and if it's raised more questions than answers I'd be happy to try and answer them :)

@@unicyclingistheshit Wow, thanks for that long dump of info. That was a fun read. I'd been thinking about the sterilization piece and thinking "I bet radiation is too hard on the plastics to do" I'd never heard of that ETO process. 700 million cycles is SO mind boggling. Amazing. Thanks for the info!

@@retrotechjournal No problem! thanks for the amazing content and for reading and replying to KZfaq comments!

Great! Welcome. I'm so pleased you found my videos! Thank you for the nice comment.

I'm glad you liked it! I learned a little bit about textiles doing this project, and a lot about video making. What sorts of tools do you use for textile design? Is there iteration/prototyping of a design? I'm various curious how that works. What is a common size run for a textile? What range of TPI do you design for? God I have so many questions! I've poked around a little looking at open source weaving things like TexGen but really I have no clue how people take a textile from idea to reality. I just wrote the software for the loom to take in images I design in photoshop.

@@dominiquemichaud7945 Wow thank you so much for all that information! I appreciate you taking the time. I will definitely check out some of the links/software/books. It's great to hear from someone doing this professionally.

After reading some, I think that I want to do a design using the Polychrome Taquete technique. I definitely wanted to try something that wasn't using a tabby so that looks like a good option. I'm not sure how I feel about the less interesting uniform almost plain weave look, but it would lend itself well to come programatic design ideas. We will have to see what happens.

@@retrotechjournal Good idea! Taquete is a great way to limit the length of floats. For the "less interesting" parts, you can use another structure, like satin or twill. For that, you will need to use one layer in Photoshop for each weave. I define beforehand each structure as a motif(pattern?) in Phososhop, and bind it after to the layer. Satin will hide the picks for a smoother colour, while twill will add texture. Have fun!

🙏 I do find joy in making/learning/problem solving. I’m glad you liked it!

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. I love dabbling in all flavors of making. Classic Jack of all trades, but master of non. I actually write mobile apps professionally, and I totally failed to include any footage of the weaving app in the video. lol. Oops.

I do think that a lot of Jacquard loom attempts over-focus on the raising and lowering of the threads part and entirely ignore/underestimate how important all the other parts of a loom are. Like you said things like tension/proper beating of each pick/even advancement, etc.

Welcome! I'm pleased you found/like my channel.

Thanks! Hopefully I've been improving over time. I'm glad you liked it.

Yes! It was fun talking to you about your loom. I love going around and chatting with folks about their projects and yours is clearly close to my heart. ;]

Oh thanks! Well of course, commercial machines do the lifting of the threads at crazy speeds, and with a very different mechanism. Still this loom does show the basic concepts of raising and lowering some pattern of threads and then passing a shuttle though. This particular mechanism with the cams is kind of nuts/not very fast. It was simply the result of me tying to solve the thread lifting problem with only 2 motors. Still I hope you did learn some useful bits of info and it sounds like you enjoyed it, so I'm going to declare that a win. :]

Thank you for the nice comment!

I'm glad you liked it! Yes, a lot of weird different skills went into this one. I'm still learning so much about making videos, so I now cringe at some of the parts, but am proud of other bits. I guess that means I'm improving. I've done a lot of complicated projects before, but this is the first one to have filled an entire notebook.

Woot. I'm excited it makes you want to learn more. That's always the goal in the projects I do. I try to build things right on the edge of what I think I can do, and that forces me to learn/extend myself. I'm glad you liked it!

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. I learned a LOT making that video. :] I'm almost done with another one. I have no idea how people do one video a week. That is crazy talk! Although I really should post smaller videos more often. That would let me learn more/try out wacky things, etc.

@@retrotechjournal I was also sad to find only two videos but I totally get it, the production process to make quality like you present is so taxing. Best wishes and I look forward to more content at any pace!

Thanks!

I'm glad you liked it! What flavor of Industrial Engineer?

@@retrotechjournal a little of everything really. Controls, electrical, mechanical, process. My team and I build custom manufacturing equipment for med device and food/beverage. I was really impressed with your ingenuity and resourcefulness. I'm going to subscribe.

@@75blackviking Neat, sounds nice and cross-discipline-y. Welcome aboard!

Thanks! My trick for doing really complicated projects is to give yourself a lot of little successes along the way. I went into this one thinking I'd never get the whole thing working but I'd learn a lot designing each of the little pieces. The lifting system/tension-ing system/the electronics/software/etc. Then if I ran out of steam I could stop and call it a success even if I didn't get to a fully cnc loom. This one just happened to make it further than I was expecting. :] I'm glad you liked it!

It is nice that it's quite compact and folds up. That makes is easy to transport/store, etc.

When I heard Bob talking about me on the podcast I had to pull over! lol. So amazing! Yes when I realized the idea was 7 moving parts per thread I really thought it would never work. Then at low thread counts it was basically fine, so I kept pushing it. :] I'm glad you liked it!

Oh thanks! It’s nice because it’s not huge and what it looses in full automation it makes up in total design freedom. (Any number/kind of warp threads/colors etc). Its main downfall is that it’s slow. I’m glad you liked it.

True enough, but at least with this kind of setup I don't have to worry about threading a zillion patterned heddels, the single peg warping system makes warping fairly easy. That and the large size/low count warp, makes the actual setup comparatively painless. :]

Awesome! I'm glad you liked it. It's nice that people have actually noticed/commented on the video itself. I put what could only be described as a stupid amount of time into it, and I wasn't sure if that was just going to be invisible to folks since people are used to watching so much highly produced video all the time. I really enjoyed learning about making videos, and getting to put in whatever silliness came to mind. It's great to hear that people can actually appreciate the amount of work that went into it. I guess since many of the folks here have taken a stab at making content it's a much more informed audience, which is really nice.

@@retrotechjournal "I put what could only be described as a stupid amount of time into it" hahaha We can all see that, that's what's so amazing! Well, that and the fact the loom itself must've taken another unit of 'stupid amout of time'!!! but hat's off to you, all that time really paid off.

It still took an afternoon to weave that Pikachu but it is true the crazy flexibility of being able to do any pattern you want is super fun. 🥰

Oh thanks! I still have a personal channel, but it was a weird mix of stuff for my family: My kids in school plays, 8mm conversions, etc. With only a tiny bit about my projects. Now that I've decided to put some effort into making videos about some of my projects I knew I really needed to make a channel about that specifically. I'm glad you liked it!

@@retrotechjournal would you consider doing a custom style of loom for a fee? I have an idea for one and either I'd like to have it built or maybe get some helpful tips for building it

Sorry I don’t have time to do commissioned work like that but I’m happy to make suggestions/bat around design ideas.

@@kurtschaefer is there a good way to contact you where i can share pictures?

@@KevinFlores-rc1lq You could post comments/image links to RetrotechJournal.com. I'd also be fine with exchanging email addresses/communicating that way, but I'm not sure how best to communicate that to you...

My dad was very into making films and then later video. He did stop motion titles for our 8mm home movies using construction paper letters on our garage door, etc. Later he switched video and did edits using 2 VCR's and put Zanfir on his Pan Flute as background music. lol. I always think of him when I'm editing. I know he would have loved to talk about how I made the videos/the edit, etc.

Amazing. I didn't know that about Toyota. I do know someone who runs an amazing vintage weaving company, and visiting her place was incredible. Large scary vintage machines firing wooden shuttles back and forth, etc. Really a treasure.

Woot! Welcome aboard! It's nice when people appreciate the time it takes to make these things. It's easy for people to say "Make more videos!" but if a video takes 6 months of evenings and weekend to do there's really no way to crank them out. (At least as a hobby)

Absolutely agree, there's a big different between churning out content for the sake of content because you need to please the algorithm and making a video that shows development of an idea or project over time. Your efforts are definitely appreciated! I may try to to tackle one of these myself now

@@EXAPHI Go for it! I think you're entirely correct that it is freeing to not actually have to worry about trying to bend the arc of the algorithm.

Great! I do love robotics, such a wonderful blend of software/hardware/mechanics. I once TA'd a Robotic Arts Studio course at CMU and the enthusiasm/creativity/effort that the students brought to that course was magic! 🥰

Thanks!

The biggest movie magic was giving the impression my shop was tidy. ;]

Great! I'm glad you liked it. Thanks for writing about it!

So true. Also this was my first big video, so I think only the scenes I made near the end (like the PCB montage) had decent edits. Learning as I go. I'm glad you liked it.

Great that you found the channel!

Yes. I made a bunch of those as a kid. With some weird bent wire hook. It was fun to get a set again and make one for the video. I think often they are peoples first/only exposure to weaving.

It is true that the loom was a year and a half of nights and weekend. Kind of crazy really. I do love taking on projects that I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to do. lol. That keeps me up to my eyeballs in problem solving. I’m glad you found my channel. Welcome!

I'm still active, but I do put more time into the videos than the blog these days. God when I think how easy a blog post is compared to a video I almost want to just go back to that. :] Still I'm excited to be getting folks enthused about making! It's a muscle, so just start and you'll get better at it over time.

Thank you for the nice comment! This video is very slowly creeping it's way to 100k views. Some time next year it'll make it. I tell myself "Not bad for my first video!" 😉

I'm glad you liked it! I was so excited when I was listening to the Making It podcast and Bob mentioned me. It was like "OMG upside down world! This is awesome!" I'll certainly do more videos, but life is busy and complicated so it'll probably be a while.

I'm glad you liked it!

I never thought of myself as old until some of these comments here. I guess since my beard turned grey I look older. It just never occurred to me. Some commenters think I'm retired! lol. I guess that is the down side to having a lot of folks projecting onto you based on a video or two. *shrug*

Thanks. I just follow that passion around so I don’t really know what I’ll be building next. Lol. I’m glad you liked it.

I'm glad you found the video, and that it was clear. I always hope to be both entertaining and educational, so it's good to hear that the ideas came across well. Have a happy new year!

@@retrotechjournal Oh my goodness! I never expected a creator's reply and especially one on short notice. I am a do-it-yourself enthusiast and was highly interested in a way to produce fabric in a fast paced manner. Your humor combined with quality visuals is such a delight for the brain to see and comprehend. I enjoy the stop motion Lego humor bits as well, they make intervals very memorable. Thank you so much for replying to my comment. I hope to see more of your channel and gain more knowledge. Thank you!!

😆

Neat to hear from actual weavers. I’ve never used an commercial Jacquard loom but the low end ones seem like they might be a maintenance nightmare. :)

@@retrotechjournal There's an art to them for sure! Never the same settings for any different cloth which can be a bit of a bugger, but I've always found them theraputic to work on... (Occassionally a hammer gets involved)

@@Crimzonius 😆

Yes. I have no idea why the algorithm has suddenly picked up my channel but suddenly folks are flooding in. I’m glad you liked it/found my channel.

I'm glad you liked it! It's certainly doable. It would take a weird mix of skills though. I think the main problem with the current design is it's pretty slow and it's a bit sensitive to very careful construction. The heddle wires often have a bit of a twist to them, and I had to kind of manually straiten them by eye. I have some ideas for making the thing a lot faster, and less sensitive to variations in part thickness, etc. I don't really know if I'll be able to find the time to make/troubleshoot that version.

I googled for "jackard weaving DIY machine" and got to your video. did not know the word "loom" so google did a great job showing your video at the top. I did this after visiting a museum where I saw huge black and white tapestry from an artist friend. He draws branches and then gives his designs to laser cutting, looming and what not shops to make enormus metal, wood, silk or paper art. I am more into DIY so I will like to experiment with looming. Maybe I will to make your machine. Will read your instructions and if I understand how you made it I will get into Jackard looming! Thanks!

@@alexecheverria Cool. Yes be warned that although I have open sourced the boards/code/designs that doesn't mean this project is anything like a "kit". The design files are undocumented, and there's nothing like "instructions" or anything like that. lol. Making one of these that was fully documented and easy to build for others would be a giant task. With very different design constraints. Also because there are a lot of 3D printed parts I think sending those out to be made would be prohibitively expensive. If you have a 3D printer and are comfortable building surface mount PCBs/compiling iPhone apps then feel free to take a stab at it and I'll answer questions. Just be warned that I like to make things I can just barely build so this isn't super easy.

That's me. Hiding in plain sight. :) I'm glad you found me.

2 Months ago I only had something like 8.5k subs. Things have really been taking off recently. I always put it the effort, because it's fun. Posting the video is almost an afterthought, although it's good way to mark the video as "totally and completely done stop messing with it" ;]

You are exactly right that the loom heddle updates aren’t super fast and the wider the material the slower each pick is. For a narrow piece the weaving is sort of normal but that wide weaving at the end took close to a minute to update per pick. Which is a lot of waiting. That is the main disadvantage of this system. The more heddles the slower it goes. The main advantage is only 2 motors. The process could probably be sped up a little but never fast enough for high TPI weaving, etc. I do have an idea for a heddle position switching that would use a Y shaped track and a kind of “track switching” beak in the middle. However I haven’t tried building it as yet. Good luck with your Meccano build! Let me know how it turns out!

@@retrotechjournal I would love to see a video in real time of the heddles updating!

*tips hat*

Oh thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks! I think I just don't make enough content to actually rate. If I could put out a video every week I'd probably have more subscribers but that is not something I can do considering how long it takes me to make one of these things. :) I'm glad you like it.

Welcome aboard!

That is certainly true of most of the builds on my channel, not this one though. That loom took a LOT of time. A year and a half.

I'm glad you found the video. I had a tiny plastic loom. I think we got it at a yard sale? My dad made me a bigger wooden one. (That was also very primitive) Plus I was always weaving plants/sticks together for fun. I'm glad you liked the video!

Great! I'm glad you liked the video. Awesome that you're doing some extra teaching during COVID. I think knowing a bit more about weaving really makes people look at all the cloth around them differently. My dad build me a super simple loom when I out grew pot holder weaving and the process really stuck with me.

I'm glad you clicked though. It's always extra fun to enjoy something you weren't expecting. Thanks for the nice comment.

Update for the end of the video: still in

Awesome. I like how these comments were a bit like a dramatic story. I'm glad it turned out ok in the end. ;]

@@retrotechjournal haha me too! But it’s because at the end of this video you mention your post schedule is infrequent. Didn’t deter me at all

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.

Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

Well that still goes on but I try to keep the testing/verification at a small level. Like early prototypes before committing. Like I made a very simple version of the carriage just enough to learn I needed linear bearings vs plain bearings. Etc. I probably did 3 versions of the levers, etc but at a small scale the revisions are fast. Of course there’s always the danger of things that work ok in your prototype but fail at scale. Those are the worst. Lol

@@retrotechjournal Of course. It's always good to test your parts. I just see a lot of videos of people putting things together, not knowing why things don't work, taking the whole thing apart, testing individual parts, putting it together again, stopping it because it's doing something wrong, taking it apart again, changing the housing and the design, and putting it back again and hoping it works. For something with a lot of moving parts, software, and delicate assembly like this, it's more difficult to account for things that go wrong before they do, even checking the parts before they are assembled into a single machine. That's what's impressive to me.

@@whyisblue923taken Yes, totally. I call that "integration testing hell" :] I did do some tricks like 3D printing little gaps in the cam spacer collars, so I could actually see where the cam was, and better diagnose jamming issues. Because "not being able to tell where the thing is or why it's jamming" was 100% going to happen. lol.

Yes, exactly right. I think I often spend more time adjusting the timing/sound design for the stop motion than shooting the stop motion. Which is kind of crazy. I'm glad you liked it.

Yes sadly there’s a huge difference between a messy pile of my design iteration and nice clean followable build instructions. Lol. The code is at least decent. If I do another rev I’ll do it in Fusion 360 and then the design will at least be more followable. Building something like is in Illustrator was madness. 😝

The design mostly went smoothly but then when I was trying to unify the motor and logic supplies into a single supply I cheaped out on the DC to DC conversion bits and got something that would work for a while, but then eventually some spike on power up would fry the whole thing. Which was horrible. Oops. Going for a $2 more part could have saved me two entire dead boards and a lot of wasted time.

@@retrotechjournal That's one way to deal with it. I've usually solved that problem by putting a clamp/filter on the step down after diagnosis. Of course, that required a board revision and all of my money on the first stock of prototype boards just goes up in smoke. One way or another, a check will be signed.

Yes, that was an insane number of parts. So many rounds of 3D print!

Thanks! Don't worry I don't think I could stop making if I tried. I've been doing it my whole life. Mostly I've just been struggling to document any of it. Projects go much more slowly when you're trying to shoot video of it. I can only hope the pace picks up a bit as I get better at it. I used to think writing a blog post about a project was onerous. That was peanuts compared to KZfaq. lol.

Oh thanks! Yes I'd say this is a pretty hard build. There's an iOS app and firmware. I did make it all open source, but the true is that weaving with it is fairly slow, so it's not super satisfying to use. I do have some ideas for how to make it much faster, but I've been working on other projects recently.

Yes. 100% I can’t imagine trying to build something that holds up to production weaving. Quite astonishing.

My pleasure. I'm glad you liked it.

Thanks!

Well the video makes it seem quick but it took a year and a half to design and build. So it’s more the magic of editing. 😄

I'm glad you liked it! I suspect that my content creation rate is way to low for my channel to "blow up" but I enjoy doing it, so I'll keep at it. Thanks for the encouragement!

Interesting. Yes, I've though there aught to be some ways of taking a "many actuator bank" and mechanically muxing it to control many more lines. (At the cost of overall speed) I think if I were to revisit the loom I think the main goal would be more speed without getting too expensive/complicated. I've had a few ideas along those lines, but so far nothing compelling enough to do another build. Checking out knitting machine mechanisms sounds like a great place to look for inspiration.

@@retrotechjournal it's definitely worth looking up an in depth description on the mechanism, but the abridged version is that they use a matrix of gates that open/close to allow the needle to move forwards or backwards. If they are blocked, the needles are pushed down by the carriage so they are bypassed. You could use the gates to enable the reeds from lifting, then use a spring to lift them. That way if they are blocked, the spring can deform instead of breaking. It is an idea I toyed with then decided it is probably a project way above my skill level because the matrix aspect confuses me.

Yes. Those early Jacquard looms are amazing. Fun to kind of bring things full circle.

Thank you! Yes this one was particularly cross discipline, but of course the best projects are! :)

Oh thanks! I'm glad you liked the sound design. I think my actual animation skills have a long way to go, but I try to make up for it with extra effort in the sound design. :] I think sound is so important and is often overlooked. I'm excited you noticed!

Yes, those machines already address many of the tolerances/zillion parts issues that I had to struggle with. I think they'd be a great start to some really neat projects.

@@retrotechjournal I can see the effort that you’ve put into getting this to work. Most people don’t realise how hard tolerances are to get right. I tried to build out a simple candy sorting machine with my son - out of Perspex so we could see what was happening. With the variation of candy size and shapes it became close to impossible to get it to be reliable. So I can see the countless hours of effort.

@@daverei1211 yes exactly. It’s easy to think things are going to be consistent but in the real world nothings consistent. Lol. The candy sorter is a great example for folks.