# @stem_antics on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DZX-ADTvJqV
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/66591654-stem-antics-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/2a7a7916f6.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-06-09T18:05:24.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Stem Antics (@stem_antics) — https://gondola.cc/stem_antics

## Caption

A loopwheel knitting machine turns at roughly 24 revolutions per minute and produces about one meter of fabric per hour. A modern sinker machine beside it makes ten times that. That single ratio explains why this 1920s technology nearly vanished, and why a few mills still refuse to let it die.

The principle is deceptively simple. Cotton yarn feeds into a slowly rotating cylinder of latch needles, but the knitted tube is never pulled or rolled. It hangs and falls under its own weight. Gravity is the only tension in the system.

That absence of tension is the whole point. In high-speed knitting, yarn is yanked through the needles under load, stretching every fiber as the loop forms. When the fabric later relaxes it contracts, leaving the cotton compressed and tight. A loopwheeled loop forms slack:

	•	Fibers are never drawn taut, so the yarn keeps its natural loft
	•	Loops settle into a fuller, rounder geometry
	•	The fabric traps more air, giving that dense, pillowy hand
	•	Dimensional stability improves, so garments shrink and distort less over years of washing

The cost is brutal. Each machine knits one fixed tube diameter, so one size per machine, seamless body but no flexibility. The cylinders demand constant hand tuning, frequent cleaning of accumulated fluff, and operators whose skill sits closer to instrument technicians than line workers. Output is counted in meters per hour against a global apparel system that thinks in meters per minute.

The machines stopped being built in the 1970s. Today roughly 200 remain operational, almost all clustered in Wakayama, Japan, kept running by cannibalizing dead units for parts.

Slowness was the flaw the market punished. It turned out to be the feature.

#stemantics #textileengineering #manufacturing #materialscience #knitting

## Stats

- **Views:** 7,561
- **Likes:** 797
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 8

## Tags

materialscience, manufacturing, textileengineering, stemantics, knitting

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