Discussion
teiferer: I understand the appeal of this tech to techies. It's so cool to automate knitting!Though it totally misses the point of actually knitting something, with your own hands. The time it takes, the details you need to think about, the skills you work on perfecting, the quiet evening on the sofa or in a cafe with friends, chatting and knitting away, all that goes into a piece of clothing that you've knitted. Letting a machine do that is completely missing out.I feel similarly about AI generated music. Taking the musician out of the loop misses the point of the whole thing.
mkreis: Depends whether you see it as a production method or an art/recreational activity. There can be both, and don't worry, hand-made products will always have a special value. Even if everybody can order custom made knitted sweater from a machine.
127: No, it doesn't miss the point. Different people have different interests. Knitting just hits more overlapping Venn diagrams than just one.
soco: The goal is the path... a concept often foreign to western, to contemporary, to techies.
tecleandor: But this talks about the mass production of garments. Nobody at the Zara factory is having a quiet evening knitting on the sofa.The idea of this is: knitting on demand, customizable, less waste.You can still knit your things at home if you want to do your own stuff, or relax a bit...
zokier: [delayed]
elil17: Most garments have been knitted on knitting machines since the 1850s
elil17: So in theory 3D-Knitting can produce a made-to-measure garment on demand, and has been able to for years.And yet, no one actually offers to sell you a made-to-measure knitted garment. Why?A few theories: - Knits are stretchy so there's limited demand for M2M - DFM/software issues - no one actually knows to generate a pattern from a set of sizes without human intervention - Issues with OEE - it's inefficient to wait for orders to produce the garments because the capital cost of the machines is so high. - Logistics - you don't want to deal with shipping everyone the right order.
vincnetas: I know that there are people who enjoy hand writing machine code or assembler and know all ins and outs of what they do. But this is not about that. I don't care how my sweater was knitted or how many evenings it was spent for that. If someone or something can make it faster and cheaper, It's ok. This also does not take away my socks that my wife knitted for me with her own hands.
Poacher5: This is knitting as a method of mass-production. It's not cannibalizing hobby knitters making hats and gloves for their loved ones at Christmas. The comparison to AI music doesn't work because that is trying to occupy the same space as musical artists.
haritha-j: They pitch this as the panacea to fast fashion, but surely the solution to fast fashion is just to not buy and throw away so many clothes? I don't believe we buy cheap clothes because we can't find good quality clothes that last, but because we like owning lots of clothes and keeping up with trends. When my last laptop broke I was kind of happy. I thought "ooh now I can upgrade to a shiny new laptop guilt-free". I think that's the real problem.
doctorhandshake: I think this is an uncharitable view of the information on offer. The linked page similarly brands the technique with a trademarked WHOLEGARMENT label, claiming it’s a world first, so it doesn’t seem a stretch to see how these folks got to claiming it’s novel and making a bit of a todo about how it’s different. It also seems to have some business model implications that on first approximation look less than favorable, so I think that helps to justify the need for a position paper like this.
ExxKA: Why are you posting this to HackerNews?This isnt a hype board, for consumer products. Its supposed to be a tech first community.
yorwba: According to the Shima Seiki history page: https://www.shimaseiki.com/company/dna/history/ it was a world first in 1995. That doesn't make it novel anymore in 2026.
willis936: Right now I'm doing the opposite: 3D printing a loom for hand-knit garments.https://www.printables.com/model/1483991-fall-is-looming-the...
