1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a knitting machine with at least one guide bar, which is moveable by a shogging drive in a shogging direction and by a swing-through drive perpendicular to the shogging direction.
2. Discussion of Background Information
In the production of a knitted article in a knitting machine, guides must be guided around needles in order to produce a loop formation. The guides are thereby attached to the guide bar. The sequence of movements of the guide bar is therefore controlled such that in a loop formation the guide bar is moved once back and once forth in a shogging direction. Thus, the shogging direction is the direction that corresponds to the longitudinal extension of the guide bar, i.e., the direction in which all of the guides of the guide bar are arranged one behind the other. The guide bar is additionally moved perpendicular to the shogging direction between the forth (forward) movement and the back movement. A movement perpendicular to the shogging direction is likewise necessary between the back movement and the forth movement of the following loop formation operation.
The movement perpendicular to the shogging direction is often caused in that the guide bar is attached to a suspension shaft, which is rotated back and forth via a machine transmission. The shogging movement is controlled by a shogging drive, which moves the guide bar back and forth. The shogging drive is responsible among other things for the patterning, i.e., how large the lift of the guide bar is in each case in a loop formation operation is controlled with the aid of the shogging drive.
A known method for controlling the shogging movement of the guide bar in a knitting machine is to use a pattern disk against which a contact roller bears. The contact roller is connected to a shogging slider. A ball pin is provided at the other end of the shogging slider, which ball pin is in engagement with a push rod, which in turn is in engagement with a ball pin on the guide bar. The push rod has ball sockets at both of its ends. The ball pins are thus hinge-mounted in the ball sockets. Thus, it is possible to also drive the guide bar through the pattern disk when it performs a swing-through motion perpendicular to the shogging direction. Through the two ball pin/ball socket bearings, the push rod compensates for the different distances that result between the front and the rear swing-through position on the one hand and the center position on the other hand.
In order to compensate for these changes caused by the swing-through movement of the effective length of the push rod, it has been proposed in DE 41 27 344 A1 to overlap a ground function with a compensation function. This compensation function must be taken into account when producing the pattern disk.
One disadvantage of this approach is still that alternately lateral forces act on the bar. This causes a negative alternating stress on the guide bar guidance and also generates frictional heat and wear in the ball connections. Another disadvantage is that the ball connections can be produced with the necessary precision only with relatively high expenditure. Even with a very precise production, temperature changes, which result, e.g., from the considerable frictional heat in the ball connections, cause division inaccuracies that lead to problems.