US3590603A

US3590603A - Sheer warp knit garment and method for making same

Info

Publication number: US3590603A
Application number: US797987A
Authority: US
Inventors: George E Jackson
Original assignee: Union Carbide Corp
Current assignee: Viskase Corp
Priority date: 1969-02-10
Filing date: 1969-02-10
Publication date: 1971-07-06
Anticipated expiration: 1988-07-06
Also published as: CA945770A

Abstract

Continuous, back-to-back tubular undergarments, having sheer, lockstitched body portions and spaced, reinforced toe, heel, welt, or panty portions, are produced on a double-needle-bar Raschel knitting machine having at least 12 guide bars. The basic body knit is chainstitched wales of one strand, the wales being connected by zigzag stitches of another strand. The chainstitches are converted to a jersey 2-0, 2-4 stitch in the reinforced area so that no guide bar must move more than one needle space to form the garment.

Description

iii States tent [72] inventor George E. Jackson Charleston, W. Va.

[21] Appl. No. 797,987

[22] Filed Feb. 10, 1969 [45] Patented July 6,1971

[73] Assignee Union Carbide Corporation New York, N.Y.

[54] SHEER WARP KNIT GARMENT AND METHOD FOR MAKING SAME 5 Claims, 6 Drawing Figs.

[52] US. Cl 66/177, 66/176, 66/195, 66/182 [51] lnLCl P04b9/02 [50] Field of Search .1

' l90--l95,182,176,l75

[56] References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,433,279 12/1947 Johnson 66/195 3,429,147 2/1969 Perrier OTHER REFERENCES Hudson, J. 0., Hosiery and Pantyhose Developments on Raschel Equipment," KNITTED OUTER TIMES, Vol. 37, No. 49., Novv 25, 1968, Pages 49- 55 Primary Examiner-Ronald Feldbaum Attorney-Pearson & Pearson ABSTRACT: Continuous, back-to-back tubular undergarments, having sheer, lockstitched body portions and spaced, reinforced toe, heel, welt, or parity portions, are produced on a double-needlebar Raschel knitting machine having at least 12 guide bars. The basic body knit is chainstitched wales of one strand, the wales being connected by zigzag stitches of another strand. The chainstitches are converted to a jersey 2-0, 2-4 stitch in the reinforced area so that no guide bar must move more than one needle space to form the garment.

PATENTEU JUL-6 I971

sum

1 or 2 mum!!! GUIDE SET OUT FOR PANTY HOSE GUIDE BARS LEG LEG 12 CHA|N \37 o o o o o o o c o c o o o o o o H JERSEY/ 0 o o o o o o o o 0 10 RT. SEL. X 9 zlG-zAG o o o o o o o o c\ o o o o a o o a o o o o o o o o o 8 LFT.SEL. X 33 24 7 INSIDE SEL. X 6 INSIDESEL. X

5 RT. SEL. 32 23 )t 4 ZG.ZAG36 o c o o o \\o o J a o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 3 LFT. SEL. X 30 2 JERSEY o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 1 CHAIN/37 0 \j o o o o o o o o o o LEFT 3 RIGHT 47 PANTY 46 SELVEDGE CENTER SELVEDGE X=CONNECTOR STRANDS 48'49 INVENTOR.

Fig. 2 GEORGE E. JACKSON ATTORNEYS PATENTEU JUL-6 lsn SHEET 2 [IF 2 BASIC TUBE STITCH REI NFORCING AREA STITCH INVENTOR. GEORGE E. JACKSON SHEER WARP KNIT GARMENT AND METHOD lFUllk MAKING SAME BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION In the knitting art, it has long been customary to make flat goods on warp knitting machines and to make tubular, semifinished garments on circular weft knitting machines. Warp knitting, with its multiplicity of warp yarns, one to a needle, has proved most satisfactory in making flat, power net fabric for cutting into undergarment patterns. While multiguide-bar, two-needle-bar Raschel machines can make continuous tubular goods, the adaption of such machines to producing sheet stockings, panty hose, or the like, has been generally unsuccessful to date.

A two-needle-bar, eightor lO-guide-bar warp knitting machine, is disclosed in British patents 1,036,246, of Jan. 8, 1963, and 1,069,881 of May 24, 1967, the machine being capable of producing tubular, ladderproof, ladies sheer stockings with invisible lateral seaming joining the two single fabrics made by the machine. Reference is made to an article entitled Hosiery and Panty Hose Developments on llaschel Equipment" in the Nov. 25, 1968 issue of Knitted Outerwear Times, describing the state of the art and the equipment and product of the above patents.

It is stated in the said article that present developments enable the production of string connected, or back-to-back, continuous, warp knit tubes on a IO-guide-bar Raschel machine, the leg, or panel, section being in reverse lock knit, the tube being stitch-shaped, the tube having reinforced sections for heel, foot bottom, and toe, and having another reinforced section to which a separately knitted welt is later attached. The reverse lock knit of the panel, or leg, area requires guide bar movement over two needle spaces, to produce a runproof stocking.

in actual practice, despite the allegations in the said article, it is believed that prior to the invention herein, stockings made in accordance with the article have been made on an eightguide-bar, double-needle-bar machine, and the selvedge has been connectable only by breaking off two needles at each selvedge. It will be understood that Raschel needles are formed in a block, and, if one or more needles are broken from the block, the needle bed can only be used for one product thereafter until the broken blocks are replaced. It is also pointed out that, when shifts of more than one needle space are made, three separately controlled yarn guides are required to make each selvedge. While stockings with only two so] vedges could be made with a l-bar machine, using four bars for the knit and six for the selvedge, panty hose with its four selvedges would require 16 guide bars, and no such machine is presently available.

To make panty hose on a l4-guide-bar machine, it would be necessary to break off needles at the outer selvedges, and this is undesirable. The said article thus does not teach the making of sheer, panty hose on the l4-guide-bar Fashionmaster machine mentioned, but simply recounts the many problems encountered including variation in individual and tension, the extensive guide bar swing, tearing of the crotch, etc.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In this invention, the l4-guide-bar, double-needle-bar Fashionmaster" of the Cocker Machine & Foundry Company of Gastonia, NO, or any other similar machine having at least 12 guide bars, can produce sheer, lockstitch, stockings, or panty hose, with the problems enumerated in the said article completely overcome. This is accomplished by avoiding the reverse lock knit, and two-needle-space movement taught by the above prior art. Instead, two fine denier strands are fed to each needle, the set of one such strands are looped back and forth between adjacent wales to tie in the adjacent pillars laterally, the set of the other such strands are chainstitched in the panel, or leg areas, and then converted to a jersey 2-(), 2-4 loop structure in the reinforced toe, foot bottom, heel and welt areas, and no guide bar moves two needle spaces in the knitted structure. In this manner, only six guide bars are needed to form the panel areas and reinforced areas, and only six more guide bars are required to make both the inside and outside selvedges and the crotch of the panty hose.

The stitch shaping and crotch leg formation of the sheer panty hose of this invention is accomplished by the mechanism of the Fashionmaster which is commercially available and is now used to make fishnet panty hose, using 12 of the i l guide bars. The gist ofmy invention is the concept of a different stitch structure in the main body of the panty hose, and in the reinforced areas, whereby stitch motions of only one needle space are required, and the machine can therefore produce sheer, stitch-shaped panty hose, rather than merely fishnet, unreinforced panty hose.

BRIEF DESGRIPTION OF Til-IE DRAWINGS FIG. ii is a diagrammatic front view of a Fashionmaster machine showing the pattern means, warp beam means, warp knitting means, and wind up means;

FIG. 2 is a schematic plan view of a double-needle-bar multiple-guidehar iRaschel knitting machine showing the guide bar set out for the sheer panty hose ofthe invention;

FIG. 3 is an enlarged schematic view of string connected back-to-baclt sheer ladies stockings made in accordance with the invention and laid out flat before being cut and boarded into final stocking shape;

FIG. is a view similar to FIG. El, showing string-connected stitch-shaped sheer panty hose made in accordance with the invention;

FIG. 5 is an enlarged fragmentary view of the basic panel, or body, stitch; and

FIG. 6 is an enlarged fragmentary view of the reinforced area stitch used in the toe, foot bottom, heel welt or panty areas.

In the drawings, FIG. I. diagrammatically illustrates a typical multiple-guide-bar two-needle-bar Raschel warp knitting machine 2i), such as the above mentioned Fashionmaster or any equivalent commercially available machine having at least 10 guide bars. The machine Ztl includes: the warp beam means 2]., guide bar means 22, double-

needle bars

23 and 24, chaintype pattern means 25 and 2b, and windup roll means 27, whereby the machine can have a pattern set up to make warp knitted products of various types.

The warp beam means 2?: is arranged to supply two strands 3d and fill, each, for example, of IS denier Cantrece nylon, to each needle 3?; or 33 of the opposite pairs of needles on needle bars 23 and M) in each transverse zone 341 of the machine 2.43 required to knit a panty width tubular undergarment 35. This is for the reason that rather than forming a single strand into both a walewise pillar and a zigzag lateral connector between pillars, in this invention, one set 36 of strands forms the zigzag lateral connector between w'alewise extending pillars, while the other set 3 7 of strands is forming either chainstitches or reinforcementjersey-type stitches.

The l2 guide bars ill-i2: of the machine are threaded as shown in FIG. 2 for making the sheer panty hose of the invention. Guide bars ll, 12, ill and 12 are threaded with the strands as, to constitute the other set 37 of strands arranged to alternately form chainstitches in the panel, or basic tube stitch areas dill of the garments or to form jersey knit 2-0, 2-4 stitches in the toe area ll, foot bottom area 42, heel area 43, welt area 44 or panty area 45 .of the garments. As shown, guide bars 5 and ill) connect the right outer selvedge 46,

guide bars

3 and 3 connect the left outer selvedge 47, and

guide bars

6 and 7 connect the inside selvedges iii and 49 of the leg, or other limb, tubes. The connector strands are marked X in the drawing, and form the crotch area M in a known manner.

In FIG. 5, the basic tube stitch of the invention is shown enlarged, each strand 3% associated with each

needle

23 or 24, forming a walewise-extending pillar of runproof, lock chainstitches such as M, 152 and 53, and with each strand 31 associated with each

needle

23 or 24, forming a zigzag stitch extending laterally back and forth as at 54 and 55 between each

wale

51, 52 or 53 to tie in the chainstitched pillars. This basic tube stitch presents a sheer stocking panel, lockstitch appearance bearing little resemblance to the fishnet stitch of prior-art panty hose, or to the two'needle-space stitch taught in the above-mentioned British patents.

In FIG. 6, the reinforced area stitch of the invention is shown enlarged, this, like the basic stitch requiring no more than one-needle-space motion by the guide bars and therefore being possible on a machine 20 of the Fashionmaster type. As shown, the

zigzag stitches

54 and 55 of strand 31 are unchanged in this area, but the chainstitches, 51, 52, or 53 of the strands 30 have been converted to the jersey knit 2-0, 24 stitch shown at 56 and 57, so that the

strands

30 and 31 cross each other in forming a mesh of reduced area suitable for a toe, heel, welt, or the like.

In FIG. 3, a stocking tube back-to-back is shown with the chain stitches 51, 52, 53 extending walewise in the body yarn areas 40 and changing to jersey stitches in the reinforced

areas

41, 42 and 43. The zigzag stitches, which are unchanged for the full length and area of the garment, are shown in stylized form, lighter lines, in view of the difficulty of showing the actual loop structure accurately on small scale.

In FIG. 4, a stitch-shaped string-connected back-to-back panty hose product of the invention is shown enlarged over the showing in FIG. 1 and with the basic stitch areas designated 40, and the reinforced stitch areas designated 41, 42, 43, 44 and 45 in a manner similar to FIG. 3.

The two guide bars of the i4 guide bars of the Fashionmaster" which are not required may be used to insert filler yarns for design purposes, if desired.

A pattern chain layout by which the guide bars 1-12 are controllably operated by pattern chain means 25 and 26 to cause machine 20 to knit the sheer panty hose product of the invention is set out below. The layout is stated as it would be read from the design pages and does not take into account that actual practice would require some chain links to be transposed to a higher or lower value due to pushing the guide bars from the left side or the right side. Since the left and right.

Front Back Front Back Guide bar 1 20 O2 22 20 00 24 22 Guide bar 4L 24 22 20 22 Other drum shift 24 22 20 22 Guide bar 5. ()2 02 00 00 Other drum shift 02 02 O0 00 Guide bar fi 02 02 00 00 Other drum shift. 24 22 20 22 Guide bar 7.- 22 22 20 20 Other drum 5 22 24 22 20 Guide bar 8. 22 22 20 20 Other drum S 22 22 20 20 Guide bar 9. 22 22 22 20 Other drum 5 22 24 22 20 Guide bar 02 22 2O 00 Other drum shift. 02 02 0O 00 Guide bar 11- 02 22 00 Other drum shift. 20 22 24 00 Guide bar 12--.. 0'2 22 20 00 One drum shift 20 22 24 00 drums of the right and left pattern means 25 or 26 can be reversed, the drums are designated as one" drum and other"drum.

PATTERN CHAIN SET OUT NOTE The upper set of numbers left to right, represents the motions for each guide bar to make the tube.

The lower set of numbers, left to right, represents the motions for each guide bar to make the panty section when both drums are shifted.

When the one drum is shifted only the heel and toe is formed.

What I claim is:

l. A garment formed of a warp knit tubular body having a predetermined pattern of spaced basic knit areas and reinforced knit areas,

each said basic knit area comprising a first set of individual continuous warp yarns, each chainstitched along its respective wale, and a second set of individual continuous warp yarns, each looped back and forth between two adjacent wales in zigzag configuration to connect the chainstitches therein,

and each said reinforced knit area comprising said first set stitched in a 2-0, 2-4 jersey loop construction instead of said chainstitch construction, and superimposed on and interlocked with said second set of zigzag configuration stitches.

2. A hollow tubular warp knit undergarment having elongated limb sections of a basic stitch construction and having a predetermined pattern of other sections of a reinforced stitch construction, each stitch of said garment being formed of superposed loops of each of a pair of strands, one said strand lapping in a first direction between adjacent wales to connect the same, from'one end of said garment to the other, and the other said strand defining a chainstitch in said limb section but changing from said chainstitch to lapping in a direction opposite to said first direction between adjacent wales in said other sections to reinforce the same while reducing mesh size therein.

3. A warp-knitted, sheer, tubular undergarment having a basic knitted structure formed by one set of strands chainstitched to form walewise pillars homogeneously all around said tube and another set of strands, each extending back and forth between the wales of said garment to tie in the same, and at least one reinforced area in said basic knitted structure for serving as a toe, foot bottom, heel, crotch, or welt, said reinforcement having said chainstitched set of strands each converted into ajersey loop structure in said area and knitted in the opposite direction to said another set of strands. t. A warp-knitted, sheer, tubular undergarment as specified in claim 3, wherein said another set of strands are each of the elastic spandex yp S. A warp-knitted, sheer, tubular undergarment as specified in claim 3, wherein said strands of said one set and said strands of said another set are all of resilient, flexible, elastomeric material.

Claims

1. A garment formed of a warp knit tubular body having a predetermined pattern of spaced basic knit areas and reinforced knit areas, each said basic knit area comprising a first set of individual continuous warp yarns, each chainstitched along its respective wale, and a second set of individual continuous warp yarns, each looped back and forth between two adjacent wales in zigzag configuration to connect the chainstitches therein, and each said reinforced knit area comprising said first set stitched in a 2-0, 2-4 jersey loop construction instead of said chainstitch construction, and superimposed on and interlocked with said second set of zigzag configuration stitches.

2. A hollow tubular warp knit undergarment having elongated limb sections of a basic stitch construction and having a predetermined pattern of other sections of a reinforced stitch construction, each stitch of said garment being formed of superposed loops of each of a pair of strands, one said strand lapping in a first direction between adjacent wales to connect the same, from one end of said garment to the other, and the other said strand defining a chainstitch in said limb section but changing from said chainstitch to lapping in a direction opposite to said first direction between adjacent wales in said other sections to reinforce the same while reducing mesh size therein.

3. A warp-knitted, sheer, tubular undergarment having a basic knitted structure formed by one set of strands chainstitched to form walewise pillars homogeneously all around said tube and another set of strands, each extending back and forth between the wales of said garment to tie in the same, and at least one reinforced area in said basic knitted structure for serving as a toe, foot bottom, heel, crotch, or welt, said reinforcement having said chainstitched set of strands each converted into a jersey loop structure in said area and knitted in the opposite direction to said another set of strands.

4. A warp-knitted, sheer, tubular undergarment as specified in claim 3, wherein said another set of strands are each of the elastic spandex type.

5. A warp-knitted, sheer, tubular undergarment as specified in claim 3, wherein said strands of said one set and said strands of said another set are all of resilient, flexible, elastomeric material.