Toyota Knitting Machines

We have put up a companion website for the Toyota Machine Knitters Yahoo Group. It's being used as a resource library for pictures of machines and more importantly, electronic copies of manuals. These are all downloadable and free of charge for anyone who needs them. We are still looking for a few manuals, like the old Simulknit attachment for the KR460 ribber that was used with the KS787 machines, but as we come across them, we are sharing them via this website.
http://toyotamking.iwarp.com
If you are a interested in Toyota knitting machines, check it out. There is a lot of information there.

I need to start this by stating that some of these photos were copied from Ebay Auctions and I sure hope I'm not in trouble for posting them here. Some of these are of my own machines or of my friends machines too. I'm hoping that members of the Toyota Knitters Yahoo Group, or any other Toyota KM knitters out there will contribute photo's of their machines to either make corrections to this information or to fill in the gaps. The last Toyota badged model, KS950. The Elna 2400 is exactly the same machine but the color combination is maroon/burgundy and grey instead of maroon/burgundy and cream.
This model features transfer lace attachements that are mounted onto the main carriage for transfer lace instead of the 2 carriage for transfer lace system of the earlier models. The square shaped darker colored peices of metal in the photo above are the attachments that actually transfer the stitches from one needle to another for transfer lace. Since it transfers stitches and knits all in the same pass of the machine, it really cuts down on the time to knit transfer lace. Mulitiple transfers are accomplished by holding the yarn out of the feeder during the transfer rows on the punchcard and then re-inserted on the last transfer row . It transfers and knits all in the same row when the yarn is in the feeder.

This little mini vidi is to show how the carriage should move across the needlebed. It's just so much easier to show things than to try to explain it. I hope this will help some of the new machine knitters out there to see what is supposed to be happening with their machines :)

Before I ran out of time I was trying to explain how I oil for each project. Everyone has their own preferences, there have been all out list wars on what products are the best. After using many different oils from Lori Lyn spray to Hoppes Gun Oil, the oil that I prefer to use is the Singer Brand Machine Oil. The bottle reads : All purpose - specially formulated for sewing/knitting machines, vacumm cleaners, household appliances, and it lists a few other things. My knitting guru, Patrick Madden swears by it, all my machines love it and since I started using it exclusively, I don't get that black stuff all over anymore either. Most importantly, I have no build up or hardening or gumming of any of my machine working parts.

As I try to point out when ever I give any kind of help or advise regarding machine knitting, all my opinions are based on my own personal experience, your results may vary :)