KARL MAYER continues to develop multibar lace – with block yarn guides and bourdon cords
The trend for using lace to create stylish garments continues unabated, and is especially making the fabrics produced on KARL MAYER’s multibar raschel machines real best-sellers.
This lace, with its typical relief-like patterns, can be produced in a wide variety of designs – ranging from classic styles to modern and extravagant looks, which bring an impressive quality and a touch of “va va voom” to the garments. As a leading producer of warp knitting machines, KARL MAYER is also ensuring that the market for multibar lace is always interesting – by constantly introducing new developments. Two of the most recent innovations include the processing of extremely thick bourdon cords and the use of block yarn guides. The developers at KARL MAYER always look closely at the market and talk to their customers before developing new products.
Thick liners create striking pattern effects
Bourdon cords are classic materials used for designing apparel lace, and produce striking patterns. Thick yarns especially enable multifaceted and striking contours to be produced, but they are not that easy to handle during the production process. The guide bars in the front shog lines on the tried-and-tested ML 46 were fitted with special guides for processing chunky bourdon cords. Non-stretch types can now be used in counts of up to 2,500 dtex, and stretch types of up to 3,300 dtex can even be processed. The maximum possible yarn counts for multibar raschel machines equipped with standard knitting elements are just over half of these values respectively.
The decorative impact of this relief lace, with its “moving”, three-dimensional surface, can be specifically enhanced by integrating multicoloured effects. These multicoloured designs can be produced by using bourdon cords with a sheath of viscose, followed by package dyeing. Alternatively they can be produced from fancy yarns, which may be produced by plying together yarns of different colour, for example. Liners made from textured polyamide, in a count of 3,000 dtex, for example, can even be processed without any problems on the ML 46.
Jacquard-like grounds produced using block yarn guides
The main requirement of lace is that it should offer a wide variety of different styles and types. Different effects can be produced by the lapping arrangement of the pattern yarns, as well as by the design of the ground. Multibar lace machines, equipped with block yarn guides, can show just what types of grounds can be produced. During the development work recently carried out at KARL MAYER, the MLF 60/32 was equipped with 1″-block yarn guides in the six string bars of the last shog line. As well as working traditional pillar stitch/weft combinations, this additional yarn system opens up extra design possibilities, especially when working jacquard-like structures, such as Binche designs, open rib patterns and distorted honeycomb nets.