Knitting Flat Machines and Circular Machines

Flat machines have needles arranged on horizontal or flat needle beds. The needle bed is made of metal and contains parallel grooves, know as tricks, which are cut into the needle bed. Into each groove is fitted one latch needle. Spring beard needles and compound needles aren't used as often as the latch needle. Usually a needle bed has well over one hundred needles. The finer the gauge of the machine, that is the more needles per inch, the finer or thinner the needles, the finer the yarn required for knitting, and the finer or thinner will be the knitted fabric produced. On the other hand, the coarser the gauge, the fewer needles per inch, the thicker the needles, the thicker or coarser the yarn which may be knitted. Coarser gauge machine are used for knitting heavier fabrics.

Circular Machines, on the circular machine, the yarn runs horizontally and continuously in the same director - in contrast to the flat bed machine, where the yarn changes director with each course. Thus, the yarn is knitted around and around, so that very high rates of production can be achieved. The fabric is a seamless tube of material. The high rate of production of circular machines is due also to the fact that they can knit up to hundred yarns in one revolution through the use of multiple yarn feeds.