INTERACTIVE COURSE AND SIMULATED APPLICATION FOR TEACHING THE DESIGN OF 3D SHAPED KNITTED TUBES

3D shape knitting provides a huge potential concerning the systems efficiencies, waste minimisation, material optimisation and creates opportunities for new applications not traditionally associated with knitted textiles. 3D forms are the most used items in technical field and the knitting technology is, among the other textile technologies (weaving, braiding, and nonwoven), one that presents a great potential for designing preforms which are suitable for fibre-reinforced composites. The major developments achieved in the knitting field have made the flat knitting machine a suitable tool to obtain near-net shapes. Technological features in flat-bed knitting allow the automatic production of 3D forms that time ago could only be handmade. These advanced knitting machines are always accompanied by the CAD (Computer Aided Design) software in order to design the pattern and also to program them. The programming skills demand sometimes beside the basic knowledge also a three dimensional view of the final product and the correlation with the 2D pattern, especially to the 3D shapes, which usually these specialised software don't have. Therefore, the paper aims to create an interactive course focused on the design of 3D shaped knitted tubes, which allows to the user to easy understand and learn how to generate these type of knitted forms in terms of knitting programming. The course is accompanied by a simulated interactive application regarding the design of a 3D shaped knitted tube in the form of L made on Ml plus pattern station, from Stoll GmbH, Germany. The IT solution used to create the course and the simulated application is the "Storyline" software from Articulate.