Croche-Matic – building a robot for crocheting 3D spherical form

Abstract

Crochet is a textile craft that has existed since it evolved out of the practice of nuns-laces during the Great Irish Famine. Unlike other textile crafts such as knitting it has almost entirely avoided mechanization and industrialization except for a select number of one-off crochet machines. These existing machines are limited to only one or two types of crochet stitches out of hundreds of possible stitches. Since crochet machines do not exist in the textile industry, mass produced crochet objects and clothes sold in stores like Target and Zara are the products of crochet sweatshops where people make pennies for hours of their handicraft. In this paper we present Croche-Matic, a radial crochet machine for generating three-dimensional spherical geometry. The Croche-Matic is designed based on Magic Ring technique, a method for crocheting three-dimensional objects. This technique is commonly found in crochet Amigurumi, the art of crocheting small stuffed animals or creatures. Croche-matic is able complete the four main stitches used in Magic Ring Technique, and has the capability to crochet three-dimensional objects.