Thingiverse user Chris designed this punch card reader and posted it on the site.

This is a proof-of-concept, 3-bit Jacquard-style, all-mechanical punch card reader. The design was inspired by designs in a textbook called “The Mechanism of Weaving” by T.W. Fox (it’s about 100 years old, but I found a copy on Amazon), and adapted to work within the limitations of my Makerbot ToM printer. It is a single-cylinder, single-acting, positive-action device. This design could readily be adapted to a higher number of ‘bits’ (needles) by re-designing only a few parts. With minor modifications, it should be suitable to mounting over a miniature loom, with the bottom eyes of the hooks lifting healds or warp threads directly. This is probably as impractical as it sounds.

3 Responses to Printed 3-Bit Mechanical Punch Card Reader

  1. Pingback: Printed 3-Bit Mechanical Punch Card Reader | My Daily Feeds

  2. Bring back the Hasbro Think-a-tron!

  3. Pingback: 3D print your own punch card reader and relive the good old days | Stock Market News - Business & Tech News

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: