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October 7, 2019 by Tien Chiu 4 Comments

Upgrading Maryam

We’re still working on getting Maryam talking to my laptop. It turns out she needs the controller card replaced, which means changing out the back beam because the strain gauge built into the back beam, which controls the warp tension, is not compatible with the latest generation of controller cards. (Maryam is one of the early-model TC-2 jacquard looms, and many design changes have taken place since.)

I’ve ordered the parts (Tronrud generously offered a discount on them, which was nice of them!), along with a kit for upgrading the beater and some small replacement parts. Shipping from Norway is so expensive that if a package is to be shipped, I want to pack as much as possible into the package!

Dave (the electromechanical wizard who put together the loom) also came by yesterday to discuss some changes to the vacuum tube pumps and wiring. We want to try wiring up both vacuum pumps to Grace in an effort to give her more thread-lifting oomph. At the moment, she has a tendency to leave some threads down when opening a shed, and we think that’s because she is right up at the maximum number of modules they recommend for a single pump – 12 modules. So she may not be outputting enough vacuum to pull up threads that have more friction. Attaching a second vacuum pump might help with that.

Of course, attaching a second vacuum pump creates some logistical problems. For example, now we need to run two vacuum pumps at once, which means putting in a second 220-volt electrical circuit to the garage. It also means wiring both pumps up to Grace AND one pump up to Maryam, and figuring out how to flip switches appropriately. And it means figuring out a system of hoses and valves such that two pumps’ worth of vacuum attach to Grace and one pump’s worth attach to Maryam, but not at the same time.

None of which are impossible, but which I’d have to do a LOT of digging to figure out, as I am not electromechanically inclined. So I am grateful for having both a spouse and a friend who understands these things.

Dave came over yesterday to discuss all this and to sketch out the design for the hoses, valves, and wiring, so I grabbed the opportunity to take a proper photo of the two of us with Grace and Maryam:

Tien, Dave, and the two TC-2 jacquard looms, Grace and Maryam — Tien, Dave, Grace, and Maryam

The delay in starting up Maryam isn’t really going to delay my weaving on her, though. It will take about a week to get parts from Tronrud and get them installed, but that’s fine – it will take me that long to prepare the warp to go onto her, anyway. I’m going to do a pretty complicated pair of warps to go onto her, which I will talk about in my next blog post.

The warps are for the painted warp class I’m developing for 2020. I bought Maryam because I can develop my color samples infinitely more efficiently on her – I can change weave structures and color striping very quickly using her ability to control each thread individually – and I’m very excited to see what our future will bring.

September 30, 2019 by Tien Chiu 1 Comment

Please welcome Maryam!!

Saturday was the loom assembly party! My friends Brian, Chris, and Dave came over to help me put Maryam together.

(Maryam, if you missed my previous posts, is my new-to-me TC-2 jacquard loom, named after Maryam Mirzakhani, the brilliant mathematician and first female Fields Medalist. All my looms are named after female mathematicians, except for Grace, who is named after renowned software titan Grace Hopper.)

Here’s what Maryam looked like shortly before 11am, when Dave (the brains behind the operation) arrived:

TC-2 loom parts scattered in driveway — loom guts scattered around my driveway

I had spent about two hours carefully unpacking and unwrapping all the loom bits and laying them out on clean cardboard in the driveway for easy access. This cleared enough room to work in the garage. The sides and the other heavy pieces I left propped up against the garage walls.

Once Dave and Chris arrived, we started assembling the frame. Dave, who is the electromechanical genius who led the assembly of Grace, was gracious and generous enough to agree to put Maryam together as well. (Thank goodness; it would have taken us at least three times as long to figure everything out without him!)

Here’s Dave on the left, getting ready to replace Grace’s feet with ratcheting leveling casters. The leveling casters convert from feet to wheels and back to feet again, making it easy to roll Maryam around when she needs to be moved – no small matter since she weighs about 750 lbs!

Dave getting ready to replace the TC-2 feet with leveling casters — Dave, our fearless leader!

After putting on the new feet, the first assembly step was to connect the two side pieces. This is an important and tricky step; each side piece weighs about 200 pounds, and the bottom weighs about 50-60 pounds, so many hands were needed to keep things stable and lined up properly. Brian, Chris, Dave, my esteemed spouse, and I all held and shifted parts about while Dave crawled about the bottom, installing the twenty-two (!) bolts that secured the frame together. (Yes, twenty-two. When those Norwegian engineers put something together, it STAYS together!!)

Now the frame was stable enough to stand on its own:

Frame assembly for my TC-2 jacquard loom — Last stages of Maryam’s basic frame assembly

At this point, we no longer needed everyone, so Brian went home, and Chris, Dave, and I continued on with assembly.

Next step was putting on the front and back top assemblies. Also well-supplied with bolts, and built from nice, thick plates of solid steel. If you want something built right, order it from Tronrud Engineering. They do not mess around!

Putting on the front and back panels of the TC-2 jacquard loom

Then we installed the back beam, which was a little tricky since we had to thread the sensor cables through the right side of the loom and hook up the wiring to the loom controller card in the right side. The TC-2 is really cool in that it controls warp tension automatically via a sensor (strain gauge) on the back beam. You can set the tension to a particular level on the computer, and the loom automatically rolls the warp beam forward or back to achieve that level of tension. Nifty, eh?

Here we are after installing the back beam:

Putting on the back beam of the TC-2 jacquard loom — back beam installed, sensor cable not yet run through

The next step (after installing the beater and the front beam) was to install the heddle kits and controller modules. Chris and Dave did that:

Installing heddle kits in the TC-2 jacquard loom — installing heddle kits

For those not familiar with loom guts, the heddles (the long springy things that Chris is putting into the loom) are what lift the threads up and down when the loom is working.

TC-2s work very differently from a standard loom in that the threads are controlled individually, and are lifted via a vacuum pump. Each heddle has a little piston on top, which goes into a shaft in the controller module above it. At the top of the shaft is a baby valve, connected to a kid-sized hose at the top of the module, which connects to a big-momma hose at the top of the loom, connected to a giant-momma vacuum pump located in a corner of the garage. When the loom is running, if a thread is supposed to go up, the computer directs the controller module to open the valve at the top of the shaft, the piston gets sucked up the shaft by the vacuum from the pump, and – TA-DAA!! – the thread rises.

Clever, these monkeys.

Anyway – heddles installed, front, back, side covers put on, warp and cloth beams added, and – drum roll please!! –

SAY HELLO TO MARYAM!!!

Maryam, my new TC-2 jacquard loom! — Maryam says “Hi!”

It took us a total of six hours to get Maryam together. I can’t thank everyone enough, especially Dave, without whom it would have taken three times as long, if we could have figured it out at all.

And here, after another couple hours of cleaning out the garage, is the family photo – Grace and Maryam, snuggled up together in their new home.

Maryam is a bit shy, and we haven’t gotten her to talk to my laptop yet, but the wonderful folks at Digital Weaving Norway/Tronrud Engineering are helping me troubleshoot things, and I’m confident that we’ll have her saying “Hello World!” sometime soon. I’m already planning my first warp on her, which will be a set of painted-warp samples for the course I plan to release next year.

Please welcome Maryam!!

September 23, 2019 by Tien Chiu 2 Comments

Moving Maryam

You may recall that I bought a second TC-2 jacquard loom about a month ago. But I couldn’t arrange for shipping for another month, so Monique (the previous owner) generously agreed to store her for me until I could have her shipped.

Well, last weekend, I flew out to Albuquerque to get her ready for shipping! Here’s the saga of disassembling and shipping her.

I started by flying out to Albuquerque, where Monique picked me up at the airport. We went to Monique’s place first, to drop off my luggage and take a look at Maryam – and there she was, pretty one!

I made the final payment for her, and we went to pick up the U-Haul. Whoops! The 15-foot truck I had reserved was too big to go down the twisty driveway, and the 10-foot truck didn’t have a ramp. We’d have to lift the 250-pound sides up into the truck through raw muscle power.

Now, I’m strong, but I’m not that strong…and we didn’t have enough strong people coming to help, either. Monique made some emergency phone calls.

I drove the truck back to Monique’s place, and spent about half an hour trying (not very competently) trying to get it into position. Fortunately, just as I was about to back it into Monique’s pine tree, her friends Ray and Dana showed up and shouted “THE TREE! THE TREE!!!”

Ray, who is every bit as deft with a truck as I am awkward, quickly took the wheel and got it into place instantly. (Thank goodness.) We started disassembly.

Here’s what she looked like after about half an hour:

Maryam, my TC-2 jacquard loom, with the warp beam and the back beam removed

We’d removed the warp beam and the back beam, and set them carefully aside. We’d also detached the vacuum hose, the green snake visible to the left side of the loom.

Next to come out were the heddles in the center of the loom. I didn’t get a photo of them while they were in the loom, but here’s a photo of a packed-up set of heddles:

packed up set of heddles for the TC-2 jacquard loom

You can see them in the previous photo in the center of the loom.

These were tricky to pack since the springs at the bottom can tangle, which creates problems later (ask me how I know!). So we covered them in paper, wrapped them in cardboard boxes, and shipped them flat.

Next step was to remove the bars connecting the sides together. This required removing the panel covers on both sides, revealing the guts of the loom. Here’s the right side, which contains the fancy electronics as well as the servo motors for the beams:

And here’s the left side, which is considerably simpler:

left side of TC-2 jacquard loom with panels removed

That was as far as we got on Saturday, with four people working for three hours.

It was now obvious that four people working for several hours on Sunday to finish disassembly, plus trying to lift the 250-pound sides into the loom, were going to be pitifully inadequate to the task. Fortunately, Monique had now gotten some return phone calls – help was going to arrive tomorrow! Excellent.

As we neared finishing-time for the day, my friend Blossom arrived. Blossom and I go back over a decade – he’s a former professional weaver who retired due to a shoulder injury, then started a letterpress business, and who currently works painting sets for movie studios. He has an intensity that makes him fascinating – whatever he does, he pours himself into with passion and verve. He was working a string of forty 12-hour days in a row but somehow managed to wangle a half-day on Sunday so he could help me move Maryam (thanks, Blossom!!).

Anyway, he arrived just as we were finishing up for the day, and instantly dived in to help. I immediately noticed his matching Leatherman Tread! (You may recall my rhapsodizing over the one I got as a gift from my in-laws.)

matching Leatherman Treads — matching Treads!

We couldn’t resist a Wonder Twins photo:

Sunday morning, Monique and I got started around 10, packing up the small parts. Around 1pm, the cavalry arrived – eight people!! They got down to serious business, disconnecting wires and removing nuts and bolts. (Yes, I took lots of pictures and taped fasteners to the correct locations.)

Disconnecting wires and disassembling TC-2 main body — Ray, supervising disassembly

Eventually, after removing about 16 bazillion bolts from solid steel plates (these Norwegian engineers do not mess around!), we successfully removed the left side:

Ray and Daniel, moving the left side of the TC-2 loom — Ray and Daniel, moving the left side

Several hefty guys lifted it into the loom (no mean feat – it weighed about 250 pounds!), where it got wrapped in moving blankets and tied down with heavy ratchet straps. The ratchet straps were rated for 750 pounds each, and I had 12 of them – I was not messing around. (This also explains why my little rollerboard suitcase weighed 46 pounds when I checked it! Needless to say, when I opened it in Albuquerque, a “We inspected your luggage” love note from the TSA fell out. 😉 )

Strapping down the left side of the TC-2 jacquard loom in the U-Haul — Strapping down the left side

There was more to pack, of course. Quite a bit more. It didn’t fill the U-Haul by any means, but it was a bit of a puzzle to figure out how to pack the load so nothing would shift:

Packing the rest of the TC-2 into the U-haul — Packing the rest of the loom

After three hours of work with eight people, we got Maryam fully disassembled, packed, and loaded. Here’s a picture of Monique, me, and Maryam:

I dropped the U-Haul off at Anne’s house (Anne was driving Maryam back to California for me) and flew back to California.

On Friday, I heard a horn beeping in front of my house. And there she was!

U-Haul with Maryam in it — Maryam’s arrived!

“Good Lord,” said my friend Lieven, “I’ve never seen this much room in your garage before!”

An abnormal amount of free space in my garage

“Don’t worry,” I grinned. “We’re about to fix that.”

And here’s Maryam in her new home:

Maryam, my new-to-me TC-2 jacquard loom, in my garage — Maryam at home

The assembly party is this Sunday! Four people are coming over to help put her together, led by my genius-engineer friend Dave. There will be cake, champagne, and lots of pictures, of course!!

September 22, 2019 by Tien Chiu 1 Comment

Cat-iversary #6!

Yes, it’s now been six turns around the wheel with these adorable kittens:

Fritz and Tigress on adoption day, 9/22/2013

They are now middle-aged kitties, with occasional middle-aged-kitty health issues: Fritz went to the vet earlier this year with a urinary tract blockage, and Tigress needed anesthesia for a periodontal deep-cleaning, though fortunately she didn’t need any teeth removed. We are not looking forward to brushing her teeth for her!

(Fritz’s teeth were just fine – apparently his fetish for chewing on cardboard and packing tape is good for something!)

The cats, however, are still eager studio assistants. Here’s Tigress assisting with a studio shoot, by guarding my samples from would-be sample molesters (i.e., me!):

Of course, every photo looks better with a cat photobombing it, especially if the cat is wrinkling the silly little bits of fabric and getting cat hair all over them! But somehow humans never seem to understand that. Go figure.

Also, sometimes humans get their priorities wrong and need to be reminded of who’s in charge. Here Fritz is laying down the law in the middle of a photo shoot (yes, he did get his belly rub!):

The cats, of course, continue to excel at cat things. Here’s Fritz, practicing the ancient art of Taking Up Enormous Expanses of Bed:

And here’s Tigress, mere moments before the human decided that perhaps all that yarn needed to be relocated:

Lest you think this mere paranoia, this had happened to an innocent skein of yarn earlier in the week:

So yeah, it’s a good thing that our little furry fiend…

….is also infinitely adorable:

Here’s to six wonderful years, and hopefully many more to come!

September 10, 2019 by Tien Chiu 1 Comment

Inching towards velvet

Again the silence! Color & Design, my new course, launched last Tuesday. (Find out more about it here.) It’s been an exhausting launch for a variety of reasons – chief among them is that, despite appearances, I’m a serious introvert, so making an extended sales pitch to thousands of people leaves me emotionally exhausted. Not to mention physically and mentally exhausted from all the work involved!

So in my limited free time, I have been escaping into mindless loom labor. You may remember that, about a thousand years ago, I mentioned that after Amazing Grace, my TC-2 jacquard loom, was threaded, we discovered a half-twist in the warp behind the heddles. Which, in turn, required cutting the warp, untwisting it, and tying it back on, thread by thread. For about 1,000 threads.

Ricki, bless their soul, did the bulk of that work. I did the last few threads two days ago, and pulled the knots through the reed yesterday!! Then – individual thread by individual thread – I drew each of the 2,640 threads tight to make sure that there were no loose threads caught behind the heddles, and tied on. Here we are now, every thread nice, tight, and even:

So now Grace is threaded, sleyed, and ready to weave. Right?

Well, not quite.

Every time you thread a loom, there’s the possibility of threading errors. Actually, check that: Unless you are a miracle worker, there are threading errors. Also sleying errors (mistakes pulling the threads through the reed). On a jacquard loom, you can add stuck heddles to that – Grace has been sitting around for two years, which jacquard looms don’t like, and we also rearranged her configuration, which can introduce dust into the pistons and bores. All of which need to be caught and debugged.

So that’s what I’ll be doing for the next while.

But that’s okay, because I need to set up the rest of the velvet equipment. In particular, I need the velvet rods, the velvet spools, and the velvet rack to hold the spools. Each velvet warp thread needs to be individually tensioned on its own separate spool (oy vey!), and there will be 880 of them, so that is a LOT of spools!

Fortunately, I have a genius software engineer for a partner, armed with a 3-D printer, so once we decide the dimensions of the velvet rack, designing and printing 880 spools should be more tedious than difficult. (Winding them will be equally tedious, but at least I will have pretty colors to console me!) Building the velvet rack should be equally simple.

No, the kicker will be the velvet rods. I had planned to use nylon monofilament, with a curved velvet knife to keep the blade roughly centered on the pile, and may still do so. But I’ve been advised (indirectly) by the velvet experts at the Lisio Foundation that this may make it difficult to get a nice even cut pile. They suggested finding an old jacquard mill and asking to use their old rods, but I have no idea where to start finding one. I tried talking to a place with a CNC milling machine, but it turns out they would be very difficult to mill on a CNC machine because of the tiny dimensions.

So a friend suggested another possibility: Have them 3-D printed in metal! She thinks it would be quite possible if we can produce the right CAD files. So I’ve written off to the Lisio Foundation to see if they’d be willing to provide measurements for their velvet rods. If that doesn’t pan out, then I’ll take a stab at designing my own, and just adjust as needed. (It might actually be more fun to design my own!)

Meanwhile, off to debug the warp!