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:

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.

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:

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!

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:

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!

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:

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:

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!!!

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!!

So, um, I bought another loom. Another TC-2 jacquard loom, in fact.

If you’re a new reader of this blog, you’re probably wondering if I’m nuts. (If you’ve been reading for awhile, you’re not wondering – you already know I’m nuts. Nothing to do with the mental illness, of course. 🙂 ) Why on earth would I feel the need to buy a second TC-2?? Especially now, when I’m so busy building a business??

Well, the short form is that I was thinking of buying a dobby loom with which to weave samples for my online courses, and a used TC-2 came up for sale, incredibly cheap – in fact, at roughly the price of a used dobby loom.

At moments like these, you don’t think (well, not if you’re me!) – you leap bodily for the keyboard and type the words, “I’ll buy your loom!”

Afterwards, you sort out the trivial details, like where on earth you’re going to put the monster (a LOT of garage-rearranging, stuff-purging, etc. is going to have to happen), how you’re going to finance the deal, and whether or not you’ll survive the giant impulse purchase (fortunately, I have a VERY tolerant spouse!).

Fortunately the ad had only been up for an hour or two when I saw it, so I beat out the other interested party, and this lovely creature is now mine, all mine:

She’s a 29″ weaving-width TC-2 jacquard loom with 880 heddles, and she’s in New Mexico right now. So my latest project is working out how to ship an 800-pound loom packed with delicate electronics 1000 miles. If you know of a shipper that handles large, delicate items and will take an item from Albequerque, New Mexico to the San Francisco Bay Area, please leave a comment on this post with your suggestion! I’d really appreciate it.

The next question, of course, is what to name the new TC-2. Fortunately, that is easy…I had already decided that my next loom (if I got one) would be named Maryam, after Maryam Mirzakhani, a brilliant mathematician and the first female recipient of the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics (it’s the “Nobel Prize” of mathematics). Tragically, she died of breast cancer in 2017, at the age of 40 – she did so much, in so little time, that it would have been wonderful to see her contributions for another 50 years!

So Maryam she will be. I can’t wait for her to get here – probably in mid-August, as it will take time to sort out shipping and clear out space in the garage.

Speaking of clearing out space – if you are interested in purchasing an 8-shaft Baby Wolf in the San Francisco Bay Area, leave a comment (that will give me your email address). I will, alas, need to part with Lady Ada sometime in the next 6 weeks to make room for the new TC-2…so I will be selling her. She comes with a castle and stroller, and weaves beautifully. She is not a fine-furniture loom, which is to say she has plenty of scratches and one leg doesn’t match the rest because it had to be replaced – but she will be priced accordingly (once I have a chance to assess fair pricing). So if you are looking for a workhorse loom, suitable for workshops, that isn’t fine furniture, drop me a line. (EDIT: Lady Ada has been sold.)

Now, of course, I can’t help wondering – will Grace and Maryam have babies together, and if so, will they look like this 3D-printed, DIY jacquard loom?

What an adventure! I can’t wait for my lovely Maryam to arrive.