The Dutch company Knitwear Lab helps visions become reality. The creative think tank offers capacities in the areas of R&D, design, knitwear development and production of prototypes and small quantities and has realised a wide range of ground-breaking projects in recent years.

The objects of the innovative projects range from medical products and high-tech sportswear to smart textiles with integrated sensors. Sustainability activities are also part of the repertoire, such as the production of yarns from recycled waste.

Knitwear Lab operates at two locations for its diverse tasks. In Almere in the Netherlands, a total of 14 employees, including five programmers, are available for development work, and in Istanbul, there is a branch for production with a team of 16. The company has also relied on its partnership with Stoll since it was founded around ten years ago.

Two locations, one partner

Both Knitwear Lab sites each have five Stoll flat knitting machines, including models from the modern ADF range. Prototypes are produced in Almere and there is small-scale production.

The production plant in Istanbul specialises in the manufacture of high-quality knitwear in small quantities. Stoll is also involved in the creative processes. For the industrial development of knitwear, Knitwear Lab offers Virtual Knitting, a revolutionary method that combines virtual and physical elements of pattern development and knitwear production to reduce waste and pre-production steps.

Customers can use Virtual Knitting to create realistic, producible collections, simplify their design iteration processes and take advantage of the wide range of real-life colourways. The basis for this is comprehensive knitwear expertise, the latest 3D software and Stoll’s Create Plus patterning software, which was developed by Stoll together with KM.ON.

Making everyday work easier with Create

Wolfram Geuppert, Head of Knitwear Design Systems Development at Stoll, spoke to Annika Klaas to find out what convinced Knitwear Lab to use Create. The Senior Knitwear Programmer at the creative industry pioneer has been using Create Plus since January 2023, in particular for cutting creation and grading and digital knitwear design. She previously used Stoll’s M1plus.

The switch at Knitwear Lab was triggered by the possibilities of 3D visualisation. "The 3D visualization of Create simplifies communication with the customer considerably. We use this function every day," says Annika Klaas. She personally appreciates the uncomplicated grading and exchange of stitch dimensions and the much faster and more efficient work with Dimensioned Shapes that this makes possible. This helps her in her day-to-day work.

"We often have requests to realise the same product in different yarns, which now works much faster," says the programmer. Further simplifications include minor optimisations in terms of the efficiency and user-friendliness of programming and additional import and export options for shapes. Discussions on implementation are already underway.

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