….in progress. Last updated: April 2026
KnitKing, Defendi and, most famous, Brother machines accepting 24-stitch cards, bulky and standard, for automatic needle selection, and, thus, patterning, can be quite finicky, especially if you inherited the machine that has not been recently serviced. There is myriad of reasons; some are simple, some are more complex. Below is my attempt to identify and summarize them.
The bullets below are NOT listed in their troubleshooting order.
- old sponge in the retaining bar: replace
- carriage is not seated properly: Brother carriages have a small lip; make sure it is “hugging” the needlebed (and not sitting on top of it).
- old grease in the carriage, which causes some of the levers be stuck. See my demo on how to check for stuck flippers.
- Problems with sinker plate: it might manifest itself by expected needle selection when ONLY the carriage is used but when the sinker plate is attached, the needles are selected incorrectly. More on this here.
- The timing belt was reattached incorrectly. A small demo of correct attachment is here.
- The timing belt and the rotating shaft are misaligned (shown here).
- The relative position of the patterning pins and square brackets is incorrect. See examples of correct and incorrect positions here. Watch how fix an incorrect installation.
