Tapimatic Rug Making Machine in Box Vintage 80s Table Top Switzerland in Box

Description

Tapimatic Rug Making Machine
Vintage 1980s Table Top Model
Made in Switzerland
The Tapimatic was a table top carpet knotting machine from 1984 that used continuous yarn. It cut this into tufts as it knotted (the cutting mechanism looks similar to that on an Airlyne rugmaking machine). The machine produced a Smyrna Double knot ten times faster than by hand. It was threaded with several colours at a time and could switch from one colour to another. The backing was a double-mesh 3.3 hole canvas which is hard to find nowadays. Modern double mesh canvases, such as Zweigart, appear to be identical to the Tapimatic canvas, but are not always compatible with the machine and keeping it moving without jamming tended to make it rather clunky (probably due to its spacing mechanism not matching exactly with canvas spacing, or the canvas threads being a different thickness).
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