Individual needle control tufting machine

A tufting machine, the machine comprising;

• backing rollers to feed a backing medium through a tufting region;
• a needle bar on one side of the backing medium in the tufting region, the needle bar comprising at least one row of needles and being reciprocable at the tufting region to drive needles into and out of backing medium;
• gauge parts on the opposite side of the backing medium to receive loops of yarn formed by the needles;
• a controller which receives pattern data for a carpet to be tufted;
• a needle selection mechanism controlled by the controller based on the pattern data such that a needle or group of needles with yarn required for the pattern is selected by the needle selection mechanism to be driven by the needle bar through the backing medium to form a tuft or tufts while a needle or group of needles that is not required for the pattern is not selected by the needle selection mechanism and is not driven through the backing medium as the needle bar reciprocates;
• and a yarn feed mechanism comprising a plurality of actively driven yarn drives each yarn feed drive being configured to drive a respective yarn to a respective needle, the yarn drives being at a location, in use, between a yarn creel and the needle, wherein the yarn feed mechanism is configured to deliver at least 70% of the yarn required for the tuft as the needle moves from top dead center to bottom dead center.