Needle bed and needle combination for flat knitting machine and needle selection mechanism

A needle bed and needle combination for a flat knitting machine, provided on each of front and back sides of a frame of the flat knitting machine, and comprising:

• a needle bed provided with a plurality of needle grooves formed by every two adjacent steel pieces,
• a plurality of parallel sinkers provided at a front end of the needle bed,
• knitting needles and stitch elements configured to drive movements of the knitting needles, wherein the knitting needles and the stitch elements are provided in the needle grooves, and
• a strip-shaped opening is formed by the sinkers and the front end of the needle bed for forming a knitted fabric;
• wherein the needle bed and needle combination further comprises needle selection units;
• a needle groove of the plurality of needle grooves is provided between every two adjacent sinkers of the plurality of parallel sinkers on the needle bed;
• two knitting needles of the knitting needles are arranged on left and right in parallel in the needle groove between every two adjacent sinkers of the plurality of parallel sinkers without having a separating piece between the two knitting needles, and each knitting needle of the two knitting needles is configured to separately make a knit stitch, a tuck stitch, and a loop transfer stitch;
• the stitch elements comprise elastic stitch elements and jacks configured to be driven by a corresponding cam on a cam plate of the flat knitting machine and drive the movement of the knitting needles in the needle grooves;
• two elastic stitch elements of the elastic stitch elements are connected to the two knitting needles in the needle groove between every two adjacent sinkers, respectively;
• and a jack of the jacks is located above and engaged with the two elastic stitch elements;
• a needle selection unit of the needle selection units provided between every two adjacent sinkers of the plurality of parallel sinkers is provided above the two elastic stitch elements, and is configured to operate on the two elastic stitch elements;
• and when being operated on, an operated elastic stitch element is deformed elastically to disengage from the jack, to idle a corresponding knitting needle of the two knitting needles connected to the operated elastic stitch element.

A needle selection mechanism of a flat knitting machine, comprising:

• two elastic stitch elements and a jack configured to be driven by a corresponding cam on a cam plate of the flat knitting machine and drive two knitting needles of the flat knitting machine to move in a needle groove of the flat knitting machine, the two knitting needles are arranged on left and right in parallel in the needle groove without having a separating piece between the two knitting needles, and
• a needle selection unit;
• wherein the two elastic stitch elements are connected to two knitting needles of the flat knitting machine, respectively;
• the jack is located above and engaged with the two elastic stitch elements;
• and
• wherein the needle selection unit is provided above the two elastic stitch elements, and is configured to operate on the two elastic stitch elements;
• and when being operated on, the operated elastic stitch element of the two elastic stitch elements is deformed elastically to disengage from the jack, to idle a corresponding knitting needle of the two knitting needles connected to the operated elastic stitch element.