I've been working on a Jacquard loom, partly because of the mild but approachable challenge and partly because I want to use a small one to make tool wraps to go with the crochet hooks. Strictly speaking it's overkill for the wraps, but it's more interesting than just a six-heddle loom.

The current design notion is to have a row of 3d-printed hooks matched to individual wire heddles, where the hooks are printed in iron-filled filament and have a matching solenoid core for actuation, driven by a high-power shift register. Several layers of these rows are then stacked to get a reasonable ends per inch, and the whole is controlled with a microcontroller. Ideally, the lift mechanism actuates a limit switch at the bottom and after a short rise, and the solenoids are only actuated for a brief period while the lift is starting to reduce heat on the plastic cores.

I've started work on the hook solenoids, as they're the core of the design and the rest is straightforward assuming they can be made to function.

I have made significant progress on the hook mechanism, switching from a solenoid approach to a voice coil. These voice coils I should be able to manufacture via a PCB shop for around $0.04 per part, with an additional $0.04 or so for the now required magnet stack. For control I plan to just use a 595 shift register and a 2803 darlington pair array, as they are readily available very inexpensively, and I should be able to keep the average current draw relatively low by dead-reckoning a PWM signal through the enable input of the 595s with a local smoothing capacitor on the supply.