System and method of unspooling a material into a textile machine

An automated unspooling mechanism capable of dispensing of knitting material strands in a dynamically-controlled tension on a knitting machine. An unspooling device is configured to sense the tension of a strand fed to the knitting machine, and responsively adjust the strand deployment speed to avoid too little or too much strand dispensing without interrupting the knitting process. The unspooling device includes a variable motor drive that can rotate the strand package in various speeds, and a spring arm trigger that can sense the current tension of the dispensed material. The spring arm trigger can vary its arm position based on the sensed tension. The arm position is then processed and converted to a signal to vary the motor speed. Therefore, the deployment speed of the strands can be dynamically controlled based on a sensed tension of feeding the strand.