dscheidt

A complete thread stand shouldn't cost more than 10 or 15 bucks. Seems silly not to have one.

I have a motor that's visually identical to the one under discussion here. It's a different brand, and attached to a garment sewing machine. It's not as sesnitive as this one seems to be, but it's a bit more touchy than I'd like it to be. I suspect it's just a crappy design, or the wrong optical sensor used.

There are brackets that will attach a motor to the back rail of the table. For instance: http://www.southstarsupply.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=4894 There are other styles. If you have a good mechanic or industrial machine shop around, they may have other styles. And a metal worker wouldn't have much trouble attaching a mounting plate to a bracke that fits your table.

<br /><br /><br />The 31-15 is an old machine; I've seen some that were in tables with weird arrangement of motors. A separate clutch isn't uncommon, for instance. (Some of these went into factories with line shafts and belts, so each head had a clutch, but several machines shared a motor. When the set is broken up, a motor was added.) Neither is a table that has two holes for a belt, expecting the use of a single length of leather belting, joined with clips once installed. A motor mounted to the back of the table rail might be another setup. If you've got a modern motor set up, it's straightforward to attach a servo motor. If you don't, it's more work.

<br /><br /><br />Tex is a measure of thread size; not of quality, composition or anything else. It's nominally the number of grams that 1,000 meters of thread weigh. So, a kilometer of thread that is Tex 90 weighs 90 grams. (There's a range of allowed weights, and it's before dying and other processing, but it doesn't matter much.) The thickness of thread depends on what it's made of, but since almost all thread sizing systems are based on weight, it's possible to convert from one to the other most of the time. The same thread may have labels in more than one system (a tex size, a commercial size, a cotton count, a metric ticket number, or a US gov't size) depending on who it's sold to. T-70 thread is #69 thread in the commercial thread sizes (which are, roughly, 1/10 of their denier, where the denier number is the weight of 9,000 meters of thread, so their 9/10 the Tex numer. Roughly, because they measure differently.) t-90 is #92. The same thread may have labels in more than one system (a tex size, a commercial size, a cotton count, a metric ticket number, or a US gov't size) depending on who it's sold to.