DrmCa

How slow do you want it to go? If you are fine with 3-5 stitches per second being the slowest, a Family brand servo should be fine. They can be found on the eBay. If you need slower, either a mod to the Family servo motor might help, or a reducer. When I bought mine, I replaced its 3" pulley with a spare 2" pulley and that helped to slow it down further.

One of my former bosses back in 1999 was from Cape Town, he said it's a hell hole. How are you guys holding up?

Isn't this exactly the same as pig leather? Pardon my ignorance.

+1 for replacing the needle and checking throat plate, but also check the foot and all guides for burrs. As we have no idea about the condition of your machine, this can be anything.

Looks like this die has a spring loaded fibreboard insert which should automatically push the piece out of the die once pressure is relieved. This productivity piece should cost a fortune.

Here's a simple chart published by American and Efird http://www.amefird.com/technical-tools/thread-size/fabric-weight/ and there are many more in the first page of google. I tend to use A&E threads and mostly go with their chart.

German Ebay is full of them in 10 packs. If you have anyone who can write German, some sellers may agree to ship to the US. It does not hurt to ask. Some might even read English. US Ebay has 1 listing: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Schmetz-Rundkolbennadel-System-332LL-LG-160-/201465097000?epid=1942962908&hash=item2ee8416b28:g:GZUAAOSw-jhUBsSB

To move the needle bar you loosen a couple of screws and move it up and down, that's about it. The long arm model looks like this:

Do you have a picture of a sample? I make mine of the same lining fabric I use for pockets of pants. You are probably referring to something different.

I get by by holding a needle parallel to the edge, i.e. almost perpendicular to the blade mating surface, and gently "cutting" that needle several times as if I was cutting fabric. Needles are chrome-plated and chromium is the hardest of all metals, so it works well honing the scissor blades. I usually set aside one large needle just for re-sharpening scissors. But as of lately I found that there are very inexpensive sets of TCN coated scissors available at Costco, which are razor-sharp and keep the edge much longer than bare steel. They cut through everything like through butter.

This is a shoe patcher, you realize that? For phone cases I would imagine you need a flatbed machine or a desk attachment for that patcher. Thread-wise it should be fine.

Adler 67 is toothed belt driven. If it skips a tooth or breaks, you are in for a timing job. Pfaff 335 is gear driven, so the chance of it going out of timing is much less than Adler. Dunno about Seiko. I would never buy a sewing machine to be shipped. Even if a local sale is more expensive, but the seller can tune it to the most typical operation for you, it is worth piece of mind.

Need more detail. Is your ruler a sticker type? I would imagine that a cheap made in China sticker could be both stretched before installation and wrong from the get go.

If you look inside the tip, do you see any groves perpendicular to the belt? Or any dimples?

I've been thinking... Since burnishing wheel can be made on a wood lathe, is there a point in moving it off to another motor? A mini wood lathe can probably serve as a burnisher.

Open cell foam deteriorates much quicker and breaks down into dust under stress, such as in the folds.

I honestly hate strap attached to the top flap, as then I want to open the flap to reach into the satchel, it drops once un-buckled. Middle of the gusset is my preference. Just 2c.

From the pictures, 7335 does not look like an exact replica: it has more meat on the body and therefore less space above the cylinder arm, so you may be not so comfortable as with 335 when working on bulkier items like jackets or bags.

Dave, I can't see the problem clearly on your picture, a more high res would help. Not sure if anyone already mentioned that there may be two kinds of feet: textile and leather. For the obvious reason textile feet are serrated, while leather feet are smooth. If you are using leather feet on denim, it would slip. Or if your textile feet are completely worn, they would slip as well. Sorry if this was mentioned already.

I own the same casting as this machine. Mine is 335-17 and it came set up for stitching, not binding like this one seems from this grainy picture. We chose it over Adler with a knee presser. The stitch length plate on mine matches the casting and the longest I get is 6mm. Had to replace the pulley on the servo motor to the smaller size in order to slow it down for accurate starting and stopping in difficult areas. If you do mostly straight stitching, the original pulleys on the servo similar to "Family" brand should be fine. You can get smaller pulleys online. I rarely use this machine, but my wife makes leather gloves and loves it.

About a year ago I bought one box each of sizes 14, 16 and 18 of 134-35LR needles by Organ. Since then my wife made half a dozen pairs of leather gloves, repaired a couple leather jackets, made a few cellphone cases and of course a few needles broke, but for the most part they just stopped stitching well without any visible signs. I call that getting dull. We have about 5-6 needles remaining in each of the boxes, so we used 4x3=12 needles for about as many items. And that got me thinking about TIN coated needles, but I could not find any. Google just was not forthcoming with TIN coated needles, though I could find some of them in larger sizes. Long story short: can anyone recommend a brand and source of TIN coated needles in 134-35LR system, sizes 14, 16 and 18? If it matters, we use them in Pfaff 335 and do most of our sewing with chrome leather and nylon thread Tex 20 to 90

Some time ago I bought several sets of feet for one of my machines from the ebay seller Jim Tally. By that time I was their customer for a total of several hundred US$ worth of machine parts and everything was tip top. So these foot sets should be no different I thought. Well, both did not fit the machine. In addition to that they were the wrong size: both 9mm vs. 5 and 6mm ordered. The rear foot was too wide for the slot in the shank and the front foot hole was oval and also did not fit the shank. I had to issue a return and pay out of pocket to ship the sets back to them, as they would not issue me a return shipping label. After a long (more than 1 month) waiting time due to those sets being "on order", I am receiving a replacement. Again, both feet of the each set do not fit for the exact same reason. Before returning the feet I took measurements with a caliper and the replacement feet measured exactly the same as the returned ones to 0.001". I cannot know for sure, but it felt like they just sent me back the same items as originally. Again, I would have to ship them back and pay for the shipping to get a refund, and then the total cost spent on shipping would be exactly the cost of the feet set. So I ended up posting them a very detailed negative feedback. And they banned me from their ebay store. I learned about that almost 2 years later now, when I wanted to get some needles.

We both probably bought the same machine CUT50? Mine too has a short cable. I was able to replace it with a cable from a donor microwave oven.