dikman

Sounds like a plan!

I found that by the time I had added on all the costs associated with shipping one of those machines from Aliexpress there was no (financial) advantage to be gained and potentially much to lose.

Why would you want to keep a clutch motor? They're not even any good as boat anchors (wrong shape). Seriously, any machine you want to use for sewing leather will be far better fitted with a servo motor. Got a photo of the table? Just curious what it looks like.

The two machines are, to all intents and purposes, identical. Probably comes down to whichever one you can get the best deal on (depending what accessories, if any, you want with it).

Looks like a bronze-gold sort of colour, probably going to be hard to match. The "usual" thing is to strip and paint the whole thing, so it's all one colour, but it's a big job. I did it once and I'm not in a hurry to do it again!!. It actually doesn't look too bad, imo, I'd probably leave it alone (I've had machines that looked worse).

Now that is something different for a wedding! I like it! Beautiful work there, something that I'm sure they'll all treasure.

Another cannon!! Nice work.

Bummer, I hate it when that happens and won't do it myself. I recently bought a couple of laptops at a good price, after I'd agreed to buy them someone else offered me two for free. I could have rung the first guy and told him I'd changed my mind but a deal is a deal! They turned out to be pretty good, better than the free ones so I'm glad I did the right thing.

Whilst I can't say categorically that it doesn't use an optical sensor I'd be very surprised if it did. None of the servos (different brands) I've bought over the last few years have used an optical sensor. You do know that you can buy speed reducers ready-to-use? Either the all-in-one big pulley/little pulley or box-type. If you want to make your own then you'll have to buy separate components and put them together.

That's quite a contraption!

Thanks for that video, I just wanted to confirm that you were talking about the "gradient" mod. As Sark said I doubt if you would find any motors using the optical control method these days. Unless you have an older servo it won't work.

I wonder if the monster at the back is for embossing belts? Whatever it is it's a great looking piece of machinery.

You got a link to that video?

I agree - unless you're a masochist and like to punish yourself!

Don't forget to get yourself the narrow plate and feed dog from RockyAussie, it makes the big machine much more versatile. It's arguably the one "must-have" for the big machine. And then have fun.

Impressive piece of work. I had to look up the handgun, and yes, cannon is an apt description!

I did some research a while ago and it indicated that the commonly used oil (Lily White) is a light hydraulic oil, ISO 22 or 32 (seems to depend on the manufacturer). I couldn't find that when I was looking and bought a slightly heavier hydraulic oil but it works fine. Don't get yourself into flap over it, either of those you have will be ok, I doubt if the machine will complain.

Yeah, too slow to be really practical, but I was curious how it would work. I removed the reducer and just used the 8"/2" combination, it's on my Pfaff 335 with a generic 550w motor and it's more than adequate. Don, that wheel will look great when it's finished and cleaned up. Make sure you post a photo.

To be honest I'm not sure that you would notice that much difference between a 550w and 750w motor if you use a speed reducer too. Having said that, if the price difference isn't too great by all means get the 750w. Speed reducers - you can get very slow speed, with gobs of torque, by varying the pulleys in the reducer, but at the expense of top speed. On one of my machines I fitted an 8" pulley in place of the handwheel, a 2'" on the motor and between them a reducer running a 1 3/4" and a 4". A bit extreme, perhaps, but I could get 1 stitch every 2 1/2 seconds! My favourite method, if possible, is to replace the handwheel with a large pulley and a small one on the motor, I find this is a fairly simple method to use.

That's one helluva speed reducer you built!

Nice work indeed. The little knife pouch is particularly neat.

Does it happen when turning by hand? Sometimes turning slowly can help localise a problem to a specific area.

Nice job carr52, looks great. I'm impressed that you did a drawing first, I just make things up as I go!

Bit hard to dog-ear the pages on one.

One way guaranteed to break needles is to "force" the material as it's feeding, or apply sideways pressure when trying to sew curves.