dikman

" except for your location" Pretty well sums up the problem here in Oz.

What he said, probably the simplest and easiest way to achieve what you want. The other way would be to make a foot pedal and fit the actual actuator housing to it, but this would likely mean extending the electrical cables between it and the control box/motor. I seem to recall Uwe made a remote foot pedal for a servo?

The 5100 is a Juki 441 clone, same as a Cobra 4 and Cowboy 4500. If you search youtube for those machines you should find quite a few videos which will be relevant to your machine.

There is a wealth of information about sewing machines on here and youtube is a good source of videos.

Not a handwheel, just a larger pulley. I've fitted one to a Pfaff and one to a Seiko, they are just pulleys that I had in my pulley/bearings spares box! I've found that this approach is simpler than fitting a speed reducer and works the same. This is the $99 servo.

I've finally finished messing around with this (I think). I replaced the round anvil thingy with a thick steel plate and cut an old chopping board to fit. A piece of angle iron will serve as a fence, with a couple of quick and nasty screw clamps welded from scrap offcuts, and I made five inserts to handle different thickness tools. The biggest problem I could see was the handle needing re-positioning with different length tools. One common solution is to grind off the lower two teeth on the ram, and when it is raised the handle can keep turning when it hits where the teeth were. Nice, but I didn't want to remove the teeth. After coming up with all sorts of ideas for a removable (tool-less) locking design for the shaft the obvious finally dawned on me - I replaced the collar locking screw with a bolt, ground down the head and loc-tited a wingnut to it. Now I can remove the collar, slide out the handle and rotate it to a new position then re-tighten the collar, without tools. Simples. Oh, and I finally drilled a hole in the other end of the ram (only 'cos I could) with a locking screw. At the right of the photo is a block of steel with a pin, if I need to use the ram for anything heavy I'll invert the ram and this block will fit on to save the end of the ram from any wear.

Zac, that is a fairly generic type of servo from China. I bought a similar one recently, it has a different control box but specs are pretty much the same, as was the price. I haven't used it much but it seems to work ok. I also had another similar one but sold it with a machine, no problems with that one either. These motors work better for leather if you either fit a speed reducer or replace the hand wheel with a larger pulley. That's not to say that they don't work as they are, but the mods give greater slow speed control and more torque. Replacing the motor pulley with a 2" one helps too. If you can successfully control a clutch motor then you'll have no problems with a servo. Fyi, my first servos were bought from China about 3-4 years ago, using Aliexpress, and cost me between $190 - $250. They are now being sold here on ebay cheaper than you can buy the same thing from China! I have seen ones like Pinto posted here in Oz for around $400!!

Looks like she's working well.

Hmm, they might be a bit too strong, you don't want too much extra tension or you will lose sensitivity in operating the pedal. You really only want something to balance the "dead" weight of the cast iron in the pedal.

A lot of forums got caught out with photobucket!! it made a lot of posts virtually useless overnight.

You make a good point. I have had pretty much all that you list happen to me (not all at once, of course) which is one of the reasons I want my machines to sew very slow!! There is an element of skill involved in using a machine - understanding how it sews, correct needle and thread for the project, balancing thread tensions etc. Definitely not as simple as hand stitching.

Nice. You guys get to make some cool holsters over there.

Yep, that's the stuff, but mine was a bit thinner than your typical cord. I'm glad you're going to re-do the linkage, it had me worried.

I have the same type of pedal on the Pfaff table and it's pretty heavy, with weight forward! I just used a piece of elastic strap, from the front of the pedal to the cross support of the table frame, to take some of the weight off the pedal. Not a particularly elegant solution but it's simple and it works.

You and me both, brother.

Nicely done, I'm sure that someone else will find this useful at some point. I've never seen anyone use a woodworking plane to bevel the edges, first time for everything. The only negative thing I can say is please mount it on a decent solid bench, I got a bit seasick with everything wobbling around!

Only took you 9 years to get back to your post. Can't rush these things, I guess. It came up pretty good.

Very neat. Quite complex, just for holding gloves.

. I even heard the voice of HAL when I read that!

Unfortunately, I don't have the contacts to smuggle one in. (Not saying that's what you did, of course).

Found a video on youtube where a chap fitted a drill chuck to the bottom of the ram to hold tools, looks like a good use for an old chuck. Got me thinking, as I have an old chuck that is a bit too worn for the drill press but would be fine for this. Looks like I'm back to drilling a hole in the end of the ram!!

Well done, it's always satisfying to work something out yourself, and as you said, just think what you've learned!

As I mentioned elsewhere, with regard to importing a 441 head unit only, I went through a long process trying to bring one in at a good price and found it couldn't be done (not as an individual). A fellow member on here, in the US, went through the same process and found likewise, it simply wasn't worth the trouble for the few dollars saved. If you were a business, buying a container load at a time, then you would doubtless get them at a better price per unit and all the other costs - shipping, customs etc - would also work out significantly less due to economies-of-scale. But for an individual it's simply not worth the effort. Some Chinese companies I contacted were offering "warranty support" but just how effective that would be is probably open to conjecture, plus those offering support were invariably at the high end price-wise. Adjusting and timing a machine is no big deal and you would have to assume that any such machine you brought in would need that done. The problem would be if you have broken/damaged parts, so you have to be able to buy it cheap enough to offset the possibility that you may have to source such parts locally. I have yet to see any figures that demonstrate it is viable/cost effective for an individual to bring in a sewing machine from China.

This is what I ended up with. The "inserts" are pretty easy to make from cylindrical scrap bits and I'll make a few with different size holes which should take most punches, rivet setters etc. As you can see similar to jimi's and Rocky's.

Now that IS an interesting concept.