EmergerFlyFishing

That's awesome to hear. I pick mine up on Tuesday. Can't wait to use it. Did you get a speed reducer for yours or anything or are you just using it as it came from the factory?

Ha! No worries. I'm just joking with you. I respect everyones opinion a lot on here so its good to hear all sides. Until I came across this thread, I'd have never even considered that an auto oiler could even potentially be an issue. With that said, I do think you guys raise an interesting point. I have to wonder if a lot of these companies aren't doing a very good when it comes to communicating some of the short comings of a product like this. They obviously wouldn't want to communicate it in a way that it sounds like a negative, but instead marketing it as a machine thats made to be sewn at higher speeds because of the auto oiler (you can always put a positive spin on anything). It might avoid a lot of confusion, or at least customers who may potentially buy a product like this and end up screwing it up, or at least being unhappy with their purchase. I just think thats bad marketing on their part that its not better said.

It sounds kinda like you're arguing with Bob . I'm not going to get in the middle of a debate about how capable the oil pump is. My bigger question to all of this was- will this machine do what I need it to do, even at a slow speed? I'm new to using industrial machines, so the ins and outs of what a particular machine is capable of are outside of my realm of knowledge. I have talked to three different dealers, one of those being Bob, and all have said that there should be no issues sewing at very slow speeds with the machine. That is regardless of whether or not the oil gets pumped. All three have said that either unthreading the machine and flooring the peddle for a couple of minutes, or winding a bobbin once a day will easily do the trick and there should be absolutely no issues. Wiz, even you said that above. It was reinforced by the dealers that the machines can actually go for quite a while after being oiled (I'm sure this depends not the amount of use of course), but Bob said that he knows people who will only manually oil their machines once a month with no issues. Another dealer said at a high work load, it should only need it about every 8 hours. Thats about a full days work. I even saw a manual for an older Consew machine that recommended oiling every 8 hours of steady use. So whether or not the pump will get oil up into the machine at a slow speed, it sounds to me like an auto oil pump will be no issue at all as long a regular habit of running the motor once a day at high speed is established. Now if you guys want to continue to debate the abilities or shortfalls of an auto oiler, be my guest. Thanks for all of the advice though guys. I appreciate it.

I just heard back from Bob. He says to date, they have had no issues with auto lube machines, although it wouldn't be a bad idea to wind a bobbin once a day to keep oil flowing. He says Consew tells him even at lower speeds that it still pumps oil to the bearings.

Yeah, I'd looked at the manual and info on the consew site as well. I wasn't really paying attention to the speeds that much because I didn't know the self oiled machines would have this issue. I will say that I've emailed back and forth with Bob at Toledo Industrial about this machine. He said the 1206 is meant to be a replacement for the Chandler 406 (the reason I had emailed him to begin with). I described to him what I typically sew and he felt said that he felt certain it would sew what I needed to sew, that he would set it up with a FS 550. But he didn't say much about speed. It didn't come up in our conversation. I'll probably check back with him about it now.

Ha! Awesome Wiz. Good to know. Thanks for the reply.

Hey there guys. Brand new to leatherworker.net but I've been watching and reading up in the forums for a while. I'm a little late to this post but I wanted to check in on this. Wiz, I've been looking at purchasing a new 1206RB pretty soon. I've talked to a couple of dealers, and no one has mentioned anything about the need to sew that fast with this machine. I sew fly fishing gear bags and smaller wallets (mostly 18oz waxed canvas but my wallets have 6oz English Bridle straps sewn onto them) and things like that, and I don't really ever sew that fast on my products. Is this oil pump really something to be concerned about? If so, it may impact whether or not I go with this machine.