RockyAussie

There are all sorts of leather varieties as to the quality and strength and from my experience with most chrome tanned leathers I would suggest the width would need to be 32mm to 35mm wide at that thickness. Doubled up it may be too thick but you could drop back the width to 20mm if you wanted. I would fully stitch the length to reduce any stretch either way you do it.

Good looking video showing the machine in use. Thanks for sharing.

No problems..... but you need to take the caster wheels off. You keep sliding around when you sew otherwise and they do get the thread tangled around them and then only slide around badly and getting the thread out of them is a time wasting bitch.

Thanks Bert, lets just hope some buying customers see it that way. It can be if the gussets go into place after but it is very difficult not to push the gussets out of place when pushing in and around the bottom curve. My 331 has the needle 7mm in from the edge and some 335s are even 11 from the edge. In production it is better to make the job for the operator as easy to do as possible and to achieve that I make the gussets fold over the lining with an attached stiffener before the outer cover piece is attached. Here are a couple of pictures to show better what I mean - Different bag but same gusset technique.

Many a time a U shaped table will get in the way on larger jobs and it is easy to set up a table or tray underneath for when you want one there. I have to say respectfully that if you would have trouble working out how to get the machine to the height you want, you would be best to forget about doing leather work. Every day come new challenges to overcome and that is just something you gotta learn to enjoy. Getting the right machine that can do the job you want it to do IS the point here.

Well I tested it and it works OK but this one's probably not of much interest due to the rarity of this particular machine model which is a 331 Pfaff. With the walking foot models you would have to change the feet from right to left halfway through and I think that would f be super unexciting. If any one wants the stl let me know. History.... the wife liked the look of this bag handle method but with the gussets in place you can not stitch the handle holes down in the one operation so I reasoned that by back stitching the top line first then spinning at the other end I could drop down the other guide and continue to complete the rest of the hole stitch. This shows the outer roller guide down for the top side stitch (Sorry I stitched it up before I remembered to take the pictures) It then moves up and the other one drops down for the bottom side Not too bad for the first go at least

I would suggest for the type of work you are doing that you consider something along the line of a Cobra class 26.

Good stuff @jimi. I have to ask if you re taped all them holes you have the allen heads in out to 4mm? I've been working on a drop down guide for going down on the left side of the needle and was hoping to find a tap and screws to match the machine threads. What a joke, just .2mm smaller. I should get to try it out in the next day or so and load some pics up then.

I've made some pretty fancy ones in the past but a pair I made a couple of weeks back would be about as easy a design as you could get I think. Basically its just 2 belt straps with buckles for adjustment and a piece to connect them at the back. I managed to get a couple of pics of the customer wearing them.

Use a little dish washing detergent as well as that helps to get the water into the pores/cells. I sometimes leave the leather in for hours and give it another hot water dip before taking it out and further breaking up the grain with my hands sometimes depending on the thickness and the character of the leather. Before putting into mould I squeeze out excess water then press into some paper towel to get rid of any remaining excess of water. Yes and to my knowledge mostly any leather they use has to be veg tanned including the alligator or croc skins. regarding the 3d printer....I have to say I wish that technology was around when I started my business. There would hardly be a day go by that I am not finding some other thing I can make with it to improve manufacturing times or the quality of products produced. My latest one yesterday was designing a funnel in pla to improve how well my strap folding machine worked as it folds the straps on soft leathers. Took 3 tries but I am happy to say it works real good. (cost in pla+ is less than $1 per piece and I can now just stretch the design for any width strap or thickness in a couple of minutes. With regards to strength of the pla+ used in a shaped product as against wet casting veg I would offer up my latest phone pouch design for you to consider for yourself. To protect the hardware on the back of this phone pouch I have used another one of the phone pouch shells.

You can on some but not all chrome tanning is the same either. On the second page in this post I did awhile ago you can see how I used some chrome tan leather to make some handcuff pouches and the 3d printed moulds etc.As long as the leather will absorb the water into it it will normally dry harder and into the shape but may not always set as firmly as veg will.

This one is a bobbin holding case that will take 49 bobbins with the bobbin holes being 22x11mm. I have made it so that it would be easy to pick up the bobbin wanted due to the space between them as shown in the below picture. Here find the stl file - BOBBIN CARRIER.stl

This'd be the right place for sure and a big welcome to you. Have you a manual for the 29K and if not what is the full number of it.

Here are the stl files for the old casting 335 pfaff and 69 adler bobbin end cover caps. They are the same - Adler Bobbin Cover.stl This one is for those rare 331 Pfaff cylinder arm machines Pfaff 331 Bobbin Cover.stl This first picture shows the reduced size across all 3 versions. This one may show better still on a 331 style I will load a 49 piece bobbin holder case tomorrow if I get time Cheers for now.

Thanks for sharing @jimi . Have you got any pictures to add to that. I will throw in the stl 335 bobbin cover end caps later today when I have a bit more time.

I been thinking that we should have a file repository for making it easy for people to find anything that might be of use to them for laser or 3d printing. I will start this of with a small stl file which comes in useful for both these technologies. It should take about 5 minutes each to print and weighs 1Gram which is less than 5c each. The magnets can be found on ebay easily enough such as this one - https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Super-Strong-N35-Round-Disc-Neodymium-Mini-Fridge-Magnets-Rare-Earth-New/333227699575?hash=item4d95eb2d77:g:EaUAAOSwTfFbTxto&frcectupt=true From where I see it, that is about 27c US each if you get a hundred. This is for a holding magnets and make them easy to remove from the job due to the shape that it has. It is designed for 9x3mm magnets that get superglued in after the print. If it is tight a little heat should work well usually. The picture below shows how I use them on the laser to hold down anything in place as it cuts. A quick tip here is to do a double or multiple cut allowing a stop between cuts as this shows areas on the run which may want to be held down more closely. Here is the stl file - Laser magnet holders.stl You can play darts with them onto your fridge if the missus isn't watching too. I will try and load another new one again tomorrow. Please feel free to load any files on to contribute. If you would like to donate anything at all for the use of any of these files of mine at least please donate it to this Leatherworker forum that provide so well a way for us all to share. If you are not already a contributing member that would also be a great way to go.

Most excellent work all the way and thank you again for sharing this with us.

Is the piece in the top picture the same piece as the pieces in the pictures below it? If so that is good looking work.

The white machine on the bottom picture would be quite a lot newer and with a bigger bobbin capacity I believe of around 40% more than the old standard bobbins. They will work fairly well and about the only reservation I would mention is that the distance of the needle from the outer edge is a fair way in at 9mm. That can sometimes make tight gusset work and such fairly difficult. BUT the price is amazing and if the were here in Australia I would buy them both in a heart beat. The EFKA motors with the needle positioners etc are really great to use and help a lot getting quality stitching. Here is a link for the Pfaff 335-G-H3 - https://www.pfaff-industrial.com/en/portfolio/sewing-machines/cylinder-arm/pfaff335

I would dearly like to get the time to make a vacuum table under so that the magnets were not needed at all but that takes time and money. The quickest way of getting the magnets around is to start off with magnets just around the outer edges. Sometimes I do a outer perimeter run with the safe light on just to see where the thing is going to cut first. After that I make a habit of doing a double or more cut which means I increase the speed by 2 times. Once the first run is done and not cut right through you can see where the magnets will be best put before the following runs are done. I will post the magnet holder stl files in a post I intend to do soon in this forum with the intention of starting a repository section for stl files to be found and shared by anyone on this forum. Re the webcam ....I do have a camera in there but found that I never use it. In the phone case above I wanted a sturdy case that allows the phone to be easy to get in and out. Nearly all examples I found enveloped the phone to closely and I don't think its right that you should have to use 2 hands to answer your phone. The 3d insert in this case costs 81 cents including power usage and takes very little time to set up. It takes 1 hour to print on the little printer but I am able to keep working whilst that is happening. The big one should be able to do maybe 8 at a time I think. There are many many different applications for the 3d printing in leather work and one of the main ones would be the mould shapes. Although I have the printed insert in the phone case, there is also a master shape that allows me to form everything over and bash into shape and get length measurements around etc. Further to this if sales warrant it I will print up negative shapes to expedite the forming and folding processes.(similar to wet moulding a bit) Here is a picture of the master mould being printed - You can see this in place in the pics above where I am getting to attach the outer cover on. This mould is the size I want for many phones and by building from the inside and working my way out I can check the required measurements as I go. Leather does not always play by cad rules and measurements. If you have a look in my how I make wedding ring boxes you can also see how I am able to print out shapes to reduce the need for skiving the leather and make forming tools as well. Hope that helps some Brian

3.5 Watts will be good when you get the hang of using it. You will find that you can use it for cutting fairly well as well. Do think about how to vent your fumes as aside from your health it can help in keeping things to run cooler keep smke out of the laser cutting path and give you longer cutting times. With the larger fan I incorporated on mine I often get away with 1 hour plus cutting jobs. One little thing to keep in mind is that you can do multiple passes on a cutting job which means that you can have it run for say 10 minutes doing 1/2 of the cut and let it sit there for 5 minutes to cool down and set it off again to finish the cut. With the T2 laser program I use I can set it off doing a multiple pass job with a inbuilt pause of however many seconds I want it to cool down between passes. They call it the "cool down time" when you instruct it as to how many passes you want it to do. Smart Hey. You may not be able to run that with out the GRBL coding but you can just start it off again from where it stops again anyway. They are amazing how accurately they follow the path, in the phone pouch cutting I put in cut lines for the magnets at a spacing of.25 mm apart for the thickness of the metal prongs and they came out perfect. Have fun and let us know how it goes for you.

Sorry for such a very late reply on this I only saw it by accident the other day. I use mostly what started off as an Elksmaker A3 laser which came with a 2.5 watt diode. After getting into it a bit I decided to run with a program called T2 Laser which was written for the Elksmaker machine by a very smart fellow called Zax I believe. Within the forum that he runs for this T2 laser he has mentioned the 2.5 watt as being the most ideal for laser engraving as it has the smallest focal point and can thus do the finest engraving. With the T2 laser you can opt for black and white or grey scale or dithered, photo and velocity mode etc etc so yes it does gradients truly as well as dithered. Recomendation wise I would go with an Elksmaker A3 and progress on bigger if you want. I say that as it takes the GRBL (open source) and it is fairly easy to make a lot larger if you want. I don't do much engraving really but I do, do a lot of cardboard pattern cutting and box making and stuff with it. One of the best things about the T2 laser is that it allows me to put in DXF cad files which can have different coloured lines and depending on the colour of the line it will cut them at a lesser percentage than the other cut lines. For box making that means I can cut the fold lines in at say 20% depth (green) and the rest all the way through. On some jobs like this prototype phone pouch I am currently working on I can have a mark line put on at the same time as cutting to help in later on lining up foam or other stiffeners and such. All of the patterns for this pouch are cut out on the laser because that allows me to go back and alter the drawings most easily. A couple of pictures should help to explain this better I think - The first pic is just to show relevance - This one shows why having something able to cut poster size and can cut many different pieces or multiples is a major advantage. Note the little yellow things a pieces I 3d printed to hold 9mm magnets and make them easy to remove. The base under is all metal. Here you can see on the cardboard the mark lines for the pieces beside them to attach in the correct place. As below Now showing them glued and ready to put together A little bit of 3d printing for extra strength - Hopefully getting clearer now All stitched up on my Cowboy 4500 with 138 (20m) thread. Now I can go back and fine tune the design a little more.

With the bobbin case in your hand can you pull the bobbin thread fairly easily? Sometimes needles hit the case when they break and the damage can cause a sticking of the bobbin as it revolves. I am guessing that the bobbin case is not letting the bobbin thread come out smoothly. Try another bobbin and another bobbin case if you have them.

Those motors do look to be very large to me. Is this because you had them already? You are planning on using a foot control for the feed speed I hope. On my Fortuna it has a fairly heavy foot pedal with a solid shaft to the clutch lever and this allows me to just kick the pedal in a bit if I want to have the speed running continuously. That is fairly rare but does help on repetitive jobs sometimes. This picture shows the foot pedal and shaft.

Might be time to do a 20mm cube and cylinder test to check how true the measurements come out??? I know if you up the flow rate as I do with my 1.75mm filament where I change that to 1.74 caus I like the tight layering does make the prints come out a little over size. Sometimes that means we draw to allow for these changes and the file sharing is not important at the time. A simple scale increase or decrease in Curra should be an easy fix though.