My wife and I own a dog collar business, and although we don't typically work with leather, our collars are relatively thick and we recently upgraded to an industrial machine after breaking numerous home machines.
We now have a Juki DDL-5550 with a servo motor. It goes through our collars with little effort, but we're having trouble controlling the speed. Even with the servo motor on the lowest setting and the pedal adjusted to not fully pull down the motor lever, the machine continues to take off of us when we're doing small runs (we have stitch lines that are only 2 inches in max length but have to go through two layers of collar).
I've looked in to two possible alternatives- the reliable 6000SM which claims to be able to do one stitch at a time by tapping the pedal, and a superior 3-6-9 speed reducer pulley. Both items are pretty expensive, so I'd like some opinions on either one before I move forward. Is there one I should choose over the other? Should I go for both? Is there any issue with attaching the reducer pulley to a servo motor I should consider?