Quade

I have a 211A I took apart and got back together. I might be able to help. I'll wait till you get the reverse lever thing straightened out. It took a bunch of adjusting to get the timing right. Mostly because the manuals are garbage.

I'd check ebay.

My 211 doesn't use a spring like that. Instead the spring hangs down from the top cover (near where the belt goes down) and hooks the reverse lever directly. If you absolutely can't find the correct spring, you could probably implement something like that.

There's a pin the goes from one side of the machine to the other. When the foot is lifted, a wedge pushes against the pin which presses on a lever on the back of the tension unit to release the tension. If you look on the back of the machine. To the left of the foot lift lever you should see a large diameter screw head. The pin is behind this head.

On that one, the top thread got cut on the first cycle or two then the rest of them finished the stitch. I just don't know what "right" is supposed to be. Comparing the cycles, the newer machine seems to turn a larger angle than the older machine. The old machine the hook seems to stop around 4 oclock, releasing the thread. On the new machine, the hook goes farther to 7 or 8.

It is supposed to cut the top thread every cycle? I have no idea how this is supposed to work but, it looks like the top thread is bring hooked, then cut at about 7 oclock.

I can confirm, at least in my 211A, when I pulled the hand wheel off the bearing came with it. It was quite a hassle pulling the wheel off too.

The video showed be a bunch. My theory about the linkage being wrong is wrong. That linkage is too simple to be wrong. I wonder if the eccentric, the thing on the main shaft that pushes the feed dogs has been rotated out of it's true position. If it's 180 degrees out, the feed dogs and needle bar will probably go backwards. It'll pull when it's supposed to push. I don't believe the timing belt being off will make it go backwards. It'll just mess up the "needle through the cloth" timing.

You should still look under it at the linkage I'm talking about. You still have the eccentric to set the stitch length. Without reverse, you'd be missing the middle shaft but, something is wrong between the eccentric and the shaft that moves the feed dogs/needle bar. Something about the linkage is making the feed dog and needle bar go backwards. I'd suggest posting a pic or movie of that lower linkage while you manually turn the hand wheel.

Does it have a reverse lever on the right? Is it up or down? I'd flip it up so you can look at the bottom. Turn the hand wheel in the correct direction and watch the eccentric which is about 1/2 way from the pulley to the hook on the main shaft. The eccentric drives the feed dogs and the movement of the needle bar through a relatively complex linkage. There's a shortish shaft between the main shaft (with the pulley) and the feed dog shaft (the top shaft if your machine is flipped up). This shaft is rotated by the reverse lever. I'd check to see if that shaft can rotate back and forth with the reverse lever. When the reverse lever is all the way up, it should move forward. With it all the way down, it'll move in reverse. You ought to be able to flip the linkage over by hand too. The eccentric is keyed to the main shaft. This eccentric is how the stitch length is set. If the presser foot lever is up, the outer foot won't go up and down. When the presser foot is down, it's the pushing down of the inner foot that lifts the outer foot.

Does this type work with thinner thread too? I wondered what the fiber washers were for. I guess they're like brake pads? For this to work, I'd think tensioner #2 would have to be pretty tight to keep the thread tightly in contact with the tensioner #3? Something about this system where the thread isn't squeezed but controlled by the rotation of the tensioner interests me.

Worker-B was close to $300. A decent servo motor with more power than the worker-B is about $150-200. It's hard to beat the Chinese. I'm thinking by the time you finish, it would be cheaper to just buy a Chinese servo. I have a Cutex branded one on one of my machines. It's been flawless.

Pics: I mounted the existing worker-B bracket to some aluminum extrusions which allowed me to adjust the position of the pulley pretty easily. The pulley can drive a belt if I was going to take it further, I'd machine off the plastic belt pulley part and install a larger aluminum one. This one is too small to grip the belt properly.

I'm working on a tangential project right now. I've acquired some Husqvarna early mostly metal sewing machines. Their first gen with stepper motors for needle position and stitch length. I'm using a raspberry Pi4 to drive the steppers and the main motor. So it's kind of what you're talking about. Using a 13 amp brushed motor driver and a PWM output from the PI I can control the speed of the main motor by pedal position. I might end up going pure stepper motor for the drive motor. In that way I can use the same driver for all 3 motors. These machines all have "Crank position" senors so it'll be possible to build in needle position without adding an additional sensor. Ultimately I want to be able to program my own stitches into the PI including bar tacks. It'll probably never be as compact as the purpose built Worker B controller. Once you see the pictures, you'll see 99% of the work behind the adapter. Getting it mounted to the machine was most of the effort. I took the pics, I just haven't offloaded them from my phone.

I installed a "worker B" on my singer 211. I used the singer pulley. I modified the stock worker B pulley to take a belt that would work on the singer pulley. It was successful, I could sew with it but, the motor and brackets were bulky enough they got in the way of tilting the machine back on the table. I'll try to post some pics when I get a chance. The worker-B motors runs on 90 volts DC. The controller controls the speed probably through PWM. It's only got two wires going to it so it's clearly not a stepper motor. The pedal is just a conventional 3 wire hookup to a 1/4" phono type jack. I'm using the pedal on another project now. I supply 3.3 volts to one leg, ground the other and I read the wiper with an ADC The magic happens in the controller. It converts line current to 90 volts DC, reads the pedal and sends the proper signal to the motor.

I ended up with a sailrite pulley when I bought the "worker B" motor. The ID seems to be about 20.4-20.52 mm. The depth of the metal insert seems to be about 25mm, The teeth of the pulley extend below the metal bushing about 7.25 mm. What I mean is there's a gap between the bushing on the inside end and the face of the gear. The total height of the part the belt engages is about 17.6mm There's no key in the metal bushing. I believe sailrite uses a pin through the pulley to keep it in position,. or so, Same thing it's only as accurate as my caliper usage. I didn't use a bore gauge, just my mito caliper. Initially I thought there was a taper but I think it's just an artifact of me not being able to get the caliper on square on one side.

One thing I prefer in the 1541 versus the 1508 is the way the bobbins work. The 1541 has a removable bobbin housing so you can have multiple housings setup for different threads thickness. It's both easier to get the thread through the thread clamp and easier to adjust the bobbin tension. I have nearly the same bobbin setup on my 211 as the 1508 and never liked how the bobbin thread was feed. The 1541 works like a home machine. That said, it's harder to stick a bobbin into the 1541 than the 1508 so I guess it's a trade-off.

I prefer this too. The newer Juki's like my DDL-5550 and 1541, the bobbin case comes out with the bobbin when you change the bobbin, so you can easily adjust the bobbin tension away from the machine. They both have a vertical hook drive instead of the horizontal drive like this machine (maybe I have that backwards, the bobbin case is on the end of the lower shaft). It's easier to keep multiple bobbin cases around set for different threads too. Stuff like this is partially why I sidelined my Singer 211 which is very similar to your LU-563. I just don't really use it anymore but I'm loath to sell it.

This is a weirdly common experience. My first machine was also a garment machine.... I struggled to make it sew thicker material with thicker thread till I finally learned it was simply the wrong machine for the job. I still have the machine. It's perfect for light duty work. Better than any home machine for straight stitching. I ended up with a Juki 1541 for the heavier work.

There's a mechanism on the main shaft on top which controls how much the walking foot arm moves. When you lock the mechanism in place with the button, then turn the hand wheel, you change how far the arm out the back of the machine will stick out, which impacts how the walking feet walk. I believe it's how you set the max foot height.

Does it work if you press that pin in again? That pin is what presses on the upper thread tensioner to release the tension when the foot is up. There should be a large headed screw and a sheet metal bracket that presses the pin when the foot is lifted. You aught to be able to temporarily pull the pin all the way out for testing. Picture #1 shows that the arm that raises the feet when you press the pedal isn't even contacting the feet mechanism. Picture #1 you see two dark arms coming from the left. The lower one is the tension arm for the main foot tension. The upper one is what lifts when you use the knee lift. In some of your pics it's been removed. The knee lift is disabled without that arm. Reading, it sounds like it works some times, then suddenly jams stuck up. That suggests to me something is getting out of alignment and holding the main foot up. When it's jammed up, look at where the spring presses on the collar on the main foot shaft. If that collar slips on the shaft, I could imaging the main foot getting stuck high. The main foot will be up when the inner foot is down pressing on the feed dog. They rock back and forth. For the main foot to touch down, the inner foot needs to be in the air.

I installed a Sailrite Worker B motor on the back of my 211 for a short while. It got in the way of tilting the machine back for maintenance so, I ended up switching to a conventional servo.

I had one of those servo's. Eventually swapped it out for a digital one. It seem to have more low speed torque. When I had the servo like yours, I installed a smaller pulley on the servo itself and that slowed it down enough for me to go stitch by stitch.

I had to use a puller to remove it from my 211. It brought the bearing with it. I made an aluminum pressing pin so I wasn't pressing on anything critical on the shaft, which is likely irreplaceable. I still have my 211 but don't particularly like it. I particularly didn't like how you set the stitch length. It's pretty primitive by today's standards. I had to make a cheat-sheet to map the numbers on the hand-wheel to actual stitch length. I set it to various stitch lengths, sewed some paper them measured the length.

I oil mine every time I use it. If you have the bobbin feeder that leans against the belt. Mine's split. I can shove a screw driver in it to expand it when it gets loose. Don't go too far with it. You just want enough to grab the inside of the bobbin.