Needle Hitting Shuttle Hook - Experienced Eyes Needed

[adventureleather]

Hello, 

I hoping there might be some experienced sewers here that can have a look and help me out with my machine. It is a 441 clone and I have noticed the needle is being hit/pushed to the left side but the hook. It is not the deflector. I have tried and tried to re-time based on UWE's video and Al Bane's videos. Both of their methods seem like different results so I am not sure if it is my machine or what. I was close to fixing the issue a bit but using Al's methods with 3/16 from bottom dead center to adjust the hook to the needle. And by having the needle bar height adjusted with bottom center and eye of the needle above the deflector bottom. This puts the hook about middle of the scarf. 

Then if the hook clears on the needle coming down, the needle will brush the shuttle behind the hook indent. 

Lastly, I noticed with my last re-timing attempt the material would get pushed forward by the tension/knot forming. So as the center foot rises at the end of the stitch to move forward, the thread forming the knot pushes the material forward. 

Any sort of help or tips you can provide would be great. I am trying to get some help from the place I purchased it from but emails back and forth are proving to take too long and not helpful. Trying to talk to them soon. 

 

Thanks!

 

Hook Hitting Needle Shuttle View
Hook Hitting Needle

 

[kgg]

8 hours ago, adventureleather said:

Any sort of help or tips you can provide would be great. I am trying to get some help from the place I purchased it from but emails back and forth are proving to take too long and not helpful. Trying to talk to them soon. 

More questions rather then answers. Did you set the travel distance of the needle bar to the needle plate? Is the needle bar set so the needle isn't slightly twisted as it moves to the hook? Did you make any adjustments before this started to happened. A video without the needle plate in place maybe helpful.

kgg

[RockyAussie]

As @kgg said a video showing without the needle plate in place might help. I will load up the manual I have that shows what is called a distance piece which comes in various thicknesses to set the hook closer or further away from the needle. They normally come with a standard piece that suits most needles and I do not know if it is possible to get a piece that is a better thickness for your needle size or not. Look for the page that says Hook driving shaft components and see the part 17-23. CB4500+Instructions+&+Parts+Catalogue.pdf

This video done by member @Uwe shows some of this part quite well. (He always does GREAT videos)

At the end of it all I am not sure if what you are seeing is all bad or not and a video showing without the needle plate would help I think.

 

[kgg]

1 hour ago, RockyAussie said:

They normally come with a standard piece that suits most needles and I do not know if it is possible to get a piece that is a better thickness for your needle size or not.

 I just watched the video and looked at the parts manual the RockyAussie was kind enough to share. I think another solution that may work if the OP has access to a 3D printer would be to print a flat thin shim in the circle shape of the ring that would set behind the ring and up against the body of the machine. The manual labels them as "Distance Piece" but doesn't say what thickness they are available in. A decent 3D printer should be able to print shims from 0.15mm up. I suspect a shim in the 1+mm range may solve the OP problem. Sorta kinda like what Alder done on some of their machines.

kgg

[RockyAussie]

53 minutes ago, kgg said:

 I just watched the video and looked at the parts manual the RockyAussie was kind enough to share. I think another solution that may work if the OP has access to a 3D printer would be to print a flat thin shim in the circle shape of the ring that would set behind the ring and up against the body of the machine. The manual labels them as "Distance Piece" but doesn't say what thickness they are available in. A decent 3D printer should be able to print shims from 0.15mm up. I suspect a shim in the 1+mm range may solve the OP problem. Sorta kinda like what Alder done on some of their machines.

kgg

They do have some shims over this side of the pond but I am thinking that the distance piece in this case is already too thick for the needle size so would require a thinner distance piece. Push to shove getting the distance piece reduced by a bit should work if other options were not available.  I know that when going to a lot smaller needle size that it has been possible to use a coke cut to shape to make a slim shim to get the hook a bit closer. If the op wants to give me the thickness of his distance piece I could do a check with the dealers here to find out if a thinner one is available.

[Wizcrafts]

14 minutes ago, RockyAussie said:

If the op wants to give me the thickness of his distance piece I could do a check with the dealers here to find out if a thinner one is available.

I might also be interested in some thinner shims. I occasionally use my 4500 to sew with thin thread and needles when that is the most useful machine for the job. The shims could go hand in hand with your narrow feeder and throat plate.

[CowboyBob]

7 hours ago, Wizcrafts said:

I might also be interested in some thinner shims. I occasionally use my 4500 to sew with thin thread and needles when that is the most useful machine for the job. The shims could go hand in hand with your narrow feeder and throat plate.

You can make shims easily,they do not need to be a full circle.Just get a piece of business card,cut into narrow strips,1/4" long & use some grease or vasoline to hold them on the backside 4 short strips would work.BUT since the OP's shuttle is hitting the hook he should take it apart & clean behind the shim as there might be some thread behind it pushing it out.

[adventureleather]

Thank you all for the suggestions! I’m going to digest them tonight and see if I have some time to adjust. I see that shim now very interesting. I love learning about the machine I just wish there was a manual that explained all of what each component actually does. This would make troubleshooting so much easier. I just don’t know what to adjust. 
 

I had some good results with re-timing the 3/16” bdc way to the hook so which put the hook by the scarf instead of the tip after a kind phone call. My only issue so far is that the needle does not meet the feed dog and centre foot all at the same time. Do all three meet above the feed all at the same time? Is there a way to adjust the needle bar rotation to match the feed dog? It seems like once you adjust one the other goes out so there maybe is a way that I don’t know. 
 

I’ll share a video once it’s all times to show where I’m at. 
 

Appreciate the help here! 
 

 

[adventureleather]

16 hours ago, RockyAussie said:

As @kgg said a video showing without the needle plate in place might help. I will load up the manual I have that shows what is called a distance piece which comes in various thicknesses to set the hook closer or further away from the needle. They normally come with a standard piece that suits most needles and I do not know if it is possible to get a piece that is a better thickness for your needle size or not. Look for the page that says Hook driving shaft components and see the part 17-23. CB4500+Instructions+&+Parts+Catalogue.pdf

This video done by member @Uwe shows some of this part quite well. (He always does GREAT videos)

At the end of it all I am not sure if what you are seeing is all bad or not and a video showing without the needle plate would help I think.

 

Great manual to have thank you for sharing! Figure 16 might be what I need to adjust after timing if the needle doesn’t meet the top of the feed at the same time? 

[RockyAussie]

21 hours ago, Wizcrafts said:

I might also be interested in some thinner shims. I occasionally use my 4500 to sew with thin thread and needles when that is the most useful machine for the job. The shims could go hand in hand with your narrow feeder and throat plate.

I will chase it up with them asap. They are doing an Ag show this week so I would expect it will take a few days to sort out.

13 hours ago, CowboyBob said:

You can make shims easily,they do not need to be a full circle.Just get a piece of business card,cut into narrow strips,1/4" long & use some grease or vasoline to hold them on the backside 4 short strips would work.BUT since the OP's shuttle is hitting the hook he should take it apart & clean behind the shim as there might be some thread behind it pushing it out.

Good tip, sounds a lot easier than cutting up a coke can to shape

8 hours ago, adventureleather said:

Figure 16 might be what I need to adjust after timing if the needle doesn’t meet the top of the feed at the same time?

One thing at a time. Lets see the video with the feet down sewing first. Make sure the stitch length is very close so that the foot is near to the middle of the throat plate where it will be touching.

Another thing I thought of....Being a new machine it may be possible that the shuttle race body is not fully seated at the back. One little bit of paint in there scratched off when assembling could be the cause. I have had one recently that was very tight to move and I had to do quite a bit of fine sandpaper sanding to get it smooth enough to move as it should. I also oiled it up when I finished to improve it. 

[adventureleather]

3 hours ago, RockyAussie said:

 

One thing at a time. Lets see the video with the feet down sewing first. Make sure the stitch length is very close so that the foot is near to the middle of the throat plate where it will be touching.

Another thing I thought of....Being a new machine it may be possible that the shuttle race body is not fully seated at the back. One little bit of paint in there scratched off when assembling could be the cause. I have had one recently that was very tight to move and I had to do quite a bit of fine sandpaper sanding to get it smooth enough to move as it should. I also oiled it up when I finished to improve it. 

Good idea

Ok here it is. 0 feed movement with the shuttle in place. From what I think the needle is late coming to the feed. I re-timed and to my low experience it seems ok. It does sew well and reverse stitches are consistent and in each hole. But the feed timing seems off to me. 

 

 

But have a look at this video. Longer stitch moves the material back as the feed moves and needle is up. It kind of looks like the feed pushes the thread forward but I don't know..I don't have the experience to know what I am looking for. This is the narrow feed and plate on there. 

 

 

Good idea about the paint. my race does install tightly. I will check behind the shim. Uwe thanks for your shuttle video nice info in there. 

I am chatting with the place I got my machine currently so I will see what they suggest as well from the videos. Thanks all!

 

Edited June 22, 2022 by adventureleather

[adventureleather]

Hi everyone, I have a good update that is hopefully the cause of my issues. Techsew here in Canada was super great in helping me. As have all of you here in this thread. 

I made a custom spring for the stirrup plate and left it in thinking I was doing myself a favour with softer chrome leather to not have the foot tension so tight. So I put back the lower compression spring that I got from techsew and added some tension to keep the material in place better. 

We also adjusted the center foot to walk better. Timing from my side of doing it was good. 

Next thing we worked on was my tension on top and bottom. Since I was having bottom tension issues a few weeks back I bent the hook spring a bit to give more latitude on top. Well seems my top tension knobs were way too tight and that made the bottom tighter too. This caused the thread to be too tight when the knot was formed pushing the material forward. Mixed with not enough foot pressure and we have what the video shows. 

I will also try sanding very lightly away the paint in the machine as Brian mentioned to have everything sit better and maybe give me some room with the hook and needle. But timing here helped too. 

I hope this information can help someone else in the future that might run into similar issues with this 441 type of machine. I really thank the problem solving of the tech at Techsew and thank you all for your input here too. It is much appreciated. The only benefit from having issues with your machine is that you know so much about it haha. At least I learned a lot  from my mistakes. 

Happy sewing!!

[dikman]

It's good that you got it working, but there is a lesson here too. You omitted to mention, at the start, that you had a custom (lighter) pressure spring fitted and had bent the hook spring too. This made it "non-standard" but anyone offering advice wasn't aware of this, which doesn't help when trying to solve problems. If something goes wrong the first thing to do is put everything back to standard and eliminate any possibility that any changes made are causing the problem.

[adventureleather]

55 minutes ago, dikman said:

It's good that you got it working, but there is a lesson here too. You omitted to mention, at the start, that you had a custom (lighter) pressure spring fitted and had bent the hook spring too. This made it "non-standard" but anyone offering advice wasn't aware of this, which doesn't help when trying to solve problems. If something goes wrong the first thing to do is put everything back to standard and eliminate any possibility that any changes made are causing the problem.

Very true and good point to mention and take note of. To be fair the spring I forgot was changed and adjusting the hook spring was only to gain more tension below from a separate issue that fixed it. It still works with this spring but I had too much tension from top and bottom (made the bobbin too tight). A lot of little details gets lost in text typing too. One thing I noticed from the machine is that it is easy to jump around trying to see what happened that like you say easy to forget what was changed. Leather craft is full of lessons learnt.. too many haha

[RockyAussie]

Very good to hear you have it solved. Thanks for the update. Now we get to see some of the work you can do with it I hope.

[RockyAussie]

On 6/21/2022 at 1:15 PM, Wizcrafts said:

I might also be interested in some thinner shims. I occasionally use my 4500 to sew with thin thread and needles when that is the most useful machine for the job. The shims could go hand in hand with your narrow feeder and throat plate.

Hey @Wizcrafts, No I didn't forget. They have 2 thicknesses, one is .2mm and the other they get water jet cut over here and is .55mm. Don't ask me what that is in thou or ounces Just out of interest I looked it up and a Bees dick is .25mm if that helps

They sell them as a set for $10 over here so postage would make it near to double I guess. Same address?

[Wizcrafts]

8 hours ago, RockyAussie said:

Same address?

Yessir