Needle Hitting Shuttle Hook - Experienced Eyes Needed

[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