My Chinese 246 clone arrived!

[ElfLeather]

Some background: By day, I'm an r&d tech for a California hardware startup. By night, I'm a hobbyist, and I've been doing leatherworking on & off for 10ish years, mostly stemming from my involvement in the local leather scene. Most of what I make is with snaps & rivets, but I got the itch to work on garments & bags recently. After a few months of research, I decided to order a machine direct from China, as I don't have the budget for a name-brand machine and I'm willing to put in the shop hours to get the machine working to my satisfaction. My level of familiarity with sewing machines is limited, some resto work I did on an old pfaff and an old singer. I used to work for a machine tool startup and I've done a fair bit of tool resto & repair in my own time, so I'm reasonably confident in my ability to figure it out.

Early in January, I ordered a cylinder arm machine from a Chinese manufacturer, Jiang Long. They're mostly a CM for other brands, and I picked them because I was able to speak at length with a few people who have ordered their machines in the past and claimed to have good experiences. I chose the 246 because I plan on working more with garment leather than heavy veg-tan. They sell on Aliexpress, but on a friend's recommendation I looked them up and spoke to their sales rep directly.

I asked for the head unit alone, as I plan to use my current table & motor setup. I also asked them to grind the foot smooth I was initially quoted $750 with standard shipping, but I name-dropped the people that referred me and they took $100 off and threw in some minor extras. Quoted ship time was 20-30 (business?) days. 5 weeks later, it arrived at my doorstep.

The packaging was pretty good, styroform surrounded by fiberboard plates in a decent box. I saw the fedex driver cartwheel it once or twice before grabbing a dolly, but so far I haven't found any shipping damage.

I went through it, cleaned off some of the shipping oil and checked for broken parts. So far, so good. It's not covered in rust or cosmoline, but now I know what Chinese cigarettes smell like.



The fit & finish is reasonable. The finish machining looks pretty good on the contact surfaces and the bearing surfaces. The internal non-contact surfaces got either paint or the China special (some fettling + a wire wheel). There's a few small chips in the paint job on the outside, mostly on corners. I popped on the pulley and gave it a few turns, can't tell if the motion is tight or just needs lube.

Next steps: open it up, check internal parts for shipping damage, and clean the factory oil off all of the sliding surfaces. Run some oil through the lines and cycle it out. There's no manual, so I'll dig deep and see if it's a close enough clone of a brand that does have good documentation. After that, check timing, then first stitches. Assuming first stitches go well, run it in for a bit and test some more.

Any recommendations for next steps? Anything you see that's grossly amiss with it?

[kgg]

5 hours ago, ElfLeather said:

Any recommendations for next steps? Anything you see that's grossly amiss with it?

Looks good. I would recommend flushing it with a lot oil to get rid debris from manufacturing and to make sure every surface that touches another is thoroughly lubed.

What was the approximate cost with shipping / duty.

kgg

[toxo]

I feel like we're brothers-in-arms having bought a Jiang Long 341 directly a little while back. Was it Rayna that you dealt with?

Might be worth scanning that barcode thing on the side for a manual or at least a parts list. Good luck with it.

Edited Friday at 04:27 PM by toxo

[ElfLeather]

8 hours ago, kgg said:

Looks good. I would recommend flushing it with a lot oil to get rid debris from manufacturing and to make sure every surface that touches another is thoroughly lubed.

What was the approximate cost with shipping / duty.

kgg

Nice. yeah that's the plan, see if I can flush out any residual chips or anything. I thought about degreaser but I don't know if it would play nice with the seals and the oiler hoses.

Total cost was around $700, $500 of which was the machine itself.

 

3 hours ago, toxo said:

I feel like we're brothers-in-arms having bought a Jiang Long 341 directly a little while back. Was it Rayna that you dealt with?

Might be worth scanning that barcode thing on the side for a manual or at least a parts list. Good luck with it.

I spoke to Ben throughout the whole process. All the questions I asked, he went to either the line supervisor or mechanic to get me an answer, send pics, videos etc. 

Thanks for pointing out the Qr code on the side. It links to an online parts catalog & manual for this and a range of similar machines. If you're interested, here's the link, proceed at your own Risk. It's in a mix of english & chinese.

Edited Friday at 08:03 PM by ElfLeather

[toxo]

Rayna pretty much did the same thing. Couldn't do enough. In fact I've just asked her if they do a pre-drilled bobbin slide plate thingie to take a binding attachment. (Does anyone know?)

Re; the code, you might get some English out of it around page 70.

[kgg]

8 hours ago, ElfLeather said:

Total cost was around $700, $500 of which was the machine itself.

Thank you. Good price.

kgg

[ElfLeather]

After mounting the machine, getting the drive belt & encoder set up, and puzzling out the automatic oiler, I'm running some test pieces. Everything is running smoothly & predictably up to 92 through 5 oz oil tan. When I switch over to a stiff 5 oz combination tan, the drive belt starts to slip from the force required to punch through.

I'm running a consew cs1000 and the belt is pretty damn tight.  The only thing that seems amiss is that the handwheel paint feels a bit on the smooth side. Kinda scratching my head over this one. I was thinking of just swapping the pulleys to get a ~2:1 reduction. Anything else worth checking before going through with this?

[kgg]

5 hours ago, ElfLeather said:

When I switch over to a stiff 5 oz combination tan

Start with basics first. 

i) Are you using needles that came with the machine. If so throw them in the bucket as they are more then likely to be of poor quality. 

ii) I am going to assume the machine takes system 135 needles. Are you using a 135 x 16 which is needed for leather? 

iii) What size of needle are you using? You may have to move up to a #22 needle for V92 in thick / tough leather. Reference chart ( https://www.tolindsewmach.com/thread-chart.html )

iv) have you checked to make sure the feed dog is set correctly. The presser foot tension just needs enough downward pressure to move stuff along. To much doward pressure and it's like creating a jam point.

5 hours ago, ElfLeather said:

I'm running a consew cs1000 and the belt is pretty damn tight.

The drive belt needs some slack otherwise it puts to much strain on the bearings in the machine and in the servo motor. I would remove the belt and turn it over by hand and see if can feel anything funny.

Is this a needle feed machine?

kgg

[ElfLeather]

23 hours ago, kgg said:

Start with basics first. 

i) Are you using needles that came with the machine. If so throw them in the bucket as they are more then likely to be of poor quality. 

ii) I am going to assume the machine takes system 135 needles. Are you using a 135 x 16 which is needed for leather? 

iii) What size of needle are you using? You may have to move up to a #22 needle for V92 in thick / tough leather. Reference chart ( https://www.tolindsewmach.com/thread-chart.html )

iv) have you checked to make sure the feed dog is set correctly. The presser foot tension just needs enough downward pressure to move stuff along. To much doward pressure and it's like creating a jam point.

The drive belt needs some slack otherwise it puts to much strain on the bearings in the machine and in the servo motor. I would remove the belt and turn it over by hand and see if can feel anything funny.

Is this a needle feed machine?

kgg

basics first

i ) I immediately replaced the needle that came with the machine
ii ) The new needle is an organ 135x16, diamond point, tried 20 and 22

iii) The problem is of a comparable scale with a 22 needle or a 20 needle

iv) I tried adjusting the presser foot tension. The factory setting turned out to quite low, and raising it made the issue a little bit worse

 

I'm using a link belt and I have a margin of only 1-2 links before it's too short. Any tension inside that 1-2 link margin and it the belt slips when running stiff leather, any other material feels fine and moves predictably. Turning it over by hand with no thread or workpiece, I can feel a little more resistance at certain points in the cycle, but that's probably just the walking feet right?

It's really only when I hit 2 layers of stiff 5 oz that the machine bogs down. 

I'm also in a leatherworking discord and got a rec to find a v-belt of the correct length. The only reason I'm using a link belt is because the v-belt is way too long for my setup. If that doesn't do it, I ordered some pulleys to try gearing it down a bit, seeing if the added torque gets me over that hump. 

I'm still scratching my head though, people have sent me pics of comparable machines sewing through an 8mm stackup with the stock setup, so yeah, not sure.

[kgg]

36 minutes ago, ElfLeather said:

I'm using a link belt and I have a margin of only 1-2 links before it's too short. Any tension inside that 1-2 link margin and it the belt slips when running stiff leather, any other material feels fine and moves predictably.

Just go to your local hardware store and get a V belt. The link belts don't provide the same amount of belt surface contact area as a V belt.

 

36 minutes ago, ElfLeather said:

I can feel a little more resistance at certain points in the cycle, but that's probably just the walking feet right?

Looking at your photo and the video of the machine on the Jiang Long site this machines appears to be a needle feed machine where the outer presser foot just goes up and down like a ordinary drop feed while the needle and the inner presser foot moves back and forth.

 

36 minutes ago, ElfLeather said:

I'm still scratching my head though, people have sent me pics of comparable machines sewing through an 8mm stackup with the stock setup

What are the model numbers of the comparable machine?? Without knowing more about the spec of your machine or what it is a clone of you maybe be at the machines limit, probably around 8 oz.

kgg