Sewing Machine For Someone With Limited Use Of Legs/feet

[Sheilajeanne]

That was my first thought, too. The machines I used in Home Ec. in school had knee controls. I liked them much better than the foot pedal on my mom's machine.

[Wizcrafts]

4 hours ago, gunnerdiego said:

I don't see where anyone has answered the question about a knee control.  I would like to put a knee control on my servo motor.  Any ideas out there?

This was an eight year old topic. There was no input about knee lever speed controllers because they aren't made for high power industrial servo motors. They draw much more current than the tiny motors used in domestic sewing machines. A typical industrial servo motor used in big sewing machines draws enough current to deliver 1/2 to 3/4 horsepower, which would burn out a domestic style controller in a tenth of a second. It is a case of apples and oranges.

I am sure that some enterprising mechanically inclined individual may have hooked up some alternate means of controlling these 3/4 horsepower motors.

[dikman]

With a lot of the servos having separate "switch" modules it's probably feasible to figure out some sort of linkage to operate one via a knee control rather than the foot pedal.The beauty of the separate module is they don't have to be mounted in the "normal" position.

But I don't know of anyone who has done this.

[Constabulary]

Solar leather once posted this hand control solution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGu4gHkw6Mg

 

Edited July 6, 2019 by Constabulary

[Gregg From Keystone Sewing]

When you have the correct motor setup, you are really only limited by your imagination.  At that point and it's easy to tailor something to someone's particular needs.  If you have a servo motor with an external actuator, you can mount it as a knee switch under the table and make something up.  If you go with a higher end motor like an Efka you can have multiple input and output buttons to help make up for things like needle up position, or whatever else you can think of.  

 

8 hours ago, Constabulary said:

Solar leather once posted this hand control solution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGu4gHkw6Mg

 

Brilliant minds think alike (or at least people who watch YouTube videos about sewing machines).  1st thing I thought of.

[gunnerdiego]

Thanks everyone - I will be installing a servo motor for my 96-16 singer and would like to keep it in the table I have currently - hope not to put it in a K-leg table for the foot control.  Must get a bit creative I guess - I'll check out the utube from solar leather as well

 

 

[SolarLeatherMachines]

I still sell the hand control.  It's $85, and comes with installation instructions.   We don't advertise it a lot because it's not a big seller, and we sell it about at cost.  I designed it, and it was meant as as service to our veterans, and as a help for those with Diabetes.  

[gunnerdiego]

Thanks Alexander - I would like it to be a knee control for the servo motor - I like my big table that it sits in and would like to add the servo and some kind of control besides a pedal on the floor.  might I use your hand control on a bracket under the table and use my knee to run it?  thinking out of the box now...