Needle Positioner That Can Be Disabled?

[HCM]

Am I the only person who has some issues with needle positioner motors? I do relatively high end work, and am very particular about where my needle goes. On some of my pieces, 0.5mm off and my piece is destroyed. So, I like to be able to stitch slow and let the needle stop right before it hits the material so I can position the piece if the needle is off its mark a little bit. For the most part, the fly wheel can be cranked by hand to get the needle to this position, but that means hand cranking the majority of a revolution if the positioner is set to stop in the needle down position. I could set it to stop in the needle up position, but then I have to hand crank every stitch where the piece needs to be turned with the needle down. So, I was wondering if there is a motor option that will let me disable the positioner for certain operations.

But really, am I the only person who has these issues?

[amuckart]

How old is the servo driver your'e using? Modern ones should configurable to stop at almost any position you want.

I don't know if commercial ones can do this, but I've seen a home-built servo controller that had a mode where the needle followed the pedal directly, so pushing the pedal down dropped the needle and lifting the pedal raised the needle. I don't know at what point it decided it had to transition through bottom dead centre though.

[HCM]

I have an Efka and two Quick Rotans. None of them are very "modern", but the Quicks are newer. I didn't know I could mess with the position like that. What if it's on a machine with a thread trimmer and automatic functions, can I still change where it stops? Even still, sometimes when I stitch through some tricky areas I have to run the needle through slow so it doesn't get deflected in the piece and break. So, I still have issues, but like I said, we do some pretty tricky stitching.