I Need To Tell You How Much I Hate The Consew Servo Motor...

[dikman]

On the inside of the pulley there should be two flats, put a spanner on them to hold the pulley and take off the nut on the front. The pulley should pull off, it has a slotted key-way to locate it on the shaft. Check the shaft diameter, most of them are 15 mm, if so it's a standard size for most motors and pulleys are readily available via ebay.

[Darren Brosowski]

Servo motors come in a huge range of varieties - just as sewing machines do.

I import the Cowboy servo motors and they are great for most machines but they are set for a maximum of 1500RPM at the factory which does not suit every application. With the factory support I can reprogramme them for higher speed.

The ramp up rate of most motors can be changed. Sometimes this is a user function but usually it is a special set up for the factory that the dealer can work you through.

 

 

[Trox]

Hi Darren, why don't you post some pics and give us some facts/specs about their new motor. It's an servo motor without needle position, am I right?  I have only seen poor pictures of it. where to buy and price.

Thanks

Tor

[mikesc]

where to buy and price

I'm presuming that the "where", is from Darren :)..although shipping from Australia to Norway ( or France ) might make us wince a bit ;)

[hackish]

I'm joining in this conversation because I've had a similar experience with servo motors. All the ones I've found are simply chinese re-brands of the same junk. I've opened 1/2 dozen motors from $120-$300USD and they innards are identical. Some of them advertise 500 or 750w yet have exactly the same motor and controller boards inside. They also seem to have fake UL labels on them considering basics of electrical design are not followed (high voltage floating grounds on the synchronizer for example!) In other words they seem to tell you what they think you want to hear.

I disassembled a needle positioner and installed it in my 20U but the Consew CSM1000 does not seem to ramp the speed up and down very nicely so it does not start/stop smoothly and depending on the position sometimes flies past the top/bottom sync and does a double stitch. I also have a CS1001 on my double needle machine and it suffers similar problems. I have not yet had a chance to do the pencil mod inside. At this point I want to buy a servo for my class 7 machine but given all the problems I'm considering buying a non-sewing industrial servo motor driver and programming it to do what I want. It would be interesting to syncrhonize it but I know these little junky controllers would never be able to stop/start a heavy machine with any reliability.

If I had infinite time I'd just design my own controller for the cheap motor kits so they could be setup safetly to do what we want and just plug a USB device in and program it as you like.

[dikman]

I found the same thing with the needle positioner and because I sew very slow decided to remove it. I can control the needle position well enough without it. Interestingly, I can't do the "pencil mod" on mine because the design is different (doesn't have the gradient piece inside). I have  500W and 750W motors, same brand, and at least the 750W is physically bigger on the outside .

[Trox]

Personally I'm happy with my Efka motors and I know who sells them in Germany. However, the motor is not pictured in any of the German dealers Web sites (Sieck.de and Frank Brunnet are both Hightex dealers in Germany). There are a lot of potential buyers here that read reviews on Chinese motors. I like to belive there are progress, they make better product all the time. The problems with today's Chinese servo motors that remains to be solved are speed control and needle position. It's not a problem to produce good solutions, but how to produce them economical. Let us see this new motor, is it any good.

Thanks

Tor   

[hackish]

Wish I had time to play with it. I'm sure I could build a controller but it would take $25,000 in R&D time and $10,000 in up-front production to have 1000 made. I have found a few servo controllers on ebay. Seems you can buy an industrial one for $250. I should order one and see if I could coax it into running one of the motors I have. $375ish still isn't that bad for a good working servo setup.

[gottaknow]

Really decent servos and air motors and control boxes have been used for many years in factories. I know Trox is a fan of the Efka's, and even the older units from the 1980's were butter smooth.  I've taken many out of service in the last few years, but having a unit survive factory use for 30 years is pretty amazing. The "hobby" servos and controllers are actually quite pathetic comparatively speaking, thus everyone wants to mod them and reinvent the wheel. The wheel already exists if you want to pay the price.  I know some of the cheaper ones can serve a hobbyist quite well. But the price point is good for hobbyists. I trust guys like Wiz to know the good from the bad because he's dealt with them.  We don't use them in factories because they get killed in short order. In contrast, I have Singer and Amco clutch motors from the 70's that have never needed a clutch replaced and old Efka units that are still going strong without adjustment. It's too bad there isn't something in between that was really smooth and strong but at a better price, perhaps not a big enough market?

Regards, Eric 

[Trox]

Thanks for the insight Eric, I believe there are some pretty reasonable priced options out there. Like the Hohsing G60 needle position motor, the price in Europe is under 200 US$. There are also other good Hohsing motors under 450 $. The G 60 is 600W with needle position and speed control that works as it should do. Hohsing are a professional brand, and have motors that can compare to Efka, I never heard anything but good things about them. I have several friends that use them, you can't get them to buy anything else.

Tor