Quick Question For Anyone With A Singer 95 Or 96 Class

[Marcusstratus]

I just finished up a restoration project I've been working on for several months, rebuilding and repainting a Singer 96-10. I'm in the process of fine-tuning him at the moment, but before I call it good, I want to ask the community a question.

For anyone that owns / has used a gear-driven 95 or 96 class, do you notice the whizzing of the gears during use? I didn't actually sew with this guy very much before dissasembly, so I can't recall if I could hear the gears back then. When I was assembling him, I couldn't get sound from the gears to completely disappear. I got it quiet, but when he's running at speed, there's a definite whizzing noise. The teeth on these gears are just straight, not helical or hypoid, so I don't expect the sound to be non-existant... but I'm surprised it's making as much noise as it is.

If you don't notice the sound of the gears, there's a couple things I can think of checking:

• I haven't packed enough grease in the gear boxes
• they need to be aligned in a specific way, with the correct teeth mating at the right spot
• they simply haven't been adjusted to quite the right spot.

Should anyone have something to say on the matter, I would appreciate it!

The results of my work:

During reassembly

Edited November 6, 2015 by Marcusstratus

[CowboyBob]

Turn up the radio,the gears always make a noise on these machines.

[Marcusstratus]

Turn up the radio,the gears always make a noise on these machines.

I can deal with that! I'm just used to modern machines at my day job that are silent.

[cdthayer]

Since I’ve posted before about my Singer 95-40 and 96-40 machines, I guess I should explain why I can’t help you with the noise question.

I use my 95-40 with a hand crank knob. It’s my back-up machine for hemming jeans pant legs. I don’t get up enough speed to hear the gears.

I have used my 96-40 for a brief attempt at quilting fabrics using a hopping foot. I haven’t ran it very much, and then only slowly trying to learn how to Free Motion Quilt with it. The hopping foot that I had didn’t work out, so the project has been on hold for a long time.

It’s nice to see you bringing a nice old Singer back into service. Good luck with it.

CD in Oklahoma

[Uwe]

Many gears on sewing machines (and other machinery) are machined to mesh with specific opposing gear teeth. There's often a factory marking on the gears that tells you which tooth on one gear is supposed to match up with wich valley on the other gear. If you assemble the gears with an offset in the tooth alignment, the gears will probably still work, but they'll be noisy. I noticed that issue when I was timing my Adler 67. I made a mention of it and show the gear markings around the 4-minute mark in my hook timing video:

Your gears may also be machined to mesh with specific opposing teeth. Look for markings (often just an ink dot or pencil marking that may look random at first). If the mark disappeared during restoration, you can try shifting the gears one tooth at a time and see if the noise gets better. The noise was very obvious with my Adler 67 when I accidentally got the gears mis-meshed.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Uwe

[Northmount]

Even if the gears aren't marked for a mating position, shifting worn (even very slightly worn) will increase the noise level because the wear pattern has been disrupted. The higher the speed, the more noise.

Tom

[Uwe]

Good point Tom. The marked gears have just been pre-worn at the factory (e.g. run them for a while with some polishing compound). It's probably a good idea to always mark gear mesh positions before separating any two gears, so you can put them back exactly as they were before you separated them.

[Marcusstratus]

Good point Tom. The marked gears have just been pre-worn at the factory (e.g. run them for a while with some polishing compound). It's probably a good idea to always mark gear mesh positions before separating any two gears, so you can put them back exactly as they were before you separated them.

Yeah, there's several points where I should have taken pictures or made notes of how this was dissasembled... Learning experience.

I cleaned everything with Citranox when I dissasembled it, so if there were any superficial markings, they're all gone now. I'll take another look, but I'm pretty sure I never noticed a notch or punch mark indicating where to line the teeth up. I'll probably have to do it the hard way, testing each tooth to see which gives the quietest results. It makes sense that they would have been worn into a sweet spot and that I just need to find it again

[TinkerTailor]

Straight cut gears make noise. Period. If it is more noise than normal it is usually either an axial shift of one of the gears or a change in gear mesh tolerance.

If you are dealing with equal sized sprockets, the one tooth trick may work. If they are different sizes, due to the gear ratio, they will not hit the same spots on every turn unless the ratio it 1:2 or 1:4 or something.

Likely the noise is the thrust on the gears, as in have their positions on their shafts changed in any way? If the gears were a little offset when they were installed originally, they would have worn a step on all the teeth where the teeth did not touch. If you reinstall the gears with a different offset, that step will be in the meshing path, and be noisy. Loosen the setscrew so it is just snug, and using a soft faced hammer, lightly tap the gear one way or the other on its shaft and then re tighten setscrew, listen to machine. Move very small amounts (fractions of a millimeter) one way and the other and observe the effect. Rinse and repeat.

Metals lathes, which have changable gears for different thread pitches have a gear mesh adjuster and those guys make it zero clearance with a piece of paper between the gear teeth. This leaves the right clearance when the paper is gone.

Also, lithium grease tends to quiet down internal gear bicycle hubs but it does not last nearly as long.

[Marcusstratus]

I spent a fair bit of time this weekend tinkering with the gears and adjusting/repositioning to hear where they're most quiet. The 2:1 gear ratio in the upper part of the head is running very quiet but the lower 1:1 set I couldn't get as quiet. I'm going to call it good where I've got it. Thanks for the replies folks, your comments are much appreciated.