Adler 4-4: Decreasing Sewing Speed

[Constabulary]

Holly smokes - that's a HUGE pulley on your motor - looks like 200mm or so. I would not invest any money in this motor. I doubt you will find a smaller pulley for this one. I never have seen this particular motor before so I cannot give you an advise for it - really not. I think you really need a new servo motor.

I have bought my servo motors from College Sewing in the UK. They also have 40mm pulleys for clutch motors but I doubt they will have one for your motor. You have to remove the pulley first to check what kind of shaft your motor has - straight or tapered.

[bex DK]

Thanks! I will see what I can find out. If I go with replacing the motor is that easy to do myself and are they standard to buy?

The one plate is a sewing machine company, I think. The other is the motor specs.

I wasn't along when my husband picked up the machine, but he swears the seller had no trouble sewing slowly with it. It was a long drive to get it, so I stayed home with animals so he could get machine in car instead of hauling a trailer along. Hopefully he will sit down at the machine himself soon and see if he can make it sew more slowly than I managed--or call the guy we bought it from and talk to him about it, as he said we should contact him with questions (my Danish is NOT good enough to talk to a Dutchman speaking Danish).

Thanks again for your patience and advice. I _REALLY_ appreciate it.

[dikman]

Yep, big pulley indeed! You will need to know the shaft diameter and also look at how the pulley fits the shaft - it will either have a slot in the shaft with a key or locking screws, usually recessed into the pulley somewhere. These days most sewing machine pulleys are pretty standard for a 3/4" shaft with a keyway, but that is an OLD motor, so anything is possible. Fitting a smaller pulley will certainly make it more manageable, if you can find one that will fit, but may still be a handful for a newbie (it was for me, it was inevitable that I would replace mine with servos).

By the way, on that last photo it looks like the thread isn't going between the discs on the top tension/guide?

Edited March 7, 2016 by dikman

[llucas]

I am a novice to sewing leather on a machine -- all my leather work has been hand-stitched until now. I could not control the clutch motor on my machine. It was far too fast to do good work. After advice from people on this forum, this is what I installed. It was not a difficult job and the difference is absolutely amazing. It hurt my budget for a while to buy the servo motor and the reducer pulley, but it was worth it.

Edited March 8, 2016 by llucas

[bex DK]

Yes, the thread is hopped over I see. They are supposed to just run over between the disks and not actually be pushed in between them, correct?

Probably banged something into it. We do not have a large house and my work area is squeezed into what should be a walk through dining room (which is also why there is a gorgeous painting behind the machine... we haven't enough walls). So I have rope and leather tools and supplies all over the place. Doing both requires more stuff, but rope horsemanship stuff actually helps pay for the leather hobby as that needs fewer tools in the long run.

When I looked at the servo motors, I had no clue what to look for. I can see a huge swing in the prices of servos on the college sewing site Constabulary recommended, but I have no clue WHAT servo would fit my needs so I could consider the budget on it. I need to clean up my accounting for last year and this year so far and see how things are looking financially. I may be doing better than I realize and things seem to be picking up already this year compared to last year. It would be good to know what numbers I need to consider, so if I can find a pulley, I can better judge if it is worth risking. If it is hard to find, it will probably be comparatively expensive....

Your servo and speed reducer look very compact compared to the current motor...

[Constabulary]

So you are British, you live in Denmark and you have bought this German machine from a Dutch speaking guy - is that correct?

To make it even more complicated I have an original Adler Class 4 / 5 manual but it is in German language. I have scanned it a while ago but I cannot attach it here because the file is too big. I also have a parts list but I have to look for it.

Please send me your Email address by PM and I can send you the PDF files by Email.

BTW - do not open too many thread for just 1 machine and it´s accessories. It´s easier to follow just one thread

[llucas]

. . . Your servo and speed reducer look very compact compared to the current motor...

The servo is quite a bit smaller than the old clutch motor that was replaced. This one is providing power for an Adler 205-374 which is a large and heavy machine. It is rated at 3/4 horsepower. You had expressed a concern about cost: the motor and the reducer pulley were $265 (USD) plus shipping fees -- altogether less than $300.

[Northmount]

Yes, the thread is hopped over I see. They are supposed to just run over between the disks and not actually be pushed in between them, correct?

The thread needs to be between the tension disks, else you have no control of the tension.

Tom

[bex DK]

So you are British, you live in Denmark and you have bought this German machine from a Dutch speaking guy - is that correct?

Nope, it's worse than that. I am American but I live in Denmark. Been here since 98. And I bought this German machine from a Dutchman speaking Danish who lives in Denmark. I speak/write Danish fine... but only really understand the accent/speech method of the northern part of the country (not their true regional dialect, which I also get lost on, but the way they speak "normal" Danish). Head to the other part of the country and I often can't understand the spoken because the small variations in word choice and pronunciation confuse me. So to take someone speaking Fyn Danish (the island between the jutland and the island Copenhagen is on) and add a Dutch accent and I will probably only understand a few words. My husband is Danish and has even lived in different parts of the country, so he can handle all the variations without thinking.

Sorry about the extra thread--I thought presser feet weren't machine-specific and someone might be able to point me to a generic thing on presser feet where I'd find the info I needed and having it separate would make it easier for someone else to find the same info for a different machine. I thought there might be a guide somewhere I'd just failed to find.

I will send you my mail. My German is limited, but I do make sense of some written German between the Danish and the Latin I'd learned in school years ago. Plus I am sure diagrams will give some information. And my old boss can always translate for me. I worked for a long time for SUSE in Germany, editing and proofreading their manuals (from a home office in Denmark). I don't think the German my coworkers taught me is useful for a sewing machine manuals. ;-)

[bex DK]

The thread needs to be between the tension disks, else you have no control of the tension.

Tom

Thank you! That is probably why it is ending up on the bottom when sewing then. I will try again later that way.