dikman Report post Posted October 16, 2018 Fitted my (cheap) servo and I must say it works well. I have to set the max speed fairly low otherwise it takes off too quickly for my needs, but it has plenty of grunt. My Organ leatherpoint needles also arrived today, and using the knee lift I can just shove 1/2" of veg under the feet and it handles it easily (#138 thread/size 24 needle). I wanted to use the original Singer pedal ('cos it looks cool) but there were a couple of problems. It was too high to comfortably use the knee lift so I made some brackets and lowered the supporting bar, and because the pivot points are behind the balance point the pedal had a lot of forward weight so I used a piece of elastic strap to take some of the weight. Seems to work ok. I had to open out the hole in the feed dog as there wasn't enough adjustment to centre the needle properly (the 117 doesn't have all the adjustments of the later 111W15x series). I had to make a couple of attempts at this as it was cutting the top thread on the upstroke! A bit more care and lots of polishing fixed that. Next problem was the knot was sitting on the bottom of the leather, I couldn't get enough top tension to pull it up. Replacing the beehive spring on the tensioner with a stiffer spring fixed that (I've no idea where the spare spring came from, but it fitted). I'll leave this set up purely for #138 thread, although I wouldn't be surprised if it could handle #207. Maybe later.... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dikman Report post Posted October 29, 2018 (edited) On to Version 3. While it would turn over at fairly low speed it didn't matter how I played with the settings the transition from slow to fast (whatever I'd set the max to) was just to quick for my liking. So the only answer was to resurrect one of my reducers and modify it fit this setup. Fortunately I had a few short belts that would work and a goodly assortment of pulleys. It actually works quite well now. From the motor to the reducer gives me a 2.7:1 reduction and from the reducer to the head another 3.9:1. I can now sew at 1 stitch/2.5 secs and changing the max speed is simple, two buttons on the front of the control box if I need a faster top speed. Wonder what I can do next? Edited October 29, 2018 by dikman Forgot photo (doh!). Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
