needle case adjustment

[Stubbytails]

Hi all,
HELP How does one adjust the needle case. I have all of my needles beginning to shift left and I believe they are breaking because they are too close. I can't seem to get them adjusted. Also the presser foot looks out of align. Any advise. Naturally Christmas rush is cutting time short and can't get the projects done because of needle breaks.

Thanks
Christine

[Body Cover]

don't know how much help I can be, but make sure your needle plate (above the bobbin area) is centered with a needle, it may need to be adjusted
if all the needles are not lining up.
Might not be it but you should certainly look and make sure.
Good Luck
Happy Holidays
Ron

[TinaK]

Christine:

To adjust your needle plate for your needle loosen the two screws on the plate then go into Maintenance and put your needle down(sorry not in OS so cant remember the term for some reason) then looking at your needle and plate move your plate so your needle is dead center in the hole in the plate and then tighten the screws back up and then do a head up and you should be good to go.

Merry Xmas!

[Rod or Sharon]

Christine,

The needle case adjustment is a critical function of the trimmining procedure. When you say "shifting to the left".....and if the needle plate being not centered, as Ron and Tina have elluded to is not the problem, then a question would be. How is the machine trimming? If the machine is trimming ok then, I would lean towards the needle plate being off center, if not, then the needle case may need to be recalibrated.

I am assuming this is an XT?

Rod Springer
Amaya Tech & Trainer

[Gingerboys Embroidery]

I experience the same issue today. All of my needles went out of alignment to the left. I think this may have been caused by running over the allowed number of color sequences. The machine basically froze and and so I shut it off and restarted. Upon restart, the needle case came down and broke off needle #1. I ended up recalibrating all of the needles to center.

Unfortunately, now I am experiencing a high number of thread breaks and am still researching why. One idea I have is that my presser foot adjustment is all wrong. In reading a post in the :How Do I..." section, it says that for thin materials the presser foot should be all the way down and then for hats, up 1 or 2. This is opposite of the cap training materials which says that the presser foot should be all the way down for hats.

Could I have set the machine out of some sort of alignment by running with the presser foot all the way dwon while doing hats? Seems this all started happening when I first did that.

Any help is much appreciated.

[Rod or Sharon]

Dan,

Always makes me nervous when I hear someone say that they "recalibrated" their needlecase. This is one of the critical functions of the machine and learning how to do this and why it is important that it be done very carefully and accurately is something that the techs are taught during our training. Once it has been done, then other things such as hook timing, etc, must also be adjusted to these new settings....

Because the needlecase calibration is so closely related to threadfeed, hook timing and proper trimming procedures on the XT, and the fact that you are now having thread breakage, I have to ask the questions ...How did you go about recalibrating your needlecase? How is the trimming on this machine?

I kind of doubt that having the presser foot down all the way for caps, had much to do with the breakage you are experiencing only because of the "recalibrating" statement in your post. But, but, but......Having the foot too low may result in hammering the material and possibly damaging the material by leaving a foot print. There is also a possibility that the presser foot spring could be fatigued and damaged over time by the constant battering that is taking place. If the spring is broken or weak, then the presser foot cannot do a proper job of holding the material down and Yes....this would then result in excess thread breakage taking place....

Rod Springer
Amaya Tech & Trainer

[Gingerboys Embroidery]

Thanks Rod. Obviously I may have more problems than I can explain in this email, but let me tell you where I am now...

Looking back, there seemed to be some oncoming symptoms that we were in for problems. We started to have a very high thread break occurence. On stock Dakota designs of 5000 stitches we would have 5 or more. Things atarted to get noisy, as if the needles were hitting metal during the sew. Then we had the color sequence overrun that I referenced. This threw and error but let me continue. It started sewing out the design only using a single color (needle 15) even though the design included colr changes. When I noticed that, I stopped the sew and then, as I said, the XT basically froze. Once I rebooted, the needle broke on the start up sequence.

I used the Maintenance tab, moved the needle to Bottom Center to see where I was and then raised the needle and jogged (trace and arrow) to center the needle. I did this for each needle. All needles were off center (to the left) by generally (or possibly exactly) the same amount. I couldn't find a way to move the entire case about 1/8" to the right.

After doing this, we re-sewed the same design that we had broken the needles on and experienced 8-10 thread breaks.

Then when I read about the presser foot, I decided to give this a shot. I used the same design on a fleece pull over. I lowered the presser foot all the way and then up to clicks. This worked fine except for 1 thread break.

I would love to know:
1) why would the entire case shift to the left?
2) is there something I should have done instead of lining up each needle on center?
3) what is the proper presser foot adjustment for light material (let's say a t-shirt) and where can I find this info?

As for trimming, not sure we're experiencing problems here. What are the signs of trimming issues?

Rod, I truly appreciate your help.

Thanks
Dan

[Juli in Kona]

If you were having trimming problems, you would not be asking the question!!! Trimming problem is where you curse, pull your hair out by the roots, snarl at anyone who comes close, and the temptation to throw the machine through your plate glass window is nearly overpowering. Have I described that correctly? If you are not experiencing any of the above, then you do not have trimming problems.

Merry Christmas everyone from sunny Kona where we are having a spectacularly beautiful Hawaiian Day. But I think of you poor slobs under 3 ft of snow. At least you have a White Christmas.

[Rod or Sharon]

Dan,

Using the "Trace---Arrows" what did you use to start centering the needles to? Calibrating the needle case is done by starting at the # 1 needle position and a great amount of care is taken to make sure this needle disects the EXACT center of the bobbin spindle shaft with the needle plate off. After this is acomplished, the needle plate is replaced and centered precisly to a needle. Then all other needles may be centered to the needle plate hole one at a time.....

Then Hook timing may need to be re-adjusted as well as the retaining support finger clearance gap......

As far as what should have been tried first...well...pprobably Melco tech support....they probably would have directed you to try clicking on "Set Table" in Maintenance, Calibration in OS.....and then went from there.

That wasn't trying to be facisious...it's just that when we start messing around with the needle case placement/adjustments, they are so closely intertwined with so many of the other timing areas of the machine...ya just gotta be careful where you tread....ya'all can get snake bit...and get into the "Juli" mode....

Cruise, smooze, lets all go see Juli throw her XT through her plate glass window....must be one tuff lady!!!!

Rod Springer
Amaya Tech & Trainer

[Rod or Sharon]

Dan,
Oh yea....presser foot adjustment. The job of the presser foot is to hold the material down until the needle breaks free on it's initial up-stroke.

The only other thing to be aware of when setting presser foot heigth is the type of material you are sewing on. If it is leather, suede, velour, velvet, etc...and if the presser foot is leaving a footprint from battering the material, then raise it a notch or so and slow down the machine a bit.

For most materials that you will be sewing on, including caps (XT ONLY) all the way down and up two clicks is the norm. Running too high of a speed on too thick of a material with the presser foot too low may even result in cutting of the material from the battering taking place.

Sweatshirts or anything with loft to it, needs to be "Compressed" by the presser foot, not just touching the top of it. Think of taking the material between your thumb and forefinger and squeezing all of the air out of it...same thing with the presser foot....

Just remember the job of the presser foot is to HOLD that material DOWN until the needle breaks free from the material on the upstroke. If the material is allowed to lift, called "flagging", then thread breakage and fraying is a sure result.

Rod Springer
Amaya Tech & Trainer

[Gingerboys Embroidery]

Rod,
Thanks for your explanation. I had thought of calling support and read a lot about getting and setting the table thinking that also would have fixed this. I guess I am venturing where the novice really shouldn't go...

In all of the things I read, I didn't pick up on the fact that the needle was actually being center on the bobbin spindle shaft, but rather the needle plate hole, so that is what I centered it on.

My final questions on this topic are:
1) what in the heck happened to cause this in the first place
2) any advice as to what to do now?

I seem to be operational, but don't want to take for granted that I may have some future issues that are caused by this....

I appreciate the help, especially over the holidays....

[Rod or Sharon]

Dan,

Something to try, would be to run the Amtrim and the Ampass test designs. To do this, hoop up 3 layers of middle weight cut-a-way backing. Do not use tear-a-way backing for these tests. Use a 44cm X 30cm jacketback hoop for this as I sew both Amtrim and Ampass on the one hoop setup. Hoop the backing drum tight...no floppiness allowed....

In OS, go into the design folder, go into C drive, Program Files, Melco Embroidery Systems, Amaya, Test Designs and select Amtrim to sew first.

Set your presser foot all the way down and up one click.

In "Settings", "Threadfeed", click on "Restore Defaults".....I want you to do this one, just because we need to know where "Column Feed", "Run/Fill" and "Min Auto Lower Limit", are really at in case they have been adjusted. Also check to see that bobbin detect, all thread protection and hoop detection is enabled.

Carefully feel the backside tips of all the needles for burrs. Replace any needles with even a hint of a burr.

It would be nice to know that the red pinch rollers and the inner thread feed rollers are well lubricated. Don't wait for the timers to tell you to do this. Make sure that they are.

It would also be nice to know that the "Takeup Lever Cam Disk" is well lubricated....In "Settings" "Timers" , go though the 10 million lubrication step procedure to see how this is done.....again I say, if you are waiting for the timers to tell you it is time to do all of these things, depending on the environments these machines live in, it is probably way too long. In most cases, it is.

Oil the rotary hook every morning before you start and every 4 hours if running hard.

Put a few extra drops of oil in the reciprocator slot....10 or so...

Check your bobbin tension and make sure the leaf spring on the case has no lint build-up under it on the bobbin case. Tension should be just a bit on the tight side of a spider crawl. You should have to drop and tug to get it to give a couple of inches or so.

Set Color Sequence for just 16 colors, starting with 1, then 2,3,4,5,6 and so on....it will color wrap by itself from then on.

Run at 1200 spm.

If all of these things are not done, then you cannot establish a clear baseline from which to be able to diagnoise thread break problems from and you will be wasting your time.

Document how many failures, what they are and what needle(s) appear to be giving you the problems. This test design is for testing the Trimmers.

Do this same thing now, only use the Ampass test design.

If both of these test designs run well w/o excessive thread breaks and/or trimming problems, then the first place I would go for would be design issues, digitizing vs machine settings, etc....

Sorry to be so wordy...guess I was just in a talk-a-tive mood.

Rod Springer
amaya Tech & Trainer

[DaemonLofman]

real old thread but just wanted to say thank you to Gingerboys Embroidery
i had the same problem and that helped me fix alot of thread breaking issues i just had on my amaya

cheers daemon