2024 Deliveries & Stash Acquisition

[Serinde]

Good service with no quibbles is vanishingly rare. They are to be congratulated.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Yes indeed, cherish them!

[Steam.Jo]

Bad girl, bad girl

Its not a cross stitch kit, so does a fifth sewing machine count as being bad Its to go with the Little Grace II Quilting frame that followed me home on Thursday and I am claiming it is a Christmas Present So I am not allowed to show anyone

I have one or possibly two sewing machines that I really should give away

Jo

[Mabel Figworthy]

how many sewing machines does a girl need
On the other hand, I;m sure you will get a lot of enjoyment from it, and do useful stuff with it

[Steam.Jo]

how many sewing machines does a girl need

You need a nice general sewing machine for doing normal stuff. Then you need a lightweight portable machine if you want to go off and socialise while sewing. An overlocker is needed for finishing edges. If quilting you need a substantial straight stitching long arm machine. Then a new fangle electronics computer controlled embroidery machine is tempting but not necessary if you want to do fancy stuff.

My £5 basic 30 year old Janome New Home I brought 20 years ago does not have the feel of my other machines but I have been warned that as we get older then you might not want to be lifting a 14Kg machine onto the table to do a quick repair.

Jo

[Serinde]

Best excuse I've heard in quite a while!

[richardandtracy]

... I have been warned that as we get older then you might not want to be lifting a 14Kg machine onto the table to do a quick repair.

Jo

Agreed. All the more reason to have it set up in its own space all the time, surely?

Regards,

Richard

[Steam.Jo]

This is my new quilting frame:



Its a Little Grace II quilting frame and is currently set up for doing king sized quilts. It is nearly 10" narrower front to back as the previous I I borrowed and I feel I have got my room back.

The previous owner up graded to a smaller frame and decided to get rid of this one. I suspect this was not the whole truth but then he did not know he was selling it to someone with a machine shop who was more than capable of sorting it out.

I was told the carriage was a bit stiff so his husband had tried greasing the bearings in the wheels - bad move bearings are sealed for life and do not need greasing and if you really had a need it should have been a thin oil not LM grease As that failed the next move was to replace the nice steel wheels with plastic ones which were a bit wide to fit the tracks and the whole carriage wobbled a bit, not something you want while trying to quilt smoothly.

Since then I have turned up 8 new wheels in Aluminium put some new SEALED for LIFE bearings in them and mounted it back on the tracks. It now has a lovely movement



On the handle you can see a little remote controller this I hope is the correct one for my new toy which arrives Wednesday

Jo

[Mabel Figworthy]

That is one impressive machine

[Serinde]

I'll second that!

[richardandtracy]

Looks, erm, very industrial. And huge.
And, to be honest I can't help seeing various modifications with ball leadscrews, NEMA stepper motors and a cnc 2 or 2.5 axis controller. However, I suspect the fun from that machine would be limited to building it, whereas the fun to be had from the frame photographed is from using it.

I do hope you enjoy it.

Regards,

Richard

[Steam.Jo]

Yes there are CNC professional Quilting machines but they are expensive. If you look at the "true" long arm sewing machines you will find domestic/hobby ones go up to £15K.

While I "cheat" with DROs on my machine tools I have no interest in CNC. The 3D printer was boring enough

Jo

[Serinde]

(did anyone apart from those two understand any of that? )

[Mabel Figworthy]

(we'll leave them to their technical chat I think....)

[Steam.Jo]

CNC = Computer Numerical Control. If you add a disc to a rotating shaft with say holes or magnetic strips, whose rotated angle can be counted by electronics then a computer can count the "angles" as it goes round and the number of times the shaft has gone round. Then if the shaft has a thread like a metric thread with one thread every 1mm then the computer can use the information to accurately turn the shaft to move what ever it is attached to very accurately.

If you have a posh embroidery capability on your sewing machine it is using this principle to do the embroidery.

Its all well and good the computer knowing how far it has moved something but us humans would also like to know where it has gone. This is where Digital Read Outs (DROs) come in, these display the movements to us mere mortals on a display.

Jo

[Serinde]

I am a bit more knowledgeable today.

[Mabel Figworthy]

A very clear explanation, thank you!

[richardandtracy]

I have 3 discreet DRO's I need to fit to my mini-mill. On my lathe I've stuck with the dials it was provided with. And.. they are keyed to the leadscrews, so no 'setting the zero' on the dial. I hadn't realized how much of a timesaver it is until I got the separate mill (my lathe is a Warco version of the Clarke CL500M with a hopeless milling head attached), think I'll be using Guy Lusard's rubber-draulics idea to create a resettable detent on the zero eventually. When I get time. If I get time.
Sorry end of aside.

I can see how the frame can take a lot of the risk of stretching out of the sewing while quilting. Really good idea.

Regards,

Richard

[Steam.Jo]

In the meantime you could cheat and use ARO's: If you have a magnetic stand and a Dial Gauge you can "mount it" on the bed of the lathe resting the plunger on the saddle. Then on the Analogue dial you can read off the accurate measurement. I still use this technique on my Cowells

While many people I know think CAD (Computer Aided Design) is the be all and end all (I also have this) I am a believer in PAD (Pencil (or Pen) Aided Design).


New sewing machine is about 1 hour away, I am not good at waiting for something to arrive

Jo

[richardandtracy]

Luckily I don't usually have to work to a precision of better than 0.02mm (0.7 thou), so the dials are OK. I tend to work in turns & segments, and have written my aide programs to give me turns & segments with a value I can type in for the start segment. Usually works well enough, and with a 2.5mm pitch on the leadscrew.

Regards,

Richard