This thing is older then me about 50 years old.. anyways I got in a discussion about the foot pedal switch, she says it's variable speed I say it's not..
Some people online say it's variable.. but the thing is I opened the pedal up last night and you can clearly see that half the travel it's not doing anything until the switch contacts this metal switch, being this old I've never seen a switch this old.. but maybe something broke on it?
I ended up replacing the cord end last night to see if it ran or not, I will get a video up to help show what I mean
I remember my mom had an old Singer sewing machine back in the 60's and it was indeed variable speed controlled by the pedal. That's not to say that some cheaper models may have simply used a footswitch instead of a pot.
I grew up around sewing machines as both my mother and grandmother loved sewing. Every machine I have seen or worked on were variable speed including the really old ones (Singers older than yours included).
Given the technology of the time I think it's a variable resistor in series with the motor. I remember the singers working but I don't remember ever taking one apart.
The inside of the foot controller was not how I expected but given 1968 I guess it's about right.
I think my above video shows that it has a huge dead space between a half press to fully pressing it down.. that's the part I don't understand hopefully google will have something about that.
It is fully oiled so it no longer slows down when doing zigzag stitches.. I'm going to be getting my mom a Brother SE400 for her birthday so this is just a fun little thing to work on now.
Keep in mind that typically you has to give it more than you wanted to get it going and then back off to the slower speed. Just a phenomena of the motor control.
It should but from what I can see inside the ceramic part are carbon discs which when fully pressing the switch disengages the carbon discs so it can run full speed.
It should but from what I can see inside the ceramic part are carbon discs which when fully pressing the switch disengages the carbon discs so it can run full speed.
Probably the discs have disintegrated over the years so they no longer work.
They would compress with the pedal giving variable speed, then the switch you see would allow full speed.
I was thinking about that since the only place I know of that had carbon discs were battery load testers.. So I guess in other words it would be impossible for it to work besides changing it out.
Well I had no problems doing patches on my jeans last night the control is still a little crazy because it's a tiny switch vs the larger pads I'm used to.
I've seen a few types, foot and knee switches (those have a bar coming down from the machine itself or fix to the table) There's just switches, there's 3 speed switches which are wiped contacts with 3 big wirewound resistors, and the fully variable, was a huge rheostat, which probably worked out about "15 speed" practically.
I have one somewhere, I picked up for running a drill through.
Yeah it's not bad pretty basic but I'm going to give my mom a new machine for her birthday, she got spoiled with the new machines.
Speaking of that the belt snapped on me 2 days ago (original belt) but I want to replace the foot controller pedal with something newer, I'm not sure what you call those wire clamps? Are they wire compressors? They are white with a little metal band inside that you crimp.