Single Needle Abuse

[Mr. Sew & Sew]

Folks - Here's one for the techs out there. I know that the maintenance schedules assume relatively equal usage across the 16 needles even though this never happens in real life. I usually do my maintenance ahead of schedule because I don't want to have to stop at point where it is in the middle of a job or something.

My question is more about a specific needle. I have a job of 150 runs of a single color with about 4500 stitches each. I'm spreading this across my 2 XTs. How often should I 1) oil the needle bar in use, 2) move the thread to a different needle, 3) replace the needle, 4) all the other stuff I might have forgotten, etc.

I have been changing my heavily used threads to a new needle location about every 50,000 stitches but I've never had a single color where I am about to sew over 600K stitches.

Any advice would be helpful.

thanks in advance
Tom

[signman]

I'm not a tech, but we had a needle rod seize up doing just what you are going to do.
Here's what we do now...
1)full maintenance for oiling, 20 drops up in the trough, etc.
2) pull the magnetic panel, and add 4 drops to each needle rod near the bottom (gets extra oil down to the felt pad there)
3) if it's all one color, set up EXTRA roll of same color-maybe 1 on needle 3, 1 on needle 9 or something-NOT 1 & 16-they are on the end of the oiled felt.
4) Every couple of articles, change the thread needle position in your needle selector to the other needle.
Should do the trick-and also, after every 25 or so, a couple extra drops of oil on the rods again on the needle being used AND the rods on either side of it.
What happens is the heat of the one rod running consistently dries out the felt pad-so you need to add more.
The other thing we do-we're not using our amaya a lot but any time we set up more than a couple of new colors, we move the 'basic' colors to new needles at the same time- black, red, white, etc. so they aren't always on the same needle.
Since we started doing this (thanks to Dick Beauregard!) not once have we heard the 'thunkathunkathunka' and then kathump as a needle bar froze up.
Roland

[Mr. Sew & Sew]

Heck Roland, with the amount you post and the help you give use lugs, I will nominate you as an "honorary tech". At least for today. Now back to work.

Tom

[Steve I]

Tom,

If you were to divide the 4 million stitches (suggested maint. for needle bar oiling) equally between the 16 needles you would get 250K stitches per needle. You could oil that particular needle bar more often than that if you felt compelled to do so. You can also over oil your machines. As far as how often you should change the needle, your sew quality and number of thread breaks should be a guide for you there. You cold also load a couple of extra spools of the same color on alternate needle and set them up for backup needles so you won't be bothered with thread breaks and you can spread the work over a couple of different needles.

I sew about 2,000,000 stitches a day with 8 AMAYAs, I stick to the recommended maint. schedule and oil the hook more often. I have never had a problem with needle bars drying out.

Steve
Trinity Embroidery