It’s been another fantastic sewing marathon for me but my machine has certainly seen some
fiber.
It’s time to get it all cleaned out.
And I thought what a great way to present to all of you good troubleshooting knowledge
and maintenance knowledge on drop in bobbin machines.
Let’s get started.
So as you can see nice and close here I’ve got a bit of mess inside of my machine.
Now of course you know I’m goofing off a little bit.
But I have literally taken my machine apart before and especially sergers and seen this
kind of mess.
There’s a few major things that will happen especially with drop in bobbin machines.
And the first one is too much fuzz down in your stitch plate area, your feed dog area,
your bobbin area.
So one of the things I do is I always remove my stitch plate.
And I’m going to caution you right now you should always do this with the power off on
your sewing machine.
But today I’ve got the power on on my machine because I’m using the lighting so you can
see better a little bit.
So power off on the machine and of course you will have your needle out of your sewing
machine.
But I need the needle to point out some of the things for timing issues so I’m doing
a few things a little different than I want you to do.
So here we are down in the drop in bobbin area.
And the first thing I do is I don’t use a can of spray air to clean this out.
I use my hands and I remove as much of the fuzz from the bobbin area as possible.
I get all of that out of the way first.
Then what I want to do is I want to take my bobbin itself out.
And if you’ve never done this your instruction manual will show you not only how to remove
the stitch plate and any extra cover plates but it will also talk about this drop in bobbin
itself.
So this black drop in bobbin piece, we’re going to maintenance and talk about putting
it back in in a few minutes.
The first thing I do is I remove it and I just take my brush and start cleaning off
all of the little areas.
Now with a drop in bobbin, a lot of times there’s going to be a piece of velcro fuzz
or wool or something along that area.
That helps our threads glide.
So not all of this is fuzz that needs to be removed.
So don’t chip away at that with an old butter knife or something.
I also clean this all the way out and at this moment let’s talk about a couple of troubleshooting
things.
So I’m going to do maintenance and troubleshooting hand in hand today.
One of the things that happens often is you get a thread jam with a drop in bobbin machine.
The drop in bobbin itself can keep spinning as the machine is jamming up.
And you’ll actually take your needle and you’ll pierce with the needle.
Pierce, pierce, pierce with your sewing needle through there.
That will start to cause some erratic looking stitches in your straight stitch.
You’ll see an occasional weird, funky stitch on the back and things.
A lot of times that’s because that little barb that was formed as the needle pierced
through that bobbin case is catching on the threads.
The other thing is is this bottom lip rides inside on the back of what we call the track
or the race, the bobbin area.
And if there are piercings through there it can float and wobble and make a bunch more
noise and just become less accurate.
So if you’ve struck your bobbin case with a needle you can take your thumbnail a lot
of times and like push that plastic back into place.
And if it works you’ve fixed it.
And if not we need to get you out there and we need to replace that bobbin case.
So that’s one of the troubleshooting things that happens with drop in bobbins often.
Now that I’ve got that bobbin case out of the way I’m going to come in here with a
brush and I’m going to continue to brush away the fiber and the lint out of here.
Now the stuff that you’re seeing now is real fuzz.
This is not prop fuzz from the props department.
This is the real stuff coming out.
And the place that we get a lot of fuzz that builds up is in our feed dogs, right in here.
Now whether that’s drop in bobbin or regular bobbin machines cleaning out your feed dogs
makes a great help especially if your stitch length is not real regular.
It means your feed is not going real well.
. So I’m going to go at here and I’m actually going aways.
I dust before I do any oiling.
And I’m dusting through here and I’m dusting through here.
And I want to point out a couple more things, ok?
So come in real close here and first of all this metal ring is a magnet as a matter of
fact.
And that magnet will help you with the metal portion of that drop in bobbin case.
It helps it sit in here properly, which I will tell you how to set it in here properly
in a second because I’m not doing it right.
Oops.
What I’m trying to point out is how that metal holds it in there securely.
So if you get too much fuzz between that magnet, and that’s the first place to look if the
fuzz builds up, you’re going to cause that magnet to break its contact.
And it’s not going to be able to hang onto that metal base of the bobbin case.
And that helps it not float around.
This magnet, in a lot of machines, it will just pop out as well.
So be careful while you’re dusting in here that you don’t knock your magnet out of
place.
This machine does not have a wick right here, although a lot of drop in bobbin machines
I meet will have a wick right in here.
You will see a square cutaway and it looks like fuzz or lint.
But it’s not, it’s a little wick that you would put a couple of little drops of
oil on there about every 30 days.
Ok, I see one more little piece of fuzz I want to get out of here before I start talking
about putting it all back together.
Now there’s a lot of other parts in here you could talk about maintenance but you could
talk about the drop in bobbin today.
Oops.
I just want that one little last piece of fuzz.
Now at this point if you had a can of spray air you could hit it with one or two little
blasts because the cover is open and a lot of that fuzz is out of there.
I still don’t love it.
At home I use a real air compressor because it doesn’t have moisture in it and that’s
why I come through here in an air compressor and blast all of the rest of the little fibers
out of the way.
Now I will often use a drop of oil.
And I’ll either put it right here.
This is the race or this is the lip that the black bobbin case is going to sit on.
So you can either put a drop of oil right there if that’s easy for you.
But the other thing you can always do is you can just flip your bobbin case over and you
can put a drop of oil right here on the underside out on that edge.
And then as this seats back into the machine that drop of oil is going to be there.
Some manufacturers do not want you to oil your machine.
This is something I do often and these bobbin cases, yes they are plastic but they’re
also fairly inexpensive.
And I think that’s where the debate lies is whether the oil will wear it out.
I haven’t seen it be problematic yet.
Ok now this is really important.
As we come in here this opening, the upper edge of the bobbin case is going to line up
square to these feed dogs.
So I’m going to come in here and try to slip it in and I’m going to point out the
other two things I’m looking for.
Ok that went in nice and smooth.
That’s just how I wanted it to fit like that.
Now you can see along this edge, it is now seated perfectly within the race.
And then most drop in bobbin machines will have one piece right here that is called the
position finger.
It’s a little spring that allows for our thread to come through here.
So you want to make sure that spring is still activatable.
So that would be another troubleshooting thing.
If your threads are getting stuck as they come through make sure there’s not something
caught on here.
As well as make sure this nub is on something.
A lot of times they will get stuck over here.
This machine has a white mark to match up those two areas.
And then a lot of times on the back side of the bobbin of the covers there will another
tab that will actually help hold in all of the working parts.
So all of this may not be completely secure until we have the rest of our stitch plate
down, ok?
So I just want to make sure that’s lined up.
It’s nice and square.
And we want to make sure we do not pierce through that with a needle.
I would always put in a fresh needle when I’m doing maintenance.
Of course you know I love my micro techs sharps needles.
They work fantastically, right?
And then there’s one last thing I want to point out, really important when it comes
to the screws within the needle plate itself.
These screws are not real easily found at the hardware store.
And a lot of times the screws are either going to have on this head, it’s going to have
this bevel, like this triangle angle to it.
Or this one has an additional little lip.
So when you start to put your stitch plates back on the machine what you’re going to
do is you’re going to slightly drop these into place.
And you’re just going to finger tighten them first.
The way the head of the screws is set up it helps bring that stitch plate right in so
that it winds up with your feed dogs.
Now as I bring it over to the machine to show you that I’m going to turn the lights off
on the machine because this machine has got a safety feature on it that’s going to start
beeping and making all kinds of noise.
Ok, so I’m just going to kill the lights but now you’ve been able to see the bobbin
case.
Now as I bring this around, ok what I’m trying to say is I want to make sure this
lines up with the feed dogs.
And then I bring these screws in.
And I finger tighten them to make sure they go in correctly.
If it takes any force that means that your threads are not lining up correctly.
And if you’re looking around in your tool kit that came with your machine you might
be looking for something that looks like this as a screwdriver but funny enough a lot of
the new machines have this little wonderful tool like here.
It’s a little bit larger than a quarter and that part down there is a screwdriver.
So you can use that to come in here like yay and tighten that up.
And now that that’s on I can turn the light back on on my machine because I put the screw
in to keep the beep from happening, right?
And I want to point out lastly is these screws are still sitting in here pretty nice and
loose and I put them both down at the same time to make sure that the feed dogs are in
line with the stitch plate.
And I wish I had two little fingers that fit in here but I don’t.
Sometimes you can come out here with a little larger screwdriver.
Oop, I’m going to use this one.
It always seems so much easier when you’re all not watching me.
That’s alright, I love the fact that you’re watching me out there because if you weren’t
watching me I wouldn’t get to do this kind of stuff.
There we go, ok.
So now that one is secure.
I’m going to come back over here and I’m going to re-secure that one.
Everything is fantastic.
And then the last thing I would go ahead and do is lock in the rest of my stitch plate.
Like I said, I’m going to put in a fresh needle.
And this machine should be ready to rock and roll for another good 30 to 60 days worth
of sewing.
Except for that needle.
A fresh needle at the beginning of every project will make your sewing as awesome as it always
is, right here at Man Sewing.