Would anyone be willing to teach a class on the basics of servicing your sewing machine? Obviously anything major should be left to the professionals, but I’d love to be more confident with my machine and with the DMS machines when inevitably issues pop up while teaching classes.
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Home machines are very hard to service yourself to almost any extent, and it depends on what level of service you’re talking about.
If you’re talking about re-timing or tearing into the mechanical components of the machine, that’s something that almost exclusively has to be done by a sewing repair shop… Usually you have to take it to the dealer of your machines brand.
If we’re talking about how to clear potential common issues (needle shredding thread, bobbin nesting, etc) we could cover that in the 101 class, I think.
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So I guess that means you’re not supposed to open up your machine and de-lint it on your own? >_> Asking for a friend…
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Old home machines and most industrials (minus the computerized ones with auto knife cutters and other stuff) are relatively easy to service and repair, and short of a major mechanical failure, don’t need to be taken in for service, only oiled at specific spots.
Delinting is fine, the moment you start messing with gears or hooks or transfer bars, things get a little hairy.
A friend attempted to use acetone as a degreaser/degunker for his mother’s home machine. He melted/fused a few gears together. The machine was 400ish new? But the repair was going to be more than the machine at the dealer.
I have a latent distrust of home machines and especially home machine dealers, their pricing and repair scheme is borderline predatory. The cost for them to touch a machine is 100 non-refundable, and it goes up from there very fast - plastic gears are very expensive for sewers. And they usually push upgrading to the current equivalent machine.
If I were to throw my industrial out of time, somehow lodge all my internal screws in the machine head transfer port, and disconnect the timing clutch so it reconnect out of time, it would be 100. And I would have to actively attempt to break it.
What about things like cleaning the bobbin race ? If I remember wien doing a lot of polar fleece I
had to clean it daily
Maybe the things we can do to keep them running well and to treent the need for service