Originally Posted by blisterful
I had to have my timing set on my Bernina three weeks ago. Yesterday timing went out again and back to dealer I went! Dealer/serviceman just called me and said it was "consumer error" and I must have done something wrong . (I was doing a simple zigzag stitch and didn't break a needle).
I explained to him that the thread/fabric did get caught down in needle hole and perhaps that was what instigated the problem. (After I removed the bunched up thread, I was able to continue sewing, everything seems fine. It seems to me that I could have pulled machine out of alignment when I pulled out wad of thread and but he didn't think that would have put machine out of time......hmmmm). Yet, I wonder if Bernina is a real sensitive machine that I will need to baby.
My question is: Has anyone had trouble with Bernina's durability or reliability? I have had several sewing machines in the past many years and never had problems outside the normal issues, tention, etc. Having "out of timing" issues twice in one month is not normal.
Any help will be appreciated. I am quite embarrassed thinking I might be abusing my machine.
You don't have to break a needle to knock the machine out of timing. You can do that a couple of different ways. The most common is sewing over/hitting pins. They don't always break the needle.
The second one is sometimes common to folks who learned to sew 'helping' the machine by pulling it from the back side of the foot while you are sewing. If you 'pull' it from behind you can theoretically get the timing out of alignment, or so I've been told.
If the bobbin case wasn't 'clicked' into the hook I suppose it could have been slipping and may have caused the 'pile up' of thread.
A good rule of thumb when you get a thread nest is to rock the hand wheel back and forth in little increments to see if you can get it to loosen up and work it out that way rather than pulling or forcing it out.
(BTW I call thread nests goobers but when I worked for Pfaff they told me I couldn't do that. Well, I am a GRITS and goobers (peanuts) come out of the ground all tangled up in these little bitty roots and that's what a thread nest looks like to me!) LOL
I've always heard Berninas are great. I'd ask him to give you some 'examples' of the kind of operator errors that could have caused it and see if he can list any or if he's just full of himself.