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Old 04-08-2012, 06:30 PM
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J Miller
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 8,091
Default Now that the Greyhound is fixed ......

......... what do I make with it?

Background story. Some of you have read this before in another thread I didn't bookmark, so I give the abbreviated story.

A long time ago a lonely little Greyhound sewing machine in a bent wood case was acquired and brought home. Nobody did anything with the poor lonely little machine until about September of last year.
I decided to rewire the wall cord and foot controller so it would run. The wires were horrible.
Somehow even with the help of wiring diagrams from several helpful people my first attempt ended up with a huge ball of sparks from the foot controller as it shorted out. I had gotten the wires in the wrong places and the little wire wrapped around the carbon pile burned out.
After that I figured out how I made my mistake and tried again. All I had was an electronic foot controller with a machine plug that didn't match any machine we had.
I whacked the machine end off and wired it into the original plug. Worked good but just wasn't right. I mean come on now. A 1920s machine with a plastic electronic foot controller. Like I said it worked.

A couple weeks ago I was standing in my work area and noticed the old controller just sitting there. I popped it open and looked it over. Nothing wrong but the little wire that was burned through. I decided to try an experiment. I undid the wire from it's too connections and re-wrapped it around the carbon pile. In doing that I figure it lost about 1.5 wraps. It was worth a try at any rate. So I put a temporary cord on it and used my DVOM to test it. Worked good. As I pushed down and released the pedal the meter reading moved up and down and so I figured it would be useable.
I'm not sure if that reduction in wire would make it run faster or slower, but it was worth a try.

Tonight I hard wired a new cord into the old controller and then wired it into the plug.
Plugged it in and ....... it worked!!!! Yayy.

So now I have to find something to make with it. Just to say I have. We've had it at least 12 years and other than playing with and working on it we've done nothing with it.

Joe
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