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-   -   Vintage Japanese 'Badged' Zig Zag and Straight Sew Sewing Machines (https://www.quiltingboard.com/vintage-antique-machine-enthusiasts-f22/vintage-japanese-badged-zig-zag-straight-sew-sewing-machines-t207877.html)

Gymnast2 08-08-2020 07:21 AM

Prinzess Freiarm Automatik
 

Originally Posted by OurWorkbench (Post 8408397)
I couldn't find any free ones, but

Thank you for your help OurWorkbench.

I think, that very few machine types got this combination:

Zigzag
Free arm
Needle threaded from side

A guy on another forum claimed, that his Kenmore got it. Now later he admit, that the needle is threaded from front. I did found drawings here: Sears spare parts site on Kenmore 158.19130 - https://www.searspartsdirect.com/mod...6BpGtIWU11VHdk
Unfortunately the drawings state, that needle is treaded from front. Therefore this manual do not interest me anymore.

However I found a Princess machine here, and it have been sold in Germany as "Prinzess Freiarm Automatik". The site claims, that it was manufactured in Japan. Most likely the machine was sold to other parts of the world too. You see more pictures of the machine here, and that the hook pass right of needle:

Naehmaschinenverzeichnis with Princess machines

You need to go to the website to look for the pictures, because they are copyrighted. I have tried to look for other pictures of it via Google, but I did not succeed. Have you seen this machine before?

Necchi did make some free-arm machines like that. This is a video, that show this mechanics:
Video of Necchi Supernova free arm mechanics

OurWorkbench 08-08-2020 05:53 PM


Originally Posted by Gymnast2 (Post 8408478)
Thank you for your help OurWorkbench.

I think, that very few machine types got this combination:

Zigzag
Free arm
Needle threaded from side ...

I'm glad whoever thought it threaded from the side with a front loading bobbin got it figured out.

Granted, there may be very few of them that have that needle orientation. You have to look at the bobbin location, Indeed, the front loading would have the needle orientation from front to back. I have a few Necchi free arm machines, but they all have the front loading bobbin.

If you note the location of the bobbin on the pictures of the machines (Necchi & Princess) that you linked to they both have end loading bobbins and would be threaded from the side.

Janey - Neat people never make the exciting discoveries I do.

JoeJr 08-10-2020 12:44 PM

4 Attachment(s)
Barn find update. I posted a picture of this machine a few weeks ago. The inside of the machine was worse than the outside, I won't say what I sprayed all over the inside to make some of the dirt and dried crud go away. It's a sad commentary on my observational abilities that it was on the workbench at least 3 days before I even noticed that the thread take up arm was broken off... The fix: a cotter pin wired to what was left of the arm and then covered with JB Weld, which I then had to sand down so it could move inside the cover. The existing part is actually riveted to the next part inside, plus I figured there is not a replacement arm anywhere in the world. The needle position adjustment lever was bent such that the needle floated around when cycling the machine, fortunately I was able to get it out and bent back. The thread tension release lever which operates off the presser foot lift lever was bent inside also; I could see how the needle position lever could be bent, but not this.

..it sews stitches, including zig zag. I'm not quite sure how to operate the pattern selector, there's a "shift" indicator on the right end of the stitch width adjuster, I tried it a little bit and it appeared that it was making the indicated pattern, but it takes a lot of thread which I didn't have.

The sticker says "McGuire Automatic" but there are two screws on the front holding nothing, which I assume held the original badge which McGuire removed.

Now that I know it sews I will have to clean it up some more and get it in a case or a table.

Celeste 08-17-2020 01:49 AM

JoeJr. I just wanted to share my admiration to you for what you just did; it’s amazing to me!

QuiltMom2 08-17-2020 04:02 AM

Makes you wonder what on earth happened to have the machine get so beat up!

Christyg 05-16-2021 04:04 PM

Japanese badged sewing machine skipping stitches
 
I'm new to this forum. Thank for accepting me. I have a Japanese badged machine with a "keystone" badge. It's a clean machine but the bobbin winder has issues. I did finally get it to wind a bobbin. It is skipping stitches. I have cleaned everything, found a vintage class15 bobbin, and put a new universal needle in. It purrs like a kitten and will zigzag without skipping but skips on the straight. Any help would be appreciated. I tried uploading some pictures but they failed.

JoeJr 05-17-2021 07:43 AM

4 Attachment(s)
Welcome to the Board!

I recently finished cleaning up the ZZ machine in the picture, and was having stitch problems although a little different from yours. Someone prior to me had removed the needle stop screw in the needle bar (I think to cheat the needle height a little bit trying to solve the stitch problem).

Check the needle height, meaning make sure there’s no crud up in the slot for the needle and that the needle makes it all the way up to the stop;

That fixed my problem on straight stitches, but not running ZZ. Based on someone telling me once that on ZZ the timing has to be backed off a little I started looking for how to adjust the timing. I wasn’t really seeing anything obvious so I started loosening screws, beginning with the one circled in the second picture. This did not allow me to adjust timing but what it did do was allow the shaft and bobbin case housing ( single arrow) to shift back and forth (double pointed arrow), and to rotate, as noted in the third picture. This did not allow the hook itself to be adjusted.

Having this screw loose (which I may have in general) most importantly allowed shifting of the entire bobbin case housing and hook distance relative to the needle.

Once I figured this out I had to adjust two things:

1. Position of the bobbin case housing relative to the feed dogs (top marks in picture 3). I didn’t notice the positioning of this when I first loosened the screw in question, so I had to look at another machine to get an idea of where the housing should be positioned relative to the openings in the feed dogs for the needle to come through.

2. Hook distance from needle; Picture 4 shows the hook/needle (on a non ZZ machine) distance, the hook has to come very, very close to the needle, as in the picture. This took a little bit of fiddling because I was adjusting this distance as well the position described in #1 at the same time and then trying to get the screw tightened when I thought I had it. Once I had the hook where it needed to be the machine sewed well, both straight and ZZ (although I had to back off the upper tension to get the ZZ stitches looking nice, which hasn’t been an issue on other ZZ machines).

I believe with the machine in my picture someone loosened this screw and the hook was too far away from the needle, or it came from the factory that way, such that it couldn’t properly pick up the thread loop on the upstroke, and was thus skipping stitches both straight (when initially tested) and ZZ.

Take away for you: check the hook distance from the needle, both in straight stitch and ZZ, and if it’s too much consider adjusting it.

Christyg 05-19-2021 05:35 PM


Originally Posted by JoeJr (Post 8484529)
Welcome to the Board!

I recently finished cleaning up the ZZ machine in the picture, and was having stitch problems although a little different from yours. Someone prior to me had removed the needle stop screw in the needle bar (I think to cheat the needle height a little bit trying to solve the stitch problem).

Check the needle height, meaning make sure there’s no crud up in the slot for the needle and that the needle makes it all the way up to the stop;

That fixed my problem on straight stitches, but not running ZZ. Based on someone telling me once that on ZZ the timing has to be backed off a little I started looking for how to adjust the timing. I wasn’t really seeing anything obvious so I started loosening screws, beginning with the one circled in the second picture. This did not allow me to adjust timing but what it did do was allow the shaft and bobbin case housing ( single arrow) to shift back and forth (double pointed arrow), and to rotate, as noted in the third picture. This did not allow the hook itself to be adjusted.

Having this screw loose (which I may have in general) most importantly allowed shifting of the entire bobbin case housing and hook distance relative to the needle.

Once I figured this out I had to adjust two things:

1. Position of the bobbin case housing relative to the feed dogs (top marks in picture 3). I didn’t notice the positioning of this when I first loosened the screw in question, so I had to look at another machine to get an idea of where the housing should be positioned relative to the openings in the feed dogs for the needle to come through.

2. Hook distance from needle; Picture 4 shows the hook/needle (on a non ZZ machine) distance, the hook has to come very, very close to the needle, as in the picture. This took a little bit of fiddling because I was adjusting this distance as well the position described in #1 at the same time and then trying to get the screw tightened when I thought I had it. Once I had the hook where it needed to be the machine sewed well, both straight and ZZ (although I had to back off the upper tension to get the ZZ stitches looking nice, which hasn’t been an issue on other ZZ machines).

I believe with the machine in my picture someone loosened this screw and the hook was too far away from the needle, or it came from the factory that way, such that it couldn’t properly pick up the thread loop on the upstroke, and was thus skipping stitches both straight (when initially tested) and ZZ.

Take away for you: check the hook distance from the needle, both in straight stitch and ZZ, and if it’s too much consider adjusting it.


Ok I will try that. I watched a few youTube videos to help me understand. thanks for the help.

OurWorkbench 05-20-2021 05:45 PM


Originally Posted by Christyg (Post 8484420)
.... I did finally get it to wind a bobbin. It is skipping stitches. ... will zigzag without skipping but skips on the straight. Any help would be appreciated. I tried uploading some pictures but they failed.

I was off on one of my bunny trails and thought of you when I happened across this web page - https://vintagesewingmachinesblog.wo...heir-remedies/
Joe gave you a lot of good info. I'm a little more cautious (sometimes, LOL) and try other things first.
When I first read your post, my thought that it just might that since you had trouble winding the bobbin that it may not be evenly wound and manifests the skipped stitches at the places the bobbin is uneven. Another thought I had was that if I remember correctly the zigzag works better with the tension is set differently than straight stitching. When I was skimming over the above link, I also noticed the two needle plates- one for straight stitching and one for zigzag. There is a thread here recently about how much better a machine does straight stitching while using a straight stitch plate.

As for posting pictures, my response is:
We like pictures. In order to post pictures on Quilting Board, you will probably need to reduce or compress the picture to a file size that is smaller than 2MB. How to post images can be found at https://www.quiltingboard.com/attach...020-01-17-.pdf
Don't forget to scroll over to the far right to find and click on the "Upload" button.

I have found that only the big red "Reply" button or "Quote" work to give me the paper clip icon to work for adding pictures.
https://www.quiltingboard.com/attach...p-location.jpg

Some additional info regarding reducing images at post #4 and images for the scroll and upload button can be found at #5 of https://www.quiltingboard.com/main-f...d-t312607.html

Janey - Neat people never make the exciting discoveries I do.
Not affiliated with off-site link(s)

Christyg 05-24-2021 05:37 PM

Japanese badged sewing machine skipping stitches
 
2 Attachment(s)
[QUOTE=OurWorkbench;8485286]I was off on one of my bunny trails and thought of you when I happened across this web page - https://vintagesewingmachinesblog.wo...heir-remedies/
Joe gave you a lot of good info. I'm a little more cautious (sometimes, LOL) and try other things first.
Janey - Neat people never make the exciting discoveries I do.
Not affiliated wit

Thank you for all the good links. I studied them and was helped a lot. In the end I got brave and took apart the tension unit and found that it was put together incorrectly. I cleaned and put it back together correctly and it helped a lot with the tension issues but it was still skipping stitches. At that point I decided to take Joe's advise and check the timing. After watching several YouTube videos and rereading Joe's comments I could see that timing was off. On the underside of the machine I loosened adjustment screws in three places. I was then able to adjust the distance between the needle and the hook, which was too wide. I also then adjusted the height ratio between the needle in the lowest position and the hook. It took adjusting a couple of times but it worked and the machine no longer skips stitches.
I uploaded a pic of the stitching before and after. The before are the rows on the left and the three rows on the right are the after.
Thanks everyone for your time and help. I will move on to the bobbin winder issues but that is for another day!


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