Motors...

In the Main board, power board and motor removal tutorial, you get to see the main motor used in the Brother PE150. This motor drives the needle mechanism and the spinning outer hook in the base of the machine. There are, however, two more motors in this machine. These two motors control the X/Y movement of the frame holder. These pictures, which are of one of the machines in my spares pile, show the size and location of the X and Y motors, and the gearing they are attached to:

For the record, I've never had one of these motors fail. I expect that's because, all things considered, they don't actually do a great deal.

More soon, no doubt....

D

Shameless advert (part 2)....

Like our page on Facebook. Short and sweet :)

Shameless advert....

... for our business. Feel free to have a browse around and even if you don't want to buy something it might give you some inspiration for your own projects!

 

 

More soon, no doubt....

 

D



Any requests?

Even though at the moment there are hardly enough hours in the day, I've decided to invite some topic or project requests. After all, the nights are now drawing-in and my work on rebranding our estore is nearly complete. I therefore expect to have some spare time on my hands. So, if you are contemplating making some changes to your machine, investigating a fault or fixing a new part, and you'd like to see a tutorial about it on this site, feel free to drop me a line and I'll see what I can do. I've stripped these machines back to the bare case, and fully re-assembled, so no subject is beyond this site. Or you might just want me to complete the tutorial on how I deep clean my machines!

More soon, no doubt....

D

A bit more on timing....

If you are having regular problems with timing slips and you're not trying to embroider heavy fabric or experiencing some other issue such as with thread tension, then it is possible that the bevel gear on the main shaft is loose. Specifically, the grubs screws in the gear have slackened off and any resistance in hook area causes an easy slip. It will be easier to explain with a few pictures.

You need to remove the outer casing to access the gear which can be seen just under the handle in this picture:

Here is a close up of the bevel gear and one of the grub screws (which takes a 3mm allen key)

 

 

And from a different angle:

So, if you are having repeated problems with timing slips you should investigate the bevel gear. To do that you need to follow steps 1 to 9 of the Take it apart tutorial. Then, using your allen key, back off the two grub screws in the gear and then reposition the gear against the corresponding plastic gear underneath. Turning the handwheel slightly ensures that everything goes into place snuggly! Retighten the grub screws and then follow the Check and adjust the timing tutorial. All being well, you'll be able to time the machine! Once you are happy with the timing, refit all the plastic trim and embroider a test pattern to check correct operation.

More soon (including an update on my power board fix which I'm sure now works but I need to buy another motor for testing purposes!)

D.

New PE150 fix coming very soon (I promise)...

About a year ago I promised a new fix for broken power boards. You may remember my lament that boards had a habit of blowing whenever the main motor failed and that new boards were expensive. Well, after a load of research and a bit of self-learning about electronics, I've concluded that the power board has a design fault inasmuch as there is no overload protection on the circuit which powers the motor. Perhaps one day I'll be able to design some protection into the circuit but until then, I will be repairing broken boards. I can do this because I've obtained a small supply of the long-obsolete components which comprise the circuit which powers the motor. I'll provide more details once the parts have arrived and I've completed and then soak-tested the first repair.

More soon, no doubt!

D

Sky Netgear DG834GT - a bit more on the side...

Well, it's been busy, busy, busy what with the new addition to the family. And in my spare time I've been fixing a few things. The other week it was a Samsung 19" LCD TV rescued from a skip (thrown there, presumably, because it was completely dead). I changed all the capacitors on the main power board and hey presto: a working LCD TV for my kitchen :). Tonight, I have been mostly fixing my mum's Netgear broadband router. The router was powering on but behaving very oddly with intermittent wireless/wired functionality and no ADSL connection whatsoever. I flicked the router open and immediately noted that four capacitors were bulging (three 6.3v 470uf and the 16v 220uf one). I didn't have any of these spare but I did have an old PC motherboard with a bunch of what I needed on. So, to cut a long story short I removed the faulty caps from the router's main board and replaced them with ones desoldered from the old PC motherboard. Result: router now working fine. A subsequent Google search suggests that blown caps in this router is not an uncommon problem.

This is part-way through the repair and the caps I've changed are highlighted. The replacement 470uf caps I've used are 16v rather than 6.3v (beggars can't be choosers) so its a bit of a tight squeeze. Interestingly, the caps that have blown are all one particular make. There are other caps on the board made by a different company and these are all in good order.

You can see how the still-to-be-changed 220uf cap in this picture (second one in from the left) has blown...

More soon, no doubt!