Julie Barrett is a freelance writer and photographer based in Plano, TX.

Cussing At The Embroidery Machine

Fresh when it gets here from Julie Barrett
Tuesday, October 21, 2014



(Current sewing machine and previous embroidery machine. No, the table doesn't look that clean today.)

So this is one for the lumber-attic of the mind. I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this, but over Christmas of last year I replaced the Brother above with a Singer Futura XL-400. It's a nice machine, but it can be just as persnickety as the Brother was, though in different ways. Yesterday it ate a couple of pieces of felt, so this morning I opened the machine, cleaned everything, rethreaded, turned on the machine, and was told I had the wrong size hoop connected.

Okay, I get that error once in a while, and the fix is usually to turn off the machine and restart it with no hoop in the bed so it can reset. This time the machine told me to connect the USB cable.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? So, it was off to the troubleshooting races:

Disconnect and reconnect the cable.

Plug the cable into a different port.

Disconnect the embroidery bed and reconnect.

Several combinations of the above combined with cycling power, and/or letting the machine sit for a while with the power off.

Installing the software on the new laptop. 

Applying a software patch to both computers.

I even tried colorful language, and lots of it!

Finally got the software to start on the new laptop. Normally, the software complains if it doesn't detect the machine and refuses to start. Now I got the hoop size error. Grr.

More wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Rocked the needle wheel on the machine.

Bingo! The embroidery arm moved, the hoop was in position and ready to go.

Mind you, I had already threaded the needle using the built-in threader, so the needle was in the correct position. Well, that's a new one on me. I lost a couple of hours of work this morning, but this beats the heck out of a repair and a $100 copay on the warranty. Oh, yes. 

So this post is here to remind me what I did today, because the time WILL come when I have the same problem, and I'll be racking my brain trying to remember what I did today. 

And now it's back to work. Time for the next issue!

Tags: Life

Filed under: Life            

 

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