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Stitch Regulator acting up


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Hello,

 

Last time I quilted in December, my stitch regulator behaved perfectly.  Today, it is giving me fits.  It seems to work fine when moving the machine back and forth (standing at the back of the machine and pushing the head toward the front and back again).  Left to right or right to left is a whole other story and is the problem.  It either doesn't engage even though it is beeping or produces inconsistent stitch lengths and the stitch regulator does not sound consistent either.  If I go really, really fast, it seems to be fine, it is just acting up at the lower speeds which I need to do a pantograph. My house is very dry right now but I do have the static clip on the machine (2005 Millennium, last serviced by APQS in January 2014).   I have M&M wheels and did try cleaning the wheels.  Still no go.  

 

Any ideas what has possessed my darling Millie?  Manual mode works fine so it is definitely related to the stitch regulator.  

 

Thank you in advance.

 

Gail S.   

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I would check for lose wires/connectors, from the wheels to the stitch regulator.  Maybe you accidentally disconnected a wire when you moved the head.  I am not sure how the rotation of the wheels is passed to the electronic sensors, but if there a brushes or some type of contact on the wheel that registers the rotation, I would put a dap of alcohol or electronic contact cleaner on them to ensure they are passing an impulse with wheel movement.  Use a Qtip to dab on the cleaner.  A dry environment is not bad for electronics, it is actually better than a humid one. Hopefully you will discover the issue.  It probably is minor issue.  If all else fails, give APQS a call on Monday.  Best of luck resolving your issue.

 

Cagey

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Gail

Two simple checks come to mind. Unthread the machine back to the tension assembly,  and start the machine in regulated mode and watch the black rubber encoder wheel when moving side to side.  Is the wheel moving consistently or does it need adjusting?  The other check would be to wiggle the stitch regulator wires while the machine is running in regulated mode.  Brenda's machine has had a broken wire right at one of the pins in that white connector.  Actually I have fixed it twice.  When I wiggled the wire the machine would cut in and out.

 

Good luck

Nigel

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Nope, neither suggestion worked but thank you for the good ideas to try.  The encoder wheel is moving just fine.  I tried unplugged and replugging the connectors.  It almost sounds like the stitch regulator is "missing".  I will call in the morning.  I have the utmost confidence in this machine and company.  It isn't the machine that is having an issue, it is the stitch regulator.  I have made repairs on this thing before.  I had to pull the mother and daughter boards out and ship for repair when I thought I had accidentally blown something on one of the boards and replaced the belt with the magnet that controls the needle up/down function.  While it scared the pants off of me to be messing around in the guts of my machine, with APQS' help, I did it.  Hopefully it is something minor.  

 

Gail S. 

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  • 4 months later...

You may have to adjust the small wheel that runs in the grove of the bigger encoder wheel. There are 2 of these wheels. One runs the horizontal direction and one runs the verticle direction. Try using your finger to turn the small wheel and see if it slips with out turning the larger wheel. There is a bolt on the under side of the bigger wheel with the grove. I have had to loosen the bolt with a socket wrench and squeeze the two wheels tighter together. I usually have to have my husband help me because it is an on the floor job needing 4 hands. They are hard to get at and one needs an open end wrench and one takes a socket wrench. I finally bought 2 wrenches just for my machine after having to dig through the piles of my husband's farm tools too many times! Don't tighten the wheels too much either or the machine gets too tight and your circles might become more like squares. As my machine is getting older I have had to mess with this more.

I upgrades to the Bliss wheels and have had to replace all my wheels once. In fact if you go to the trouble of taking the encoder wheels apart entirely, if the have a yellow tab in the center of the wheel, APQS might replace all your big wheels with the groove in it for free because there was a recall?? You can't see the yellow tab until you take the wheel off because it is on the top side of the wheel. I did have to purchase 2 new little encoder wheels because they do wear down with use.

I hope this makes sence and helps!

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My machine is doing the same thing... it will run in stitch regulated mode north/south but doesn't want to fire on east/west from the back of the machine.  Funny, though, from the front of the machine I was able to baste in regulated mode east/west when putting on the batting and then when stitching down the top.  Could it be something in the rear controls?

I've installed new encoder wheels.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, here is the update on the stitch regulator problem.

After replacing the motor brushes and encoder wheels, there still wasn't any improvement in the east/west movement.

Then I started checking the mushroom handles to see if it was a control button problem... nada.  But underneath the rear handle, there was a cable connection not quite tight.  Plugged those together and POW!!!! Even the needle up/down slowness has been cured.

 

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  • 7 months later...

I also am having a problem with my stitch regulator on my Millie, not all the time, just sometimes.  I'll be either working from the front or the back quite nicely, then all of a sudden it starts to "miss", then takes an uncontrollable number of fast stitches, then skips ... then if I start to move the machine slowly it will "get back to normal" stitching again.  It scares the heck out of me especially when I'm working from the front of the machine with rulers.  I just quilted a childs quilt the other day and it only happened once.  I will try what JanieSue mentioned in the above post about the cable connection.

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Unusally:  The Quiltazoid is a tool that lets you mount pattern templates, sew circles and create spirographic patterns and the like with the appropriate attachments.  Really a neat tool.  Unfortunately they are no longer manufactured.  The only way you could get one is buy a used one.  Ones comes offered here occasionally, but not often.  Jim    

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  • 1 year later...

Catcher:  I think it will.  I believe the same support piece was used on all the APQS models. (the adjustable bar that rests on the leveling roller)  I have an Ult 2 and I think I shortened mine, but I don't really remember-it was seven or eight years ago.  Try putting it on your machine.  You'll know right away if it fits.  Jim

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  • 1 year later...

I posted about the same problem with my machine back in February 2017 ….. and still after changing the encoder wheel and Crydom & relay it got even worse yesterday (November 2019)  …. it took 4 1/2 hours to quilt a 65 x 75 quilt ….. so many stops finishing this quilt I was ready to chuck my machine and go try a Gammill.  Until I read through all the posts again today and tried SueJane's post from June 2016.  I had not noticed a plug-in directly under the back mushroom handle before, so I checked under the whole machine and rechecked "all" the plugins, ran my machine and everything sounds/works great so far, even my stitch regulator needle didn't hop back and forth when I put it on 12 stitches/inch this time.  But time will tell after running my machine for 2 hours on my next quilt.  I hope my fix will have turned out to be this simple.

 

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