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Machine Maintenance - Regular Tasks


APQS

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Good general maintenance is the key to keeping your machine performing at its best.

1. We recommend investing in a small air compressor (available at Wal-Mart, Ace Hardware, etc. for about $90). It takes only a few minutes to turn it on and get enough pressure to blow the lint out of everything, including your bobbin case!

2. The wicks on the top of the machine don't need oil if they are wet to the touch. If your front handles and light fixture are black and greasy, you are over-oiling the wicks and eventually it may drip down on your quilt. (Note: It's always a good idea to move the machine off the quilt when you are done for the day, and slightly relax the fabric by loosening your rollers to prevent stretching.)

3. You should thoroughly clean and oil your hook assembly every day. ?Most quilters will do this before loading each quilt to prevent getting oil on the fabric. While you should clean out the lint in the hook area and in the bobbin case after every bobbin, you generally will be able to complete an average-size quilt before needing to completely clean and oil the hook area. However, if you are doing extensive quilting on a project, or if the hook area starts to get noisy and rattles, take the time to clean and oil the hook (of course, move the machine away from your quilt first). Hook assemblies will last a lot longer if properly taken care of.

4. Every month, take off the left side front cover (when standing on the free hand side of the machine) and clean this area out, making sure there isn?t any thread wrapped around the hand wheel. Yes, it does happen!! Do this more often if you?ve experienced a lot of thread breakage. After cleaning out the thread, make sure the wicks are repositioned over their respective oiling holes before replacing the cover. Take a look at the new fly wheel cover offered as an accessory if this is a recurring problem for you.

5. If your needle up/down function seems slower than usual, chances are you have thread wrapped around the hand wheel inside the machine, causing the motor to be over-worked. It is normal to have to slow down the needle up/down speed once or twice from the factory settings. After that, it shouldn't need adjustment. If it does, it may be a circuit board issue. You should not ever have to speed it up.

Dawn Cavanaugh

National Director of Education

APQS

1-800-426-7233

dawn@apqs.com

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  • 6 months later...

Shannon I DID have to speed up my needle up/down when I first got mine. It was SO slow it was not able to come up when it was down. It would just kind of sieze up and the motor was still trying to work. I had to turn the hand wheel to get it to make it\'s cycle. After I sped it up it was fine. After a while it did get faster and made extra stitches so I had to slow it back down. HTH

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Shannon,

If you\'ve "warmed up" the machine before sewing at the beginning of the day and the needle positioner is still painfully slow, then you\'ll want to adjust it.

(Always make any needle positioner adjustments after the machine has warmed up. Move the sewing head off any quilt project. Then remove the bobbin case and unthread the machine past the last moving part. Turn the machine on in manual mode, with a motor speed about 5-6, or half speed. Allow the machine to run for several minutes before beginning the adjustment or beginning quilting.)

Look in the manual\'s appendix section for the appendix called "needle positioner adjustment" and follow the directions to change the correct circuit board screw.

As TracyeQ pointed out, you may later need to "slow it down" if it begins taking too many stitches once you\'ve stopped the machine. Nothing is more frustrating than waiting on an extremely slow needle positioner:)!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you Dawn for this list. I\'ve had my Millie going on 2 years and had never removed the left front cover. So I did and found some thread that had gotten wrapped around the hand wheel before I put my wheel cover on. It wasn\'t a lot, but it may have caused me problems down the road.

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Darlene,

Newer APQS models come with a factory-installed fly wheel cover, so you don\'t have to worry about checking for thread.

However, if anyone has an older model with an open fly wheel on the tension knob side, check inside the fly wheel area as described above. If you have trouble with threads getting trapped inside, you can purchase an optional fly wheel cover from APQS for under $15.

Have a great weekend!

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  • 4 weeks later...

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