Topic
Sewing machine care and preventive maintenance.
5 notes
A guide to the industrial sewing machines found on garment lines: lockstitch, overlock, flatlock, chainstitch, bartack, buttonhole, button sew, kansai and automatic units. What each does, where it is used and what to check.
Broken needles stop production and, if fragments are lost, can end up in garments. Why needles break, how to troubleshoot them in a logical order, and how a broken needle policy protects the customer.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) splits losses into availability, performance and quality. How to calculate it for sewing, cutting and knitting machines, a worked example, and why OEE and line efficiency tell you different things.
How to choose industrial sewing needles: needle systems, metric and Singer sizes, point types for knits and wovens, matching the needle to the thread, and how the wrong needle causes skipped stitches, needle cuts and thread breaks.
Frequent thread breaks stop operators, cause skipped and broken stitches and destroy line efficiency. A step-by-step way to find the cause in the needle, thread path, tension, timing, thread or fabric.