Have to say it always seemed like magic watching one work. Funny how a simple graphic can clear away the fog.
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The amazing thing is that it actually works. Every single time that thread is caught and wrapped around. Wow.
A great story, I had always wondered how it worked my self
As Kurt Vonnegut said, “Sew it goes.”
I found the comments most amazing…
I started sewing with a sewing machine when I was 7 years old (54 years ago) and figuring out how it worked was one of the very first things I did.
It’s difficult to believe people have so little curiosity and are so willing to accept that things just work by “magic”!
One of the Junkyard wars teams made a great video about this several years back, using their bodys as parts of the sewing machine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAhmYzmkvcY
If you grew up in the New England factory town which was home to Singer Sewing Machine and its founder Elias Howe – honored with a statue on the harbor, young males of the horny persuasion were wont to use the inevitable one-liner on females of any persuasion:
“Let’s go down to Seaside Park, tonight, and I’ll show you Howe – standing up!”
Somebody explain how the string makes it through the shaft that spins under the material.
#5
Wow! Only a mind as great as you can find amazement in the fact that some people aren’t curious enough to unravel the workings of a machine they’ve never had occasion to use. Your just as precious now as you were at 7.
Somebody explain how the string makes it through the shaft that spins under the material.
It’s not a shaft, it’s a reel containing the second thread (blue in the diagram) and mounted at a slight angle so that when the green thread is caught it’s initially behind the blue one. As the catcher (forget its proper name) revolves, the green thread is shifted to the other side of the reel and then released.
#8–The thread does not go thru the shaft but rather it is wrapped around the “bobbin” and simply unspools as the shaft/bobbin turns. As it is “underneath and not seen, it can be whatever thread is left over.
The bobbin thread should be the same thread as used on the spool. Same size and weight or they will not stitch properly.
#1
Anyone that has ever used a sewing machine knows that it does not work every single time. Most of the time, yes. But on the few occasion I have tried to use one of these beasts, there have been many expletive laced conversations between me and machine when the bobbin gets screwed up.
#10
That is clear from the animation. If you look at the “catcher” when at the bottom of the rotation, one green string is on the front side of the real, and one green string behind (like a jump rope). There has to be a shaft on the backside to rotate the assembly… Therefore It would seem that the green string on the back side is cutting through the shaft.
I’ll have to tear one apart to see this in action!
#16, I don’t understand what you’re doing.
I agree with #15… is that right? now I’m curious!
I just looked and this is not how it works (at least not on the one my wife owns)!
It’s a bit complicated to explain but there are a couple of notes:
1) The “catcher” does not rotate 360 Degrees- it reciprocates in a half moon arc (most important fact).
2) The fabric should be at a right angle to the direction the illustration is showing.
3) The shaft on the far side is set away from the “bobbin,” and an arm is attached that rotates the outside of the mechanism,and therefore does not come into contact with the string because of the reciprocation.
Lesson for the day-the “tubes” are not always correct!
As a child, I asked my mom how a sewing machine worked. She replied, “Gary, it is so complex and wonderful that we can’t possibly understand it, and we should never question its place in our lives.”
This wasn’t the only time I got that answer đ
Gary, your mom is a very smart woman. Except that she raised a dangerous infidel. Anyway…
They can be turned manually and you can watch it stitch at whatever speed you need to get the picture.
“I just looked and this is not how it works (at least not on the one my wife owns)!”
That’s because it’s different than the original Singer mechanism, which is the one shown, and for well over a century, the only one that worked reliably.
“2) The fabric should be at a right angle to the direction the illustration is showing.”
HUH??
The graphic shows the fabric lying horizontal. As it does on ALL sewing machines except special purpose ones that are made to sew horizontal things in place. It has to lie flat or gravity would fuck up the whole arrangement.
“Lesson for the day-the âtubesâ are not always correct!”
Lesson for the day? That the tubes cannot show every variation on a design that might exist. This one shows how the vast majority of sewing machines built in the last 150 years work. That’s good enough, unless you’re planning on relying on that graphic to tell you how to fix one. đ
“Bet You Didnât Know This Is How A Sewing Machine Works”
Bet I did. It’s because I watched “Secret Life of Machines”
Check it out at http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/
You can also download it at (legally I think) at http://sciencezero.4hv.org/tslom.htm
Now can you show me how, in slow-motion, how color LCD’s work?
#22 – Ryan – That site has many cool programs to download. The sewing machine video is excellent. It shows how the bobbin works. There is no shaft attached to it.
Back in my navy days we used a monster of a machine to sew canvas, and I think I spent as much time tinkering as I did sewing. And when the machine couldn’t handle the job, I used a sailmaker’s palm and a needle about five inches long to sew heavy canvas.
Well I for one was pleased with this graphic. How a aewing machine actually works was something I’d thought about when seeing them in action, yet just wasn’t quite interested enough to go look it up and find out about it. The world is full of small myseteries that we don’t have the time or inclination to understand, necessarily so or no-one would ever get any work done. There is now one less in my world, thanks to whoever designed this, and I look forward to the LCD color TV with interest.
its just brilliant
jasmine
I think this post was
“sew-sew” đ
yes i love to repair them
the bobbin has no shaft because it needs none…the secondary thread is pulled out by each loop of the primary (green) thread
Thank Jesus, now I can sleep at night knowing this invaluable information, what would I have dont without this knowledge, how would I have carried on, but more importantly why?
#18 is correct.
“1) The âcatcherâ does not rotate 360 Degrees- it reciprocates in a half moon arc (most important fact).”
If not for this reciprocation, the thread WOULD wind around whatever shaft is holding the bobbin in place. (It doesn’t just float in mid air, it’s attached to the machine – yet this graphic shows thread going all the way around it as if there’s nothing holding it in place.)
“2) The fabric should be at a right angle to the direction the illustration is showing.”
That’s also true – not that it needs to be rotated to a vertical position as a previous nay-sayer assumed, but that it needs to be rotated 90 degrees on the horizontal plane so that it’s headed “into the monitor” instead of towards the left side of the monitor. This rotation makes the whole thing work, but would complicate the visualization – so the person who made the graphic simplified it by rotating the orientation.
However, as presented, it would not work because it must reciprocate – it cannot just spin. No sewing machine ever built has worked the way this shows. They ALL reciprocate.