The Crash Test Dummy machine arrived from the usual eBay seller in a cardboard box with a few rigid foam strips and some closed-cell foam sheets tossed inside. The seller thought the machine was “adequately protected”, which turned out to be, at best, optimistic:
Fortunately, the crushed case protected the sewing machine itself and, given that I specifically bought it with the intent of making mistakes thereupon, it worked well enough. At one point, it vibrated off a desk, landed face-down on the concrete basement floor, and now the stitch selection / length cam followers don’t follow their cams very well at all.
I modified the cracked-but-workable base to pass the connectors on the AC motor power and LED power / position sensor cables:
That was done by chucking a hole saw in the drill press, running at lowest speed, resting the other end of the case on my thigh, and tipping my foot to drive the case upward into the saw. Worked surprisingly well, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that technique yourself.
Now that the Crash Test Dummy resembles a sewing machine again, running a few trial stitches in scrap fabric showed that it works well enough for straight-line sewing and free-motion quilting:
We installed it in the Quilting Room, ready for a more extensive evaluation on an actual quilt…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
For what it’s worth, I’ll use a fence on the drill press. It’s usually a scrap of wood, but the current fence is a 1″ x 2.5″ chunk of cold-rolled, with 5″ C-clamps to hold it. Getting rid of a degree of freedom or two makes me breathe a bit easier. I usually keep some stock close by for this, stored next to the Vise-grip press-clamp widget. I’ve enough scars from shop goofs to develop some
paranoiacaution.Good luck on the evaluation!
That base was so tall the table hit the bottom stop, so I winged it.
Granted, sometimes I find myself saying “Oh, Lord, I’ve been good this week, apart from a few incidents involving sloth and gluttony that, really, could happen to anyone. Let me replay the last fifteen seconds and I promise a better outcome this time…”
Hmm, missed giving my keyboard and monitor a shower by that much. [grin/wince]
You know you shouldn’t drink and type…