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Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Tag: Sewing

Fabric arts and machines

Kenmore 158.17032 Handwheel Clutch Disassembly

One of Mary’s friends asked us to take a look at her Kenmore 158.17032 sewing machine that suffered from a Showstopper Problem: the handwheel turned the main shaft, but the motor pulley spun freely. You could rev the motor to maximum speed without budging the shaft, which suggested something was wrong with the clutch joining the handwheel and the belt pulley to the main shaft. This being a slightly newer model than the others in our stable, I was mildly surprised to find a completely different clutch mechanism between the drive belt and the main shaft.

The plastic cover plate in the handwheel yielded to an old crochet hook:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Handwheel cap removal

Stick the hook into the tiny notch, engage hook with cover, pull outward, and it’ll fall into your other hand.

That exposes a simple screw holding the chromed plastic handwheel in place on the motor shaft. After taking the pulley and clutch off the Hard Way, I discovered the Right Way, which is hereby documented for The Next Time Around. In order to show what’s needed, I’ll start in the middle and work outward.

Pull the handwheel off and remove the machine’s end cover.

With the clutch assembly removed (which you can’t do yet), you can see a pair of pot metal bands that act as a brake when the bobbin winder snaps off a full bobbin. They look like this in the normal running position:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Clutch trip lever – normal position

The black bow-tie at 9 o’clock is vertical, holding the brake bands apart and clearing the tab on the clutch asembly (which you haven’t seen yet).

They look like this when the bobbin winder has just snapped:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Clutch trip lever – bobbin wind position

The Bobbin Winder Reset Button atop the machine (which our machines don’t have and this one does) presses on the tab sticking out toward you on the horizontal bar pivoting on the front of the machine:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Bobbin winder reset lever

In that position, the button is up, the bobbin is ready to load, the brake bands are off, and you can gently tap the clutch assembly off the main crankshaft:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Handwheel clutch assembly

The inner hub rotates very slightly with respect to the belt drive pulley (which has the grooves that drive the bobbin winder tire). That didn’t quite work on this machine, due to the usual lack of lubrication / mechanical wear / what-have-you.

The innermost part (with the notches for the pin visible at 2 o’clock on the main shaft) rotates with the handwheel. The belt pulley rotates with the motor belt. The clutch lets you turn the handwheel with the motor stopped. Normal rotation is clockwise in this view; on the machine, you turn the top of the wheel toward you.

Carefully remove the spring that retracts the clutch lever, remove both black screws, remove the big flat head screw, and slide the black lever out to the side.

Unscrew the two remaining flat-head screws holding the hub / lever in place. The one with the longer shoulder goes into the lever:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Handwheel clutch screws

Removing the hub reveals the pin that engages the clutch mechanism visible through the slot at 6 o’clock in the handwheel:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Handwheel clutch dog

Remove the fiber washer and the steel cover plate to expose the clutch mechanism:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Handwheel clutch – detail

The pin pressing against the hollow cylinder (which is the actual clutch!) has a powerful spring:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Handwheel clutch interior

If you hold the cylinder in place, you can rotate the clutch body enough to unload the spring just enough to let you ease the cylinder out and gently release the spring. Good luck!

With all the parts on the bench, clean everything, lube only the parts that need it (like the spring-loaded pin, but not the clutch cylinder), put everything back together, and it should Just Work.

The screwdriver points out the tab engaging the black bow-tie doodad:

Kenmore 158.17032 – Handwheel clutch tab

The object of the games is to make the tab pivot smoothly around the large flat-head screw under the spring as you press the part that sticks out, so the clutch will be either completely disengaged or firmly engaged.

When you get it working smoothly, release the brake bands, slide the clutch assembly back on the shaft, reinstall the cover, install the handwheel, install the screw, pop the plastic hub back in, and you’re done!

Update:

Even though I write this stuff down to help me remember what I did, sometimes other folks find it useful:

Just read your article about Kenmore 158.17032 Handwheel clutch and was able to repair a machine because of you. I so appreciate that you take the time to post such things. I would not have taken the thing apart had I not found your article and I just wanted to say THANKS. I browsed some of your other projects also. Wow.
Thanks Again,
Donnie

… and …

I have spent weeks searching for how to fix the Kenmore 158.1703 clutch ( a very weird one) for a friend of mine. I was pointed to your post by the Vintage Kenmore sewing machine groups.io.
I jumped up and down with joy to read and see the photos.
Yes! I can fix this and get it back to her. THANK YOU! I will try later today with your post printed out.
Thank you!
Linda

More small victories in the struggle against entropy!

The Kenmore Vintage Sewing Machine group may come in handy.

2016-03-25
OttLite LED Conversion
Although Mary liked the illumination from her OttLite (an old 13 W fluorescent Folding Task Lamp), neither of us liked its tiny base and tippy nature. It recently fell / was dropped / jumped to its doom, smashing the CFL tube and wreaking havoc on the tiny plastic studs holding its large cast-iron weight and steel base in position. Given that the CFL ballast had started humming a while ago, I took it apart to see whether I could salvage anything from the rubble.

Remove:
- Four screws under the fuzzy felt feet
- One screw under the label on the back
- A final screw that becomes visible only after disemboweling the hinge assembly by unscrewing the obvious endcaps:
OttLite LED Conversion – hinge screw

Pull the hinge end of the white inside panel away from the outer stand at enough of an angle to disengage all three latches holding it to the base, then remove it just enough to let you start cutting wires around the ballast…

I rebuilt the thing with a pair of 24 V 150 mA warm-white LED panels (good industrial surplus, not the usual cheap eBay crap) powered by a 19 V laptop adapter (from IBM, no less) through a (cheap eBay) boost converter sticky-foam-taped where the fluorescent ballast used to live:

OttLite LED Conversion – boost supply wiring

The power supply had only two conductors, the central wire surrounded by twisted shielding, and didn’t require a fussy interface. Hooray for simple bulk power supplies; I lopped off the connector and soldered the wires directly to the boost converter.

The original lamp wiring has a 120 VAC switch inside the hinge that turned the lamp on as you raise the arm holding the CFL tube: exactly what I need for its new use. That eliminated figuring out how to crack the arm apart to rewire it.

I harvested the base from a(nother) defunct CFL bulb:

OttLite LED Conversion – harvested CFL base

By soldering wires directly into the pins, I could reuse the existing CFL socket in the lamp arm, the existing wiring, and the switch.

The LED panels dissipate 3-ish W each:

OttLite LED Conversion – LED panel layout

They’re mounted on a 0.1 inch aluminum sheet from the heap that required exactly one saw cut to fit into the space available, so I defined it to be perfect. The 4-40 screws holding the panels in place continue through the plate and 3/8 inch aluminum standoffs into a quartet of knurled inserts epoxied into eyeballometrically match-drilled holes in the lamp arm:

OttLite LED Conversion – epoxied threaded inserts

The faint yellowish discoloration from the CFL tube’s heat and UV is much more visible in real life, but nobody will ever see it again. The scrawled blue (+) and (-) marks give the socket polarity; it’s not mechanically polarized and a bit of care is in order. The black rectangle is actually a shiny metal sheet intended to reflect heat from the CFL tube’s base away from the plastic arm.

I set the boost converter to 23.5 V, at which point the LED panels draw about 100 mA each and get just over uncomfortably warm after an hour or two:

OttLite LED Conversion – in action

The panels run 120 °F = 50 °C and the SMD LEDs probably exceed 150 °F = 65 °C. The scant surplus doc touted “No heatsink required” and the single-sided FR4 PCB insulates the LEDs from the aluminum sheet, but I still smeared some heatsink compound behind the panels in the hopes of spreading the heat out a bit.

I glued the shattered base studs back in place with IPS #3, surrounded them with generous epoxy fillets, plunked the cast iron weight in place atop some waxed paper to mold the epoxy to fit (and let me remove it again, if needs be), screwed everything together, and stuck a foam sheet over the steel base plate. It’s as tippy as before, but at least the LEDs won’t shatter if when it falls. It really needs a larger base; a polycarbonate plate might work, if only I could figure out how to attach it.

All in all, the lamp looks good and the warm-white LEDs with DC drive don’t produce that horrible fluorescent flicker.

The lamp now sports a label identifying it as a NisLite; because P-Touch labeler.
2016-03-17
Streaming Player: Wireless Keypad

Moving the streaming media player control panel across the Sewing Room for E-Z access:

Wireless Keypad – colored labels

Stipulated: garish labels that don’t fit the keys well at all.

I need more than one stream for testing; the only one that matters is Classical.

The keypad uses the same 2.4 GHz ISM band as the Raspberry Pi’s Wifi radio, which means holding a key down (which should never happen) puts a dent in mplayer’s cache fill level. Even absent that interference, the WiFi link seems more than a little iffy, probably because it’s at the far end of the house and upstairs from the router.

Other WiFi devices report that 2.4 GHz RF has trouble punching through the intervening fifty feet of hardwood floor (on the diagonal, the joists amount to a lot of wood) and multiple sets of doubled wallboard sheets; the RPi probably needs a better radio with an actual antenna. I did move the WiFi control channel away from the default used by the (relatively distant) neighbors, which seemed to improve its disposition.

2016-03-04
Kenmore Model 158: Older Foot Pedal Resistor

Based on the paperwork tucked into the sewing table, the most recent Kenmore Model 158 sewing machine in our stable dates to 1972, a bit earlier than the others, and has a metal-cased foot pedal with a wire-wound resistor:

Kenmore Model 158 – new-ish foot pedal resistor

The cord insulation stiffened up over the decades and I wanted to replace it, but the contacts in the sewing machine connector were spot-welded to the conductors with no room for teeny screws:

Kenmore Model 158 – new-ish foot pedal connector

I blew out the fuzz, put it back together, and it works pretty well, modulo the usual low torque at slow speeds issue.

The discrete resistor taps produce a somewhat stepped response, but early reports suggest it’s not enough to be annoying; it’s much more stable than the carbon disks in the more recent pedals.

2016-02-27
Sears Sewing Table: Sewing Machine Supports

For reasons that should not require explanation by now, Mary just acquired a large sewing table (along with a Sears Kenmore Model 158 sewing machine that’s slightly older and fancier than the three we already have). The table has an opening fitted to the machine base, but the rubber pads atop the leveling screws had long since stiffened up and two screws were frozen in place. A few drops of penetrating oil released the screws and, mirable dictu, they have ordinary 6-32 threads.

Some rummaging turned up four PC case screws and soft caps intended for wire shelves, which easily combined into replacement machine supports:

Sewing Machine Supports – inserting screws

Once again, I’m using the drill press as a low-force arbor press, with a chunk of aluminum tubing to shove the screw flange into the slightly smaller plastic cap.

Spun into their brackets, they look quite nice, not that anybody will ever see them:

Sewing Machine Supports – installed

The new-to-us table replaces the incredible collection of junk previously supporting Machine #3. I tucked some plastic foam around the near and right edges to fill the small gaps and it fits well:

Sewing Machine Supports – machine installed

Obviously, the foam will fall out whenever Mary lifts the machine to tinker with machinery under the platform, so we’ll see how often pins & needles slip through the cracks without the foam.

That machine awaits a lighting update, because I’m awaiting some rectangular chip-on-board LED strips from halfway around the planet.

Early reports concerning the sewing table seem promising…

2016-02-24

Sears Sewing Table Hinge Covers

The extension surfaces on the Sears sewing table in the Basement Sewing Room unfold from the top, leaving the hinges exposed:

Alas, quilts snag on the squared-off ends of the hinges, a situation that is not to be tolerated…

This protective cap isn’t as small as we’d like, but it must be that thick to cover the hinge, that long to cover the squared-off ends, and that wide for symmetry:

Sears Sewing Table Hinge Cover - solid model — Sears Sewing Table Hinge Cover – solid model

Two neodymium magnets fit in the holes and secure the cover to the all-steel “bronzed” hinges:

Sears Sewing Table - hinge covers — Sears Sewing Table – hinge covers

We’re not sure how well that will work in the long term, but early returns seem promising.

It could be slightly narrower left-to-right and maybe fewer vertices should be oriented differently.

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub gist:

	// Vacuum Tube LED Lights
	// Ed Nisley KE4ZNU January 2016

	//- Extrusion parameters must match reality!

	ThreadThick = 0.20;
	ThreadWidth = 0.40;

	HoleWindage = 0.2;

	Protrusion = 0.1; // make holes end cleanly

	inch = 25.4;

	function IntegerMultiple(Size,Unit) = Unit * ceil(Size / Unit);

	//———————-
	// Dimensions

	Hinge = [7.0,52.0,6.0];

	TopThick = 3*ThreadThick;
	PlateThick = Hinge[2] + TopThick;

	NumSides = 8*4;

	//———————-
	// Useful routines

	module PolyCyl(Dia,Height,ForceSides=0) { // based on nophead's polyholes

	Sides = (ForceSides != 0) ? ForceSides : (ceil(Dia) + 2);

	FixDia = Dia / cos(180/Sides);

	cylinder(r=(FixDia + HoleWindage)/2,h=Height,$fn=Sides);
	}

	//———————-
	// Build it

	difference() {
	hull()
	for (a=[0:7])
	rotate(a*360/8)
	translate([Hinge[1]/2,0,0])
	scale([1.5,1.5,1])
	sphere(r=PlateThick,$fn=NumSides);
	hull()
	for (k=[-1,1])
	translate([0,Hinge[1]/2,k*(Hinge[2] – Hinge[0]/2)])
	rotate([90,0,0]) rotate(180/8)
	PolyCyl(Hinge[0],Hinge[1],8);

	for (i=[-1,1])
	translate([i*Hinge[1]/2,0,-Protrusion])
	PolyCyl(4.8,2.5 + Protrusion,8);

	translate([0,0,-PlateThick])
	cube(2*[Hinge[1],Hinge[1],PlateThick],center=true);
	}

view raw Sewing Table Hinge Covers.scad hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2016-02-09

Darning Foot Modification

Mary wanted an opening in the front of the Darning Foot I didn’t modify the last time around, so I grabbed it in a machinist’s vise, grabbed that in the bench vise, and freehanded a Dremel slitting saw:

Darning Foot – saw-cut foot

A bit of file work and it looks pretty good, although neither of us like the blurred-from-the-factory red lines:

Darning Foot – opened foot

This one retains the pin that lifts it as the needle rises, so it’s a hopping foot.

2016-01-28

Tag: Sewing

Kenmore 158.17032 Handwheel Clutch Disassembly

OttLite LED Conversion

Streaming Player: Wireless Keypad

Kenmore Model 158: Older Foot Pedal Resistor

Sears Sewing Table: Sewing Machine Supports

Sears Sewing Table Hinge Covers

Darning Foot Modification