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The in-depth technical article linked from TFA is worth a read[0]. It's amazing to me is that a 20 year-old sewing machine needs to be reverse-engineered and re

The in-depth technical article linked from TFA is worth a read[0]. It's amazing to me is that a 20 year-old sewing machine needs to be reverse-engineered and requires other hardware to make it useful. The oldest of my sewing machines is closing in on 100 years old and anyone who understands how a straight-stitch machine works could have it running in 5 minutes. Does it embroider? No. Hell, it doesn't stitch in reverse, never mind zigzag or sew any fancy stitches (which are all combinations of zigzag and reverse). Nonetheless, it remains a useful machine. For those who aren't aware: fancy stitches can be (and were) implemented purely mechanically for decades, mostly after WWII for consumer machines. My machine is just too old. I realize that the point of the machine in TFA is to introduce a new group of people to sewing. It seems that doing so by creating something so lacking in long-term maintainability is unfortunate. [0] https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art22.html https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art22.html

LeifCarrotson 4y ago
As an industrial automation/controls engineer who just got into a sewing project, let me just echo that old (and new) sewing machines are industrial-technological miracles. And they were built long before servomotors and semiconductors were a thing. Even after watching it work, I'm still incredulous that a combination of castings and camshafts can do 4000 stitches per minute; if you asked me to tie a knot with a strand of thread with my normal modern tools of 6-axis robots and PLCs you'd be looking at a quarter million dollar machine that was two orders of magnitude slower than the Juki I'm used to. It is unusual for sewing machines that these examples require what they do. But it is also unusual as compared to other technology that your 100-year-old machine is so hyper-optimized, understandable, maintainable, and open that it doesn't require any reverse-engineering or external hardware.
Doxin 4y ago
Another point of reference for people unfamiliar with how wildly impressive sewing machines can be: I own a sewing machine that does 21 different styles of stitches. Anything from straight to zigzag to crazy decorative stitches. All that works with the thing unplugged. You can just turn the wheel and it'll do it. When you do plug it in it'll do all those stitches at breakneck speeds and still stop on a dime. There's few things that upset me the way sewing machines getting computerized upsets me. It's a clear step backwards to me.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

As an industrial automation/controls engineer who just got into a sewing project, let me just echo that old (and new) sewing machines are industrial-technological miracles. And they were built long before servomotors and semiconductors were a thing. Even after watching it work, I'm still incredulous that a combination of castings and camshafts can do 4000 stitches per minute; if you asked me to tie a knot with a strand of thread with my normal modern tools of 6-axis robots and PLCs you'd be looking at a quarter million dollar machine that was two orders of magnitude slower than the Juki I'm used to. It is unusual for sewing machines that these examples require what they do. But it is also unusual as compared to other technology that your 100-year-old machine is so hyper-optimized, understandable, maintainable, and open that it doesn't require any reverse-engineering or external hardware.

Doxin 4y ago

Another point of reference for people unfamiliar with how wildly impressive sewing machines can be: I own a sewing machine that does 21 different styles of stitches. Anything from straight to zigzag to crazy decorative stitches. All that works with the thing unplugged. You can just turn the wheel and it'll do it. When you do plug it in it'll do all those stitches at breakneck speeds and still stop on a dime. There's few things that upset me the way sewing machines getting computerized upsets me. It's a clear step backwards to me.