Brother 416 tension issues.

jhornsby3 · December 26th, 2019, 07:16 PM

Hey all,

I have the Brother 416 single head machine. Got it with a lot of issues. Had a tech come in and give the machine a working over. He came back to finish the major tune up after running it and he set the bobbin tension again. It ran fine on a job and I got to the third from the last shirt and the thread pulled the shirt through the bobbin. Just balled the tread up and pulled this light weight "sports" fabric right on through the needle plate. The tech told me that I needed a new bobbin case so I got one. He told me the case won't set tension. So when I ordered the new case I got one of the Tajima stick tension gauges. The tension was set by him to just over 50g. Could this be the reason the thread balled up around the bobbin case and cause the fabric to pull into the needle plate? I set the tension back to 35g per the instruction book but don't have any of that really thin sports fabric to run a test on.

Thanks for looking and any responses I get,
John

Robert Young · January 2nd, 2020, 03:19 PM

have had 2 of those machines and really liked them. third from last shirt? were you close to the end of the bobbin or thread? just seems odd that simply unloading and then loading a new shirt hoop would adjust the tensions/timing. did the last two work ok?

personally have never used a gauge just the "drop in hand" method to adjust bobbin tension... (holds firm but if you move your hand it falls a bit...sure there are videos on this) then for the top thread I just pull it through the needle...if it feels like it could bounce back (although it is not elastic) then good to go.

jhornsby3 · January 3rd, 2020, 04:20 PM

Yeah, I got through 35 shirts and third from the last one and it went screwy. I picked up a tension gauge and checked the bobbin. The tech had it at over 50 grams. My top tension was at 60 grams. So the top was light but the bobbin was well over the called for 15-25 grams. So I can understand the fabric being pulled through the needle plate hole.

Set everything and ran a test stitch. All looked great so I ran the last few. Then was given a few more to do. I gave the local high school a break to help out the sports director. Now I'm running just stuff for him.