You know when you are told not to use canned air to clean out your machine, they really mean it!
My machine was making very loud grinding noises last month so I took it upon myself to see what’s what. I squirted oil here and there and still the noise. So I took off the bottom plate of the machine – cause that’s where the noise was coming from, or so I thought – and look what I found! Years of thread and lint that I had blown into the bottom of the machine! It was firmly entrenched in every gear and moving mechanical thing under there.
I dilgently and carefully cleaned out the lint – I don’t recommend this for the mechanically intimidated – and put the machine back together sans on screw. It rolled away never to be seen again. Upon starting up the machine again – still grinding!
OK – this means there was something seriously wrong with the poor machine. So I took it into the shop – something I was avoiding with a vengeance because I didn’t want to be relegated to sewing on my “other” machine for the duration of the repair visit. Luckily, I have an “in” with the service tech and he looked at my machine while I waited. Much to my embarrassment, he called me back to his office for a diagnosis and sitting there on his repair bench beside my machine was about a 1/2 inch length of a broken needle tip and several strands of decorative thread that I hadn’t used in years!!!! Ah – hah! The source of the grinding!
Apparently I had blown (through my consistent use of canned air) the needle tip and the pretty threads all the way over to the flywheel side of the machine and these pesky little pieces of debris got caught up in the belt! Not exactly where I heard the grinding noise coming from but its not grinding any more and I’m not blowing air any more either! Lesson learned!