Broken sewing machine - technical help needed!

Apologies if this is in the wrong bit of the forum...

Seem to have broken my sewing machine (possibly due to the needle hitting a pin, but not sure) Now there seems to be some sort of vibration in there which means that after only a few seconds something locks up such that the needle will no longer go up and down (even manually). Now I think the blockage is somewhere on the underside, although I've taken all the plate out and had a look underneath and can't see any physical impediment there.

Does anyone have any idea where else I should look, or know of any good sites on fixing things like this myself?

Many thanks.

Mrs C

I did something similar to my old machine, but I'm blowed if I can remember how I fixed it

will have a think and come back on that

Have you unthreaded & re threaded?
Changed the needle?
Made sure there is no tangle underneath?
Is the fabric too thick for the needle?
No other ideas at the moment. Thinking cap on.

I was thinking it sounded like a thread tangle inside the metal case which holds the spool..can't think what it is called at the moment...but it can get a heck of a tangle going in there!

Hmmm - problem solved, but was caused by the bobbin case and needle plate becoming misaligned. Very useful (simple) description of how the sewing machine actually works that I found here and then managed to use this to narrow down exactly where the problem was, understand it and then solve it. Taken most of the afternoon though. Still, the engineer in me feels a sense of achievement now though!

Thanks for the ideas folks!

Mrs C

Glad it is sorted. Well done.

:cheers: Mrs C

Find and remove the penny.

Sorry, this is a story from when I was just a little nipper. Went to visit grandma who had a sewing shop (made fancy things like coctail aprons) and afterwards not a single one of the (industrial type) machines in the shop would go. The guys from Singer came out but couldn't figure out what was wrong, everything looked OK. They told her would have to take them to the shop and she was so mad (US = angry) she gave the nearest a swift kick and a penny flew out of the slot.

See, I had just been given a coin bank. I had a large supply of pennies. And those slots where the I don't know what you call it goes up and down to give the thread slack must have looked to me just like the slots of a coin bank. Naturally the repair guys hadn't considered the possibility of "sabotage" and didn't check for foreign objects jamming the slots.