How to wire sewing machine foot pedal.

[micky]

Just found a nice looking Singer sewing machine, very light, but it has no cord and I can't test it until I figure out how to connect the two slots in the wall to the three pins in the sewing machine. Is it as simple as connecting the wall neutral to one pin, the wall hot and one of the foot pedal wires to another, and the other pedal wire to the third?

The pins are in a triangle arrangement, so cords are not plentiful, and I probably won't be able to find one locally, only online.

I found a pedal/cord online, but it's 34 dollars plus shipping! I wouldn't pay that much for the whole machine. Certainly too much to spend without testing it first. I found just the cord for $15, but even if I would use that, I would need the answer to the question at the start. (Although rather than pay $15 for a molded plug on a cord, I might just make my own out of PC-7. )

BTW, the frypan and its glass cover are doing fine. I've tried to wipe off the condensation inside the lid, but it reappears to some extent, depending on the food I suppose. Visited 6 thrift stores in the last 3 days, only found what I wanted at number 3. Thanks for the advice.

[micky]

Also, I see now that there are electronic foot pedals!!!! Do you think I have to find one of these for a Singer made in 1999, or can I use my spare pedal that was made about 1950!?

Can I just connect the wires without a pedal in between and see how it runs at full speed? I can take the sewing machine apart enough to know which pins are which.

[bob haller]

try calling some local sewing machine repair places. they might sell youu one cheap off a junk machine

[hrhofmann]

What he says is about the only thing to do if you don't want to buy the correct cord new.

[Norminn]

Ebay has loads and loads of sewing machines and parts. Not willing to pay $34 for a machine? Zounds! What do you plan to do with it? If you are going for no-cost, place an ad in Freecycle. One problem is that Singer machines last forever, so getting a good machine or spare part at such a low cost might be iffy. I would also try a Singer dealer, as it is likely they have scavenged all kinds of parts. I got my machine around 1968; it spent 10 years in a damp basement and still sews like a champ.

[micky]

Thanks everyone who replied.

I had already looked. This is an unusual plug. I said what ebay had, just the one pedal/cord for $35 and the one cord for 15, but I still need to know how to wire the $15 cord, which is what my question was.

I don't even know yet if the machine works. Even though they rarely break, they must break sometimes. In fact I have a very old machine that breaks needles, even when not threaded. . (I did turn this one manually and the needle goes down and up without breaking.)

I've made 3 things in the last 40 years. Mostly I just repair things.

But in addition to the machine that breaks needles, I have two other machines, one is a White Rotary about 50 years old that wasn't designed to do zigzag but otherwise works fine. And the other is a very heavy electronic machine with lots of built in special stitches, and a special monogrram accessory, and some other stuff, which a woman on Freecycle gave me when she moved to Oregon. She said it only worked sometimes, and that the repair cost was in the hundreds of dollars. ( She gave me a serger too, which I gave to a friend of a friend with an uphostery shop) For my machine, she also couldn't find the foot pedal. It was a pneumatic pedal, which sucked on a tube in the machine. That I could test, by putting a hose on the tube and sucking with my mouth. It would be hard to do that for 30 minutes, so I bought a pedal for about 25 dollars.

I don't know if this will work when I want to use it. Plus it's very heavy.

Exactly. I'm reluctant to go to a shop just to test the machine and then when it works, refuse to pay the 30 dollars he wants. Except I would do that at the shop where I bought the last pedal. He's far away. In the time it takes me to get there, I could use jumper wires to wire up a test pedal, if I knew how the pedal./cord was wired.

Once it's running. I could put some little tubes with wires soldered to them around the machines pins, put vaseline on the opening in the machine, and then put pc-7 epoxee round the little tubes and the wires. Then I would have my own plug that fits. Becaue of the vaseline, it might even be removeable

[robartuk]

i'm in uk I bought a pedal from amazon for £8 and a singer power cord fro m US for £11 plus £12 postage, easy to wire together for total of £31 works beautifully

[hrhofmann]

Go the clip lead route. Full 120V into the machine should light up the lig ht but not run the motor, so see if you can find those two pins. Then goin g thru the old foot pedal, clip it in on the third pin and try each of the two primary pins. One of those two should allow you to run the motor by p ushing on the foot pedal. The foot pedal is a variable resistance in serie s with the motor windings.