Industrial Sewing Machine First Impressions

We decided to go get the Juki today instead of Wednesday due to the HUGE snowstorm "supposedly" heading to Michigan. Worked out well as we were actually ahead of my timeline, we finished painting on Saturday so this put us ahead by two days.

I spent about 2 hours with a very helpful technician learning some of the features of the machine, basics like, threading needle, bobbin, winding bobbin, oiling, presser foot, etc. I am pretty sure I will be in LOVE with my machine very soon!

The machine was moved in one piece, they prepped it by shrink wrapping it so it could lay down in our vehicle. It was a pretty intense 10-15 minutes to get it out of the truck, to the steps, up the steps and into position.

I have had very little time to try it out at home, but so far it is a dream of a machine and I am 100% certain this was the correct time and machine for me. Of course there will be learning curve and I am guessing it will be several hours of random sewing and testing to get used to the new features and difference in this from a home machine. I thought I would share a few "first impression" pros and cons.

PROS:

• Speed-machine is set at 2000 stitches per minute and I can totally manage this safely, the speed control is amazingly simple and responsive to the foot
  
• Stitch quality
• Auto presser foot raise via foot pedal
• Needle up positioning at end of sewing (LOVE, LOVE LOVE this)
• Thread trimmer
• Heftyness of this machine - it is a seriously heavy ALL metal machine
• Table, work space
• Sewing machine surface flush with table
• Huge sewing bed
• Finger guard, this will be ample enough safety to keep my fingers safe
• No oil pan, just a drip pan, low maintenance oiling (this was a big concern)
• Auto bobbin winding while sewing - still need to work on this, but basically if you have "black" in the machine, you have a second cone feeding a new winding bobbin, this means I need to get doubles of some colors.
• I am pretty sure the foot I received is a quarter inch, this is a big necessity for me
• After sale support, this will be hugely helpful to get one on one phone assistance as necessary
• Machine is super quiet
  

CONS:

• More steps to thread, needle threads from side of needed, more or less where the finger guard is this is definitely more difficult then a home machine.
• Cannot see the bobbin for thread availability and have to reload from under the table or by tilting the machine back - which is extremely heavy and sort of difficult to do
• No walking foot, not a big deal but I am a touch worried about giving up this feature, so far I think the machine can handle these tasks, but have not fully tested
• Lighting, it comes with an LED flex task lamp, I am not too fond of LED lighting I find it uneasy on the eyes, and since the machine is so big it seems inevitable there will be shadowing, I have gotten a few floor lamps to test some lighting for my space, and there is no light in the "bed" of the machine, so it seems dark
• My husband wants to play on it too, after all it is a big heavy industrial piece of equipment, you know how guys like this sort of thing
  

I am still re-assembling my sewing room and will not have any real time to myself until Wednesday and Thursday so for the next few days I am going to read the enourmous owners manual that came with it. Just a little light reading for when we are snowed in later this week.

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