Juki DDL-8700 Motor Upgrade Help

[Hoosier T]

Trying here before I go join a commercial sewing forum. I just scored a great price on a lightly used DDL-8700 but I would like to upgrade the clutch motor to a brushless servo. Can anyone on here offer any suggestions or can tell me which motor theirs might have on it? So far I’m strongly cosidering the SewQuiet 6000.

[Nick Smolinske]

Possibly more up my alley than any question that’s ever been asked on this forum! I have done this upgrade once. I bought this one and it’s worked well for me:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Industrial-Sewing-Machine-Servo-Family-Motor-FESM-55ON-CSM550-NEW-3-4-HP/112344275819?hash=item1a283d9b6b:g:xtgAAOxykMpTGhTt

All my other machines came with servos already, and they are either the same motor or very similar-looking knockoffs.

The SewQuiet does look nice. More torque can be helpful when you want to sew through thick material at low speeds. Our machines occasionally bog down when going through really thick stuff. But in that case you just run the hand wheel for a stitch or two, it’s not a huge deal. One of these days I’ll experiment with more expensive motors, or needle positioners and the like. But the cheap motors work just fine.

[Hoosier T]

Thanks, Nick! I was strongly considering the motor you linked but was leaning towards a brushless. Do you have any brushless? If so, any comments on how dramatic the difference is? Lastly, how much control does that motor provide? Can you do very slow/ single stitches with it without it going berserk?

[Nick Smolinske]

We don’t have any brushless motors so I can’t compare. I *did* get the chance to use a brushless motor with a needle positioning sensor at my local industrial machine dealer and it was pretty cool. Definitely easier to hit precise stop points than I expected.

It’s a bit tricky to go slow on our machines, but not awful. Judging by tapping my finger to a timer here at home, I’d guess it’s pretty easy to modulate down to 2 stitches per second or so – going much slower than that gets tough. And hard to start the machine at that speed since it would be low on torque.

For single stitches (like when coming up to a corner and wanting to hit it precisely) we always use the handwheel. Once you get used to feathering the gas pedal to make the handwheel move easily, it becomes second nature pretty quickly.

[Hoosier T]

Thanks, Nick. I’ll keep stewing on it and maybe I’ll get lucky on a holiday deal on the SewQuiet, although unlikely…

[Ken Thompson]

Some info and video here,

http://www.sailrite.com/Sailrite-Workhorse-Servo-Motor-110V

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