Schiffli Embroidery Machine Shuttles
Container which holds bobbins are called shuttles or Schiffli by the embroidery industry. Shuttles are available in steel or plastics.
Shuttles of Schiffli Machine
Shuttles have to fill with great accurateness. The bobbin has to be pushed against the shuttle bottom and the yarn has to be drawn off against the shuttle tip. Shuttles are available in steel or plastics.
The shuttles have to be filled as shown below.
When putting the shuttles into the shuttle boxes approximately 4 cm (corresponds to yarn length that is necessary to surround the shuttle once) of bobbin thread is necessary to allow the shuttle to form the lock of the stitch. In order to avoid the bad look of the design bobbin threads should not be longer than 4 cm (especially chemical lace).
Use the shuttle opener tool to open the shuttle at the cover opening.
Every single shuttle’s tension has to be adjusted according to the fabric and yarn used. For thin fabrics and yarns (net, cotton yarn) shuttle tension is usually low and for thick and yarns shuttle tension is higher.
Tension is measured in grams. Adjustments vary between min. 70 and max. 90 grams. On average a value of 75 grams is used.
An experienced person adjusts the shuttles by pulling the bobbin yarn manually away from the shuttle tip and moving the tension adjustment left for more tension, right for less tension. A simple possibility to obtain an average tension is to hold the shuttle yarn and then throwing the shuttle with force downwards. The pulled out thread should be about 30cm long. If the thread is hotter than 30 cm tension has to be lowered and vice versa.
For less experienced persons tension adjustment machines are available. Shuttle yarn will be visible on the from the side of the fabric if the shuttle tension is too low. Thread breakage is caused by too much tension.
Due to the fact that shuttles are quite expensive, they should be handled with great care. Tips should be intact and the shuttle should not be sharp-edged. Spare parts are available to displace damaged parts.
It is suggested to choose the shuttle yarn color according to the color of the fabric (especially for dark fabrics).
Shuttles must be clean and free of dust especially below the spring; the back of the shuttles has to be lubricated (only lightly) with spool oil from time to time to improve run ability.
The filled shuttles should be stored in shuttle transport modules.
How to use shuttle transport module and lifting tool
- The shuttle transport modules are filled with full shuttles
- One filling battery line remains empty
- Empty shuttles are given into the empty filling battery
- Full shuttles are placed into the shuttle box with the shuttle lifting tool
- These two actions are repeated until the machine is loaded