US 8,176,860 B2Granted

Sewing machine

AssigneeBrother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

InventorsAkie Shimizu, Hirokazu Hirose, Yuki Ihira, Yoshio Nishimura, Yoshinori Nakamura

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Abstract

A sewing machine including a needle bar; a sewing needle attached to the lower end of the needle bar; a needle bar drive mechanism vertically driving the needle bar; a presser foot capable of applying releasable pressure on a workpiece cloth and that releases the pressure to allow manual movement and sewing of the workpiece cloth; a regulatory needle including a tip and being capable of assuming a pierced state where the tip is pierced through the workpiece cloth and a non-pierced state, wherein the regulatory needle is moved along with the workpiece cloth while retaining the pierced state of the tip; a regulatory needle drive unit vertically driving the regulatory needle between the pierced state and the non-pierced state in coordination with vertical movement of the sewing needle; and a regulatory needle regulator limiting horizontal movement of the regulatory needle so as not to exceed a predetermined stitch pitch.

Claims8

Dependent claims

A sewing machine, comprising:

a needle bar having a lower end, the lower end being configured to hold a sewing needle;
a needle bar drive mechanism configured to vertically drive the needle bar;
a presser foot that is capable of applying releasable pressure on a workpiece cloth and that is configured to release the pressure to allow manual movement and sewing of the workpiece cloth;
a regulatory needle that includes a tip and that is capable of assuming a pierced state in which the tip is pierced through the workpiece cloth and a non-pierced state, wherein the regulatory needle is movable along with the workpiece cloth while retaining the pierced state of the tip in which the tip is pierced through the workpiece cloth;
a regulatory needle drive unit configured to vertically drive the regulatory needle between the pierced state in which the tip is pierced through the workpiece cloth and the non-pierced state;
and
a regulatory needle regulator configured to limit horizontal movement of the regulatory needle in the pierced state in which the tip is pierced through the workpiece cloth so that the horizontal movement does not exceed a predetermined stitch pitch.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.