The Redundant Needle is another name for the Color Groups feature and provides automatic recovery in the event of a thread break. The user can assign colors in groups of needles and when a thread break occurs on one of the needles, the machine automatically recovers by using a different needle threaded with the same color.
For example, look at a three-color design. Needles 1, 2, and 3 have red thread. Needles 4, 5, and 6 have white thread. Needles 7, 8, and 9 have blue thread. The color grouping would look like this:
|
Primary Colors |
Backup Colors |
|
Needle 1 (red) |
Needles 2, 3 |
|
Needle 4 (white) |
Needles 5, 6 |
|
Needle 7 (blue) |
Needles 8, 9 |
The order in which redundant needles are used is set when assigning color groups. In this example above, the first group was chosen by clicking 1, 2, 3.
NOTE: Backup colors cannot be chosen in the color sequence.
If the thread in Needle 4 breaks while sewing, the machine automatically switches to Needle 5 and continues sewing as long as Automatic Start After Needle Change is checked. The color sequence changes from 1, 4, 7 to 1, 5, 7 and Needle 4 is avoided because its thread is broken. This continues until there is a thread break on a needle and there are no threaded backup needles left. At this point the machine stops. There are now two courses of action:
Re-thread the current needle and push Start. The machine continues sewing on the current needle.
Re-thread ALL broken needles and reset the redundant needles. The reset is accomplished by pressing the Hoop and Color keys at the same time on the keypad. All thread breaks are reset and the color sequence goes back to the primary needles. The machine continues to sew on the current needle but reverts back to the primary needle when it uses that color the next time.
NOTE: The Reset Design command in AOS also resets the thread breaks for redundant needles.
See Color Groups for more information.