On Wednesday, April 22, 2009 4:17:37 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Anyone know how these old singer foot pedals work? There's not much
to this thing, but I can't for the life of me figure out how it's
supposed to work!

The one I have contains a long ceramic tube filled with a stack or
maybe 100 graphite disks. One end connects to the sewing machine
motor (I assume), and at the other end there's a contact that's
brought closer to and eventually touching the contact on the end of
the tube as the foot pedal is depressed.

The foot pedal was dropped and I'm trying to repair it, but so far I
can't get any variable speed out of it - I get either off (when the
contact isn't touching the end of the graphite-disc-tube) or ON-HIGH
when the contact touches the end of the graphite-disc-tube.

Sorry for the miserable description - it's been about a month since I
had the thing apart - just figured I'd post here to see if anyone had
any suggestions.

thanks!

-Pete

My wife has a 35 year old Singer with the same type of speed control. Hers developed the same problem several years ago and increasing the disc tension slightly fixed the problem. If yours is unserviceable how about an old time sewing machine store? We have a guy around here that's been in the vacuum cleaner business since Columbus came over. He has a supply of old vacuums from day one. Perhaps you might be able to find someone like that who may have one of these just collecting dust. I would have to agree with Jeff about not using a PWM type of speed control. For the same reason I never put one on my 1953 Lionel train set. Lenny