How to change the battery in a KH930

Click on Pictures to enlarge the photo, these are large photos however if they are too large on this page it will slow down the load time.

IMPORTANT

Before starting read through the instructions and watch all videos before you go right into it. All YouTube links open in a new window.

CAUTION

DO NOT try to un-solder or solder the tabs from the bad battery or onto the new battery it might burst!

This is NOT the only way to replace a battery, this is just the way my husband chose to replace the battery. 

We chose to use wires, instead of cutting the soldering tabs and trying to shove them into the small holes. The battery in my machine was a size 2320, but we THINK you might be able to get away with any 3 volt coin battery. The link below with the battery is the battery I purchased, again we chose this as this was the exact battery we took out of the machine. We recommend a battery with the tabs built in. 

SOME, I need to stress this- SOME Radio Shacks will have the battery and solder clip you can use, NOT all Radio Shacks carry these items. SOME Radio Shacks may also fully replace the battery for you.

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MATERIALS

Screw Driver

Solder Iron

Solder

Damp Sponge

Solder Sucker or the Copper Braid for removing the solder

Battery with Solder tab (or battery and a clip type tab to solder to board)

OPTIONAL- 2 small wires

OPTIONAL- electrical tape

OPTIONAL- wire cutters

1. Remove the screws on both side of the electronic face, be sure to take your tools out and remove the mast. Wiggle the top until it pops off.

2. Remove all 6 cables, don't worry if you forget where they go, each one is a different size and can only go into its designated slot.

3. The next 4 pictures show the placement of the screws on the PC Board, remove the screws and set them aside.

4. Here you will see the ribbons that connect the touch pad to the PC Board, you can remove these as well if you think it will be easier to do the soldering.

5. This is showing the PC Board turned over, you will solder both of those metal knobs, depending on how your battery is placed in there you may need to solder from the top as well. 

If you need help learning how to solder please watch this video- 

Introduction to Soldering

Soldering Safety Tips

Soldering Iron Maintenance Tips

Tools for Soldering

Types of Soldering Irons

Types of Solder

Heating and Applying Solder

Removing Solder

Soldering Tips

6. Mine had the tab from the battery split so it would go through the holes on the PC Board and went through to the back of the board and was soldered on top and bottom of the board.

Here is the New Battery, you can purchase it here- New Battery

(these items ship via UPS and FedEX)

Here is the front of the board you need to make sure that you can see through both of the holes

7. Connecting the battery to the board. We chose to use 2 wires (can find it at any hardware or electronic stores), we did red for the positive side (top of battery) and black for the negative side of the battery. You will need to strip about 2-3" of the wire and wrap it around the holes in the solder tab. Solder both wires on the top and bottom of the battery.

8. You will now strip the other end of the wire about 1", then thread them through the holes matching the positive to the positive (+) on the board, fold the exposed wire over in the back and solder it down (make sure that the soldering doesn't come near any of the other components on the board).

The picture is somewhat blurry but it shows that the back is also soldered down, the red wire is folded over away from the other soldered piece next to it.

9. Take some electrical tape and tape it off to the side. If you need to replace the battery again, just cut the wires close to the battery and repeat step 7 from above, then tape it down.

10. Put the machine back together.

How to make Text without DAK for brother electronic machines

Here is what you will need-
WinCrea (http://knittsings.com/free-stitch-design-software-for-hand-and-machine-knitting-win_crea/)
FB100 Emulator & FB100 Utility 
Brotherlink Cable
Brother electronic machine

WinCrea is a free software originally designed for the Passap machines, this is a stand alone program and does not need to be installed. This also works with all versions of windows.

FB100 Emulator and FB100 Utility come with the Brotherlink Cable, however if you lost your disk you can find the link above that you can download these programs. The FB100 Emulator allows you to upload and download to your knitting machine just like the FB100 disk drive. The FB100 Utility allows you to make tracks, look at the designs in each track etc.

WinCrea can be some what finicky about how the design is layed out (the number of background sts must be more than the fair isle color, will get into more detail. This is a very easy program to use once you know how to use it.

For those who know how to use Wincrea these instructions may be over kill, but I want to be thorough  The directions for each picture will be ABOVE each picture.

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CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM

1) Open WinCrea, click on 'File' and click on 'New'

2) Put in the number of stitches and rows you need, feel free to put in more than needed as we may need to add rows later anyway.

3) Go to 'View' and click on 'Zoom in' until the graph is large enough for you

4) Once you have your graph large enough, you will have what is shown below

5) I prefer to change the background to a color, you don't have too. If you would like to change the background go to the 'Flood Fill' icon, shown in purple below, find your color then click on your graph

6) Now we are ready to draw, the top two icons in the 'Tool' box will draw. The first one will allow you to draw 1 square at a  time, the 2nd one will allow you to draw lines- you can drag the line so you don't have to click each square. Pick your color and draw in your design. 

7) Our name isn't centered, so lets fix that now. You will see the purple box below is on the 'Selection Rectangle' after you have that selected you will click on the top left corner of what you want to select and drag the box to over what you want to move/copy. We can't actually 'move' the items so we have to copy and paste it. Once you have the selection box around what you want to copy hit - ctrl+c to copy.

8) Now we need to paste the item, hit - ctrl+v to paste, it won't paste it right now. Wincrea will give you another selection box that you can move around. Use this box to find the center, once you are happy with it just click to paste the item. It will overlap what is already there so we will need to clean that up.

9) Here is what it should look like after you have pasted the name down.

10) Now to clean up the remaining items that are not needed, if you can't remember which color you chose for the background you can click on the 'Colour Pick-Up' tab, the one in purple below and click on the background color. 

11) Click on one of the drawing tools, and color in the unnecessary color

12) Click on the 'Flood Fill' and click on the unnecessary color/text that you want to color in the background color

13) We now need to click on the 'Twist' option in the Tool box, and click on your graph and it will flip it for you. All items MUST be backwards, if you are doing a top down item you will also need to use the 'Flip' tool. You could cut down the sides so the name is the only thing shown, however WinCrea is picky about the number of fair isle stitches versus the number of background color. If your fair isle stitches are greater than the background, Wincrea will assume the fair isle stitches are the background color.

14) Now it is time to create a track and check that you have enough background stitches. You MUST plug in your Brotherlink cable. Open FB100 utility and click on 'No Port'

15) The only option you will have is '4. Edit', if you have a Brotherlink Cable 7 then you will get all of the options. The Brotherlink Cable 7 allows direct downloads from the FB100 disk drive to your computer.

16) Click on 'New'

17) You will need to create a track now- put anything you want it doesn't matter, then hit save

18) Click 'Add', then find your machine and click on that

19) I have the KH940, so you will see it under 'Mode'. Click on 'Track 1' to highlight it, then click 'Edit'

20) Now you need to add your files, you can open the folder where your pattern is and drag and drop or you can click the 'Add' button.

21) Click on your pattern to highlight it, then clock on 'Show', you will get a design box as shown below. I changed my colors the default colors are blue for background and red for the design color, mine is blue for background and white for the design. Now it is necessary to check your design before you download it to your knitting machine. If you don't have enough background color you will see it here and with my colors it would be white background and blue letters. Your machine will ONLY select the White stitches so it is important that your fair isle stitches are the ones your machine selects. If you need to add more columns I will discuss that below.

22) If everything looks great Click 'Close', click 'Close' again, click 'Save'. Now you have to get all the way out of FB100 Utility before you can open FB100 Emulator. Keep your cable plugged in.

23) Now open FB100 Emulator, and click on 'Emulate'

24) Click 'On'

25) Click 'Load' and select your track, click ok

26) You will now see your loaded track, now it is time to turn on the knitting machine, click CE, 551, STEP, 1, STEP , once it is finished your machine will beep, you can check how many patterns you downloaded by hitting STEP and you will see the last pattern loaded, so if you downloaded 19 patterns you will see 919. To close the program hit 'Eject', then 'Off', now you can click the little red x to close it out. 

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Uh-oh, I didn't add enough columns to my pattern how do I add more rows and keep my item center?

Click on 'Edit' and go to 'Insert Columns and Rows', Now add the amount of Columns you want to add. The Columns will be added on the Left side of the graph and will push everything over. If you added a background color you can use the 'Flood Fill' to fill in that area. You will then repeat steps 7-12 above, your items should already be flipped but if it is not then do step 13 as well. 

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and happy knitting! 

Minnie Mouse Ears Headband/ Bridal

Tunisian Afghans Backing

I have been asked several times to explain how to do the back of a Tunisian Afghan. I don't currently have time to put together a video, but I will put one together as soon as I get my many WIP's finished.... including the partial Harry Potter afghan shown in the lower section of this post. I didn't get pictures of the backs of the first 2 afghans but it looked the same as the Harry Potter Afghan.

Click on photos to view a larger size for more details

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This afghan was made for a 2 year old girl, as you can see our dear Rocky (RIP June 2010) just had to be in the picture, you can see the scaling of the afghan a little bit. I believe this one measured roughly 45"X60".

This shows the finished piece.

This picture shows the border stitch used on this afghan.

This next picture shows the back of my afghan after I hand quilted it on.

This one shows a close up of the blanket stitch I used to attach the edges of the flannel with the outside of the afghan. Also a close up of the quilting. The blanket stitch goes through the flannel and then also goes through the back stitches of the afghan, then I just crochet through the blanket stitch and the afghan to put the border on.

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This is the first Backed Tunisian Afghan. This is a double bed/queen size afghan. This was made for a 9year old boy (well now he is 11) and he absolutely LOVED it.

This is the completed afghan. I actually just made the graph for the center piece only, after I had it 75% completed I realized that it was too narrow so instead on ripping it out, I added the side panels. This was challenging but I was very happy with the over all look of the piece. There were no seams on the underside after I connected the two side pieces.

This shows the front with the back on the other side.

Here is the backing, This is orange with a blue stripe around the edges in flannel.

Here is a close up of the type of quilting I did on this afghan, with the side and border. I did the same blanket stitch that I did with the Princess Aurora Afghan above.

Close up of the border and blanket stitch.

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Here is the Harry Potter Afghan, it is about 60% completed. Yes I have dogs so yes something this large is bound to have doggie hair all over it. I wash all afghans prior to backing, I then wash them again after I complete the afghan and get pictures of it.

Here is the front on the piece and you can see the over all size of this afghan, our foster gsd Lance is enjoying himself on this afghan.... I can't seem to put an afghan down and not have a dog in the picture. Since this is to show the back I figured it wouldn't matter if there was a dog in the picture.

Here is the back, and when I get finished it will look the same, I won't touch any of the tails and will just cover it with flannel. If you want to sew in the ends you may do so. Tunisian afghans weren't meant to be completely reversal-able like crochet afghans. So you will see where you changed colors just like in a knit afghan. If you knit you will change colors in the same manner.

This shows you that I tied on the end on the bottom left then just used the one strand to go up and when I was finished with that color or section I just cut it off and tied the end.

I do carry my yarn and this shows a section of carried yarn. If I were to weave in the ends I would not carry yarn on the back.

This picture shows the color change around the edges, each section of color has it's own ball of yarn. You need to twist the yarn around each other to prevent holes. I do think I show how to do color changes in my Tunisian video on YouTube.

For an example, if I didn't twist the yarn around each other at a color change, I would have a HUGE hole right where the gray is straight for about 10 rows below.

Some more close ups.

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I never carry the yarn more than 10 stitches even when I am backing the afghan as the floats are too large on the back and I would hate to snag it when I putting the backing on.

Again these types of afghans are not meant to be reversible, like a crocheted picture afghan can be. There will be traces of the color change on the back, if you don't your afghan will have LOTS of holes for little fingers to get into and can get stuck so be careful about holes.

There are several ways of doing a backing such as using yarn and just tieing the afghan (you see these on a lot of old quilts, that don't have quilting done on them (guilting is the type of sewing).

I do hope this helps even a little bit.