Cleaning & Oiling Your Machine

Remove hardware

Before you start your machine cleaning, remove the needle, presser foot, stitch plate, and bobbin case from your machine. Removing these accessories will give you better visibility for cleaning and make access to certain hardware that should be maintained.

Sewing Machine Love and Care - remove needle

Clean the cutter

Many of our newer machines have an automated thread cutter. This will sometimes leave thread snip debris in the hook area and occasionally some thread gets stuck in the cutter. It is easy to clean this device.

Sewing Machine Love and Care - remove stitch plate

Go into your Setup display and select “Machine settings.”

Sewing Machine Love and Care - machine settings

Then select the “Cleaning/Update” icon.

Sewing Machine Love and Care - clean update

Now select the brush icon to clean the thread catcher.

Sewing Machine Love and Care - thread catcher icon

Touch the link to move the thread catcher out. This will open the cutter up and leave it parked open so that you can remove threads caught in the cutting mechanism.

Sewing Machine Love and Care - thread catcher link

Sewing Machine Love and Care - clean thread catcher

Once you have removed debris from the thread cutter, select the link on screen to move the thread catcher in. You can then take a soft brush to remove lint and clean the feed dog.

Sewing Machine Love and Care - brush feed dog

Oiling the Machine

Now you can turn your machine off to lubricate the hook. Be sure to use the oil that comes with your machine, as this is lighter oil specifically for this hook system.

Open up the hook area and wipe everything down with a cloth. Remove the hook and oil the two felt pads inside the hook with one drop on each.

Sewing Machine Love and Care - oil felt pads

Place one drop of oil into the hook race as shown in the illustration. Do NOT add oil to the red marked reservoir under the stitch plate, as this can lead to over-oiling the machine.

Clean and oil your BERNINA machine

Once you have finished with oiling the hook and everything is back together, sew a few seams on a little on a scrap of fabric to absorb any excess oil.

 

Keep it Covered

When you are not using your machine, it is always a good idea to keep the machine covered. This protects the machine from sunlight and dust, or your four-legged feline friends who might have a thread fetish.

Sewing Machine Love and Care - dust cover