The machine not only achieves higher productivity due to instantaneous increases/decreases in sewing speed at the beginning /end of sewing and increased speed of thread trimming, but also achieves a flexible responsiveness to materials to promise enhanced seam quality due to JUKI's unique active tension and programmable intermediate presser. The AMS-EN Series has been favorably received in the market because of its ease of use, achieved by the smooth setting of sewing material and the large-sized color liquid crystal touch panel. The following two additional models are now added to the Series: The AMS-224EN-4530 [450mm(X)×300mm(Y)] The AMS-224EN-6030 [600mm(X)×300mm(Y)] A newly developed encoder-controlled stepping motor system has been adopted for the X-Y feed mechanism. This contributes to more accurate sewing performance and increased productivity.

The machine performs various kinds of stitching, making the most out of its wider sewing area in various sewing applications such as attaching handles to bags and pouches, attaching belts, sewing many small parts at a time, attaching parts to shoes and sports shoes (one pair of shoes) and sewing air bags.

The AMS-224EN has been designed laying importance on electrical power saving for increased economization. The machine has adopted the direct-drive system utilizing a compact-sized AC servomotor to drive the machine head. It has also adopted an encoder control system which drives the stepping motor with a minimum electrical power according to the weight of the material and stitch length for the material-feeding X-Y drive. With these two systems, the average power consumption of the machine is reduced by 30% during operation and 45% during standby as compared with our conventional model (AMS-224C) which does not incorporate the encoder control system. *The graph provides a comparison between the AMS-224EN and AMS-224C when sewing shape tacking (approximately 1,000 stitches) of the upper parts of right and left shoes under the continuous sewing mode.

The position of the feed can be checked during sewing by means of the encoder-controlled X-Y drive stepping motor. This remarkably improves accuracy of the feed. As a result, deformation of a sewing pattern which is likely to occur when sewing at a high speed or sewing a heavy-weight material is significantly reduced.

Market-proven active tension has been introduced to the needle thread tension controller. With the active tension, pinpoint changes in the needle thread tension during sewing are enabled. The needle thread tension, therefore, can be set in conjunction with the material thickness and can be corrected according to the direction of sewing on a stitch-by-stitch basis through the operation panel. Since the needle thread tension is reproducible, supporting a broader range of sewing conditions, the time required for setup changing upon process changeover can be reduced.

With the programmable intermediate presser, the height of the lower dead point of the intermediate presser can be set according to the material thickness, thereby not only preventing troubles in sewing such as stitch skipping and thread breakage, but also protecting the sewing product from being damaged by the presser. The height setting can be changed with ease even during sewing. The machine finishes beautiful uniform seams free from stitch skipping even on multiple parts of the material by the ideal combination of the active tension and programmable intermediate presser.