Industrial Sewing Machine

YourName

I hope people here might be able to help me.

A small charity has purchased some Cordura and Clear PVC that needs to be sown together (and maybe glued) to create a laptop cover, that will allow a laptop to be open and used while on water (I.e. on a river or out at sea).

We have shipped in the fabric from the UK however the person who was going to make this piece for us has now informed us that they only have a normal sewing machine, that would not be good enough to do this job and an Industrial Sewing Machine would be needed to do the job.

Would anyone here be able to help??? Or know someone that would???

looksee

Lord that sounds dodgy! Who will be held responsible if it leaks? I would have thought that sewing it - given that sewing inevitably produces holes - would not be the way to go, some sort of welding would be better, though that still leaves the question of how to create a closure.

Creating a row of holes in pvc is creating a weak seam that will split before long.

It also depends on how complex this cover is. A domestic machine should be able to handle a single layer of Cordura and pvc, but it sounds like trouble trying to create good, tidy joins even with an industrial machine. It would need some clever design to do it with minimum joins and multi-thicknesses.

If I were your machinist I would not take it on either

YourName

Well it won't actually be in the water, it will probably be under a big cover anyway, its really only to protect it against light rain when getting on and off the boat, to date the laptop is being used without a cover.

Ok, well the stitching was more to add a bit of strength, the idea was really to glue the seams to prevent and water ingress from there, we obviously wern't hoping to get a full seal with a few stiches. Do you use glueing at all??? And if so what would you recommend.

Obviously the machinist would not be held responsible for anything that went wrong or if it just didn't work out, this is just us trying to find a solution to a problem. We don't have much in the way of funding and we provide a service to the community which is highly sought after nationwide, this is something we need to do, as opposed to a little project, it should be a fairly simple design.

looksee

I think I was envisioning something more complicated than you are intending. Do you just mean a slip cover for the closed laptop which you will remove to use? Though you could easily buy something like that that would protect from a shower.

I don't know much about glue, tho I know there is some that is used for repairing things like inflatable dinghies and air beds, I think it is a solvent based glue you are looking for.

The Royal Scam

Are you just making a few of these or are they going to be high volume?

YourName

Just the one to be honest, I have enough material to make 2, but if it worked out and could be reasonably considered Water Resistant you never know, there could be a market.

But at the moment, I'm just looking for someone to help us out.

The Royal Scam

I have access to a few industrial machines and also some plastic welders I may be able to help you out. I'm doing the marathon on Monday so I will contact you by PM after that and maybe I can help, I will need to check the specifics. What is the charity by the way? If I can I'll be glad to help

YourName

Thats brilliant news, I'll send you out a PM now, thanks a million for your offer of support.