Some useful information and controls are hidden away in the Settings Panel. To see them,press the Settings Key on the Control Panel (circled in red in the photo below):
You’ll come to the first page of settings. You can cycle through the various options by pressing the > (next) and < (previous) keys.
The available options are:
Screen 1
- Needle Position – Up or Down: Sets the position of the needle when the machine stops.
- Width Control – On or Off: If this setting is “Off,” the sewing speed controller is used to change the speed of the stitching. If you turn it “On,” you can use it to quickly and easily adjust the width of the stitch while you’re sewing. This is useful for creating decorative stitches. In this case, you need to use the foot controller to control the speed of sewing. This function is only used for sewing because in embroidery the stitch width is controlled by the design itself. For more details, see page 58 in the Operation Manual.
Screen 2
The first two settings on this screen control the type of information that is displayed during embroidery. The choices are:
- Needle Count. The LCD display shows the current stitch number / total stitches while embroidering. The stitch number is useful to know in case something happens during the embroidery. Then you can fix the problem, back up a few stitches and start stitching again. If you have to turn the machine off, note this number and you can advance by color and/or by stitch to get back where you were without having to start over.
- Number of Color. Displays the thread color number. When this is selected, you can choose the brand of thread with the second line of settings. This is only useful if you use one of the thread brands in the list.
- Name of Color. Thread color name. I don’t find this very useful because I use a different brand of thread than it knows about. So it maps the color information to Brother’s thread colors and always gets it wrong.
- Time. I’ve never used this and don’t really know what it is.
The third line on this screen lets you change the units from inches to millimeters (mm) (1 cm = 10 mm if you need to convert from centimeters).
Screen 3
- Buzzer. On or Off. By default, the machine is set to beep once whenever you press a control or beep more times if there’s an error. You can turn the beeps off here.
- Initial Position. Sets whether the embroidery pattern is positioned in the center (default) or lower left of the embroidery frame when you select a pattern. You can change the position for each design using the Adjust > Layout functions.
- English. You can change the language to many others.
Screen 4
You can change the brightness of the LCD display.
Screen 5
- NO. This is the machine ID which is unique to your machine and is different than the machine serial number. It is used to license designs from Brother’s ibroidery.com site to your particular machine.
- Version: The version of the software in the Brother SE400.
I could find hardly any information about the settings in the manual. So I hope this helps.
I really liked your blog post. Really looking forward to read more. Great. Isis Andras Cordle
Hi! My new to me se 400 just showed me something I think is odd. I have a 1/4 foot on the machine, my speed is always set at medium – when i went to sew with it after taking a break from sewing – the needle hits the foot….trying to figure out how to move the needle I discovered that the speed setting moves the needle ?? Is that weird? I tried to move it using the touch screen by touching center rather than left, but nothin happens…I just stumbled across the fact that the speed setting moves the needle. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks for your posts, they have help me adapt to this machine a LOT!
I have the SE 400 and I am having so much trouble with the tension. I finally got the bobbin to not show on top but now my thread color shows on the bottoms as much as it does on the top. I have tried every number on the tension wheel and have tighten the boo in and loosen it so many time. Can you help and tell me what to do?