Embroidery Machine Potentiometer Repair

There is a component in the machine that manages the color change to correspond with the machines computer and it is called the Potentiometer.

When a potentiometer is going bad usually it will miss the proper needle by 1 (You program the machine to sew needle 8 and it sews needle 7 instead) The fact that yours is missing it by allot can be caused by another possibility. I have a few questions that if you can answer will help me isolate weather it is the potentiometer or something else.

1) Did you recently have to remove the embroidery head for any reason
perhaps to change a reciprocator or to diagnose why the color change
system was jamming up?

2) Did you recently replace the potentiometer?

If you did have to remove the embroidery head for some reason, then you may have remounted the head with the wrong needle over the needle plate. If the machine was set to needle 8 when you removed the head, and then you remounted the head with needle 4 for example over the needle plate, then your potentiometer is still thinking you were on 8 and that is why it will not go to the correct needle entry.

If you did replace the potentiometer recently and did not set the potentiometer to reflect the current needle over the needle plate, then it will also be off.

If none of these ocurred, then it would be the potentiometer.