Cheryl, you were right on with the diagnosis...Sue took a chance and called Melco...and got right through to a tech. They walked her through and found that the presser foot was bent (explaining the off center needle), had to manually move the needle head (it was 'blocked' in stepper window of maintainence) and blow out more stuff. Problem we run into with hats-if something goes wrong and we have to restart on a hat, we can't 'recenter' the hoop-we usually have to physically center each hat on the hoop using the controls-to get the image dead center on the real hat center. Once we do this-if the design is reset-the hoop goes back to 'home center' and not where we lined it up. Guess we have to run another hundred hats to screw up before we get used to it! Roland