Patent 7428876 was granted and assigned to Groz-Beckert on September, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A needle holder (7) is provided, in particular, for industrial sewing machines, in which sewing machine needles having different needle gauges and preferably different cylindrical shanks or shafts are supported or held in such a manner that they can be adjusted in a transverse direction. This permits an adjustment of the relative position between the sewing needle (4) and the gripper (6), without requiring an adjustment of the gripper position and/or the needle guard position.