I am looking into adding custom embroidery to my screen printing business and was wondering how many items (t-shirts and polo shirts mostly) can a single head commercial embroidery machine handle in a day? Let’s say the machine will run 8 hours a day. Thank You.
It all depends on the stitch count of the logo and the embroidery machine stitch speed. I have my machine running at 800 stitches per minute and the average stitch count of logos that I do in my niche is 6,000 stitches. So you can do the simple math there to give you an idea. But, you also have to take into account that the machine does not run at 800 stitches per minute constantly because of color changes, trimming, adjustments, and reloading shirts where the machine must stop.
By just dividing 6,000 by 800 you get 7.5 minutes. In an hour that’s 8 pieces which means it’s 64 pieces in 8 hours. However, remember that the machine can not be constantly at 800 spm as stated in the previous paragraph so I can be certain that I can never produce 64 pieces in 8 hours given my machine speed and the average stitch count of logos I embroider. I can probably do around 50 pieces in 8 hours.
It helps a lot if you have several hooped shirts already lined up for when the one being embroidered is done so you can just simply reload. Then you can do the finishing touches on the embroidered shirts while the machine embroiders the newly loaded shirt.
In your niche, the average logo/design could be less or more than 6,000 stitches and you may choose to slow or speed your machine’s stitch speed. I hope I’ve given you an overview of how you can have an idea on how many you can do.
I was just wondering how many pieces a single head can embroider today while doing my research when I came across this post. Thanks for answering my question!