Taking embroidery in house

newguy

Hi!
We're a smallish wholesale company who wants to take our embroidery in house.We do bags, t shirts, kid stuff etc. We feel that by being able to do the embroidery ourselves it would help us in the design process,making samples, experimenting etc, as well as save us money on production. Most of our production runs are in the low 100's for shirts, onesies with relatively simple designs that are used with screenprinting.
The problem is we're having a hard time figuring out which machine to purchase,if we need one head or more, how fast these things go etc.
Any advice/recomendations or feedback would be AWESOME!
THANX!

jeff

Today's commercial embroidery machines have a maximum speed of up to 1,500 stitches per minute (spm). However, much a like a car, it's unlikely that you'll be using the maximum speed. Tajima & Barudan machines are 1,200 spm and the Amaya is 1,500 spm. I have Tajima machines, but I have plenty of experience with other brands of machines too. With ALL of them I've noticed that the quality of embroidery suffers when the speed is set to 1,000+ spm. I think it's just a matter of physics and not some sort of machine defect. I guess it's kind of a way for machine of different brands to say "Our machine goes as fast or is faster than our competitors!". A marketing thing I guess.

With all the machines I have experience with - Tajima, Barudan, SWF, & Melco - I find I get great results running the machine at 750 - 800 spm for regular logos on flats and 600 - 650 spm for caps. For complicated logos with tiny lettering, about 650 - 700 spm on flats. With tiny details, including lettering, it helps to also use a smaller sized needle. With a single head, embroidering average left chest logos on serveral hundred shirts regularly is not a good idea. I know, because I've done it :P. I finally purchased a multihead after suffering for a while! I now have 1 single head Tajima and a 1 six head Tajima.

The single head I use for samples and onsies while the four head is for large orders. It's the most efficient way I think. I can now do several hundred shirts a DAY. You can get a multihead head and do onesies too by enabling only one head, but you can't do onesies on all heads at the same time. You can also have several single heads for doing lots of onesies and also network all or several of the heads so that they function as a multihead. A dealership will be able to help you out more once you give them your production numbers. Get a popular brand from a reputable dealership! You can't go wrong with a Tajima or a Barudan. Customer service / tech support is as important as the machine so make sure you do business with a dealership you can count on and nearby. One more thing, farm out your digitizing or get a pro in house. Don't do it yourself unless your really love digitizing because it's not for everyone. Sorry for the long post.

newguy

Cool!
Thanx

jeff

That should be six head instead of four head. Where the hell did four come from? It must be because it's such a long post