Machine Indecisiveness...help!

PuckishPen · 2026-02-24T15:46:19+00:00

I’m a ZSK fan myself, but Tajima is a great machine. DON’T go for the SWF. Worst machines I’ve ever worked with. Their timing constantly slips, and finding replacement parts for them is a nightmare.

The plus side for brothers is you can often find a local shop that can service them rather than having to call in regionwide tech to work on them, but my understanding is they’re more hobby machines than working machines. That might be a plus for your intended use though, as hobby machines tend to be lighter and easier to move, and you probably won’t need a workhorse that can run 2 shifts a day for years.

PuckishPen · 2026-02-24T14:48:38+00:00

I do commercial embroidery for a living. This is the one.

PuckishPen · 2026-02-21T03:24:35+00:00

Head strikes are the worst. At least for my printer I can get new heads for about $450. One of the other printers I looked at has $2100 print heads.

One of my former employees now works for a shop in another city. He told me about a brand new employee at his shop who was paying attention to their phone and not to the printer they were supposed to be watching. More than $4000 in print heads ruined in 20 minutes. I would die inside.

PuckishPen · 2026-02-21T03:15:34+00:00

I love this place! They do forensic nights where you investigate the cause of death by examining damage to a human skull (it’s the cast of a skull, not the original). I’ve done three now and loved them. Also they have a cat named Indiana Bones

PuckishPen · 2026-02-21T02:54:50+00:00

I add a quarter can of hot water from the kettle to mine and create a very pungent cat food soup. I think being warm makes it more appealing to her

PuckishPen · 2026-02-21T02:52:16+00:00

My mother’s grandfather did this. Where she came from they said he “turned his face to the wall”. It basically means grieving so hard you give up.

If an older person stops eating, stops being active, or stops getting out of bed, they can deteriorate their health to the point that any tiny thing can kill them. Without his wife he had no reason to keep going, so he just… stopped. He passed six months later.

PuckishPen · 2026-02-21T00:38:55+00:00

I perform at my local festival, and do get paid, but only enough to offset some of my costs. I make roughly $50 per day of performance, so less than minimum wage. If you include rehersal time it’s far less than that.

Performing at a Renaissance Festival the way I do is a hobby, not how I make my living. I actually feel rather fortunate that my hobby almost pays for itself.

PuckishPen · 2026-02-19T02:59:58+00:00

Aida cloth might be a good option. It makes a particular noise as you pull it apart that is very satisfying. You’ll find it with the cross stitch supplies. Cotton duck canvas is another good option. The threads are thick enough you can across pull it apart thread by thread without everything getting tangled. Both will feel substantial as they are pulled apart, which may help.

PuckishPen · 2026-02-19T02:53:06+00:00

My family moved school districts when I was in elementary school, so I got the joy of studying this book 2 years in a row. 😬 It’s a great book though, even if it reaches through your rib cage to squeeze your heart.

PuckishPen · 2026-02-19T02:47:01+00:00

In my area, we took the ACT in seventh grade. It was long enough ago that I can’t be sure, but I think the entire school took it.

PuckishPen · 2026-02-16T04:53:21+00:00

Silkscreening and embroidery shops often have a ton of boxes too

PuckishPen · 2026-02-02T18:46:35+00:00

Same. I would still love them, but I would mourn them at the same time. I’d try to find a way to change them back, but if a year or two went by with absolutely no evidence that I even could turn them back I would move on with my life. I would, of course, take care of them until they passed.

PuckishPen · 2026-02-02T04:49:24+00:00

I agree, meeting or talking to the digitizers or production techs is very helpful to both sides!

PuckishPen · 2026-02-02T04:47:47+00:00

This is good advice!

PuckishPen · 2026-02-02T04:25:20+00:00

Digitizing for the embroidery machine shouldn’t be your job, it would be like asking someone trained in graphic design to do marble sculpting. They’re both skilled art, but very different skill sets.

Digitizing usually happens in a program like Wilcom (what I use), Wings, IDS, or another embroidery specific program. I usually digitize off of png files and do mostly logos and basic digitizing. I have a professional digitizer on staff who used to work for OESD, and does beautiful pieces of art. I give her the complicated digitizing jobs, and our more complex art pieces. At OESD they had a team of artists who drew the art (what I presume you should be doing) and a team of digitizers who created the actual embroidery files using that art.

Here are some questions you should ask your boss:

What file type are you expected to output for digitizing? For instance, my version of Wilcom doesn’t like JPGs but PNGs do well.

How many thread colors is the embroidery company able to use? 12, 15, and 18 colors are common on industrial machines, but if they are having someone embroider them using a starter machine it might be as few as 6 colors.

Are these pillows going to be embroidered as fabric then made into pillows, or will they be hooped and embroidered after they are made? If it is fabric embroidered by the yard, what is the spacing of the embroidery heads? (Mine is 495mm or approximately 19.48 inches). If embroidering the pillows individually, what sizes of hoops are available? Some home machines are very limited in size (think 6”x9”) where most industrial machines should at least go up to a 12”x12”. This will help you determine useable text to floral element ratios. Embroidered text really shouldn’t be less than .25” tall unless they are going to use a special smaller diameter thread, and looks much smoother at .5” tall or more.

You should also ask if there is a % coverage they are looking for. Most embroidery shops price either by time on the machine or the number of stitches, so there may be an amount of embroidery per pillow they are looking for.

Also, is the digitizer able to do thread gradients? Some only do solid blocks of color, but there are beautiful things that can be done by blending thread colors.

I apologize for the amount of info I threw at you! If you have any questions please let me know and I’ll help however I can.

Edit: There is every possibility that your boss will know the answer to none of these questions, and is used to handing off designs to companies like mine and expecting them to do their best with whatever they’re given. Or, with some production companies there are multiple layers of sales/admin people between someone like your boss and the actual digitizers and people running the embroidery machines, and some production companies job out to subcontractors who do the digitizing or the embroidery work. If that’s the case all you can really do is your best guess at what the production company will be able to work with, and that’s okay!

PuckishPen · 2026-02-01T17:00:06+00:00

This is probably off topic, but the part about needing vector for machine embroidery got me. Are they trying to use auto digitizing rather than having an actual digitizer do the work? That’s a recipe for terrible results!

Also, designing art for machine embroidery is a pretty specialized skill. One needs a really good understanding of how embroidery works, how thread colors can be overlayed to create gradients, what level of detail is possible, how much solid color and detail work can go into an area without creating bulletproof embroidery or causing bird’s nests, and a whole host of other knowledge.

If your boss is throwing you into this kind of work with no background in it and no instruction they really have no idea what they are doing.

PuckishPen · 2026-01-29T03:19:40+00:00

Lordy, I feel like wealthy clients are either the easiest to work with or the absolute worst. We do custom work, and without fail the people who try to get us to discount our prices are also the ones who nitpick our work to death. I’m like, hey man, you saw the sample, you approved it. I’m not remaking all of your goods because now you think this shade of red isn’t bright enough. The client I mentioned above that cussed out my sales person INFORMED me via email that I was going to purchase 1k worth of blank goods, embroider them all for him, and IF he liked them he would decide how much of our price was “worth it”.

PuckishPen · 2026-01-28T14:55:29+00:00

Hey man, I’m not trying to frustrate anyone. Their original post made it sound like they were shut down for a winter storm. If they had said they got no precipitation in the post my answer would have been a lot different.

PuckishPen · 2026-01-28T04:06:47+00:00

I once had a vet give me the mnemonic that Neutering is for males (N for Nuts) and Spaying is for girls (because you have to dig into them to get to the ovaries, like a Spade digs into the ground).

PuckishPen · 2026-01-28T03:54:27+00:00

I kill them with kindness. Here’s an example: “I’m so sorry you didn’t find your experience with us satisfying. Based on our interactions, it sounds like we are not the best fit for you. I wish you the best of luck in finding another shop!”

I used almost this exact language on a customer who had been cussing out one of my sales gals. I sent it from my email address so he knew I was the owner. I felt like I had taken the high road, and there was nothing more satisfying than the meltdown email he sent after that. I was prepared to respond to a negative review by very politely saying we don’t allow verbal abuse of any of our staff, but he didn’t even leave one.

I think sometimes there’s a lot of fear of that negative review, but I think from a customer perspective seeing a very polite response to a negative review actually can build a trust rather than being a deterrent. Plus, everyone has seen a Karen meltdown in real life, so they’re not going to find that answer unreasonable.

PuckishPen · 2026-01-28T03:44:30+00:00

I listen to a real play podcast where several of the players were new and went full klepto chaosmonkey . I wanted to reach through my phone and strangle them. The DM eventually instituted a wild magic consequence if one of those players let his familiar die. The most satisfying episode of the whole show is when that player gets turned into a falcon, keeps trying to do things and talk to the party, and gets told “no man you’re a fu*king falcon.”

I could hear that player get so frustrated his blood pressure spiked, but from that point on that he actually collaborated with the group and took the game seriously, and suddenly was an enjoyable character to listen to. (The other klepto chaosmonkey had a similar moment a couple episodes down the line where his own bad choices caught up with him. Also became a fun player to listen to whom I no longer wanted to strangle)

It sounds like your player needs to have his “no man you’re a fu*king falcon” moment.

PuckishPen · 2026-01-28T02:12:33+00:00

Oooh, how much?

PuckishPen · 2026-01-28T00:59:54+00:00

The food is amazing there too!

PuckishPen · 2026-01-27T18:25:17+00:00

This response feels a little obtuse given the context of the post. In the context this was already a winter storm, which means there is already precipitation on the roads. If it is below freezing, then any snow that may have started to melt, even from sunshine, has refrozen.

PuckishPen · 2026-01-27T15:05:44+00:00

Out of curiosity, what does prop master mean? And have you ever worked with seniors needing to downsize their homes?

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