100 Hats?

[Sewfine]

Hello everyone!

My boss just gave me an order for 100 hats, design on front and names on the back. I am using an Amaya XT and it is taking me A LONG time to do. Between figuring out how to hoop, thread breaks and bobbin changes, Ive only been able to get the front done on 8 hats in 4hrs. Is this typical? We are a small shop with only one machine, I’m the only person that does the embroidery, and I only work less than 15hrs a week. At this rate it’s going to take over a month!

Should I tell my boss that its not possible to complete this job in a reasonable amount of time? Are there any other alternatives such as contracting out the work to another full time shop?

Thanks for the help!

[Steve]

Aaron from Sargent stitches has a multihead machine and he is in OR. You can find his name in the member list. I'm not sure if he still monitors this board like he used to.

[Wayne]

Depending on the stitch count.
If you are only doing 2 per hour you must have about a 12,000 stitch count design.
At the rate you are going I would say it will take you 50 hours just for the fronts and about another 25 or so hours to do the back.

You may want to get someone near by that has 3 or 4 heads to do this job for you.

[signman]

I farm out any order over 24 or so...Pat has 15 amayas north of us in Vermont and can turn around a 200 piece order in one morning.
But being on the other side of the country-probably not convenient for you. Your boss doesn't have a clue how long it takes to do anything on the amaya time wise, does he!

[3DEmbroidery]

It is not typical for an Amaya to take that long to stitch a cap. What is your stitch count? Is the design you are stitching made for caps? Maybe the design is set up to dense, and that could be cousing the thread breaks

[Sewfine]

The stitch count is 9200 and I have it set at 850spm. The design was given to me already digitized by the customer from some hats she had done awhile ago and the sample hats from the same file look great so Im sure the design was digitized correctly.

I taught myself how to use the machine, and have only done a few small cap orders in the past so I knew it would take alittle longer than normal.

[signman]

Do you have extra hat hoops so you can be hooping one while another one sews? On the XT, 9200 stitches (and don't trust the digitizing to be perfect UNLESS it was digitized FOR the Amaya) should take 10-12 minutes to sewout. With another hat hooped and ready to go, you should be able to get 5-6 per hour done. Even at that speed-doing 100 is NOT cost effective and you are looking at 20 hours at least! I just got in a flier from an american supplier-flex fit hats with up to 14,000 stitches- $3.50 PER HAT....72 piece minimum! And only $20 setup. That's up to 3 locations on the hat. So it pays to outsource orders like this if you don't have multiple heads.

[Sewfine]

Thank you everyone for the advice! I found a shop with 20 machines that is willing to do them at a much cheaper price than I can.