New Machine

[Boomer]

We are waiting on the Delivery of our new machine.Wish us luck.We are adding this to our line of Digital Vinyl Printing and Sign business. We will be able to offer Digitizing when we get up and running. If we can help in any way in Signs,Decals,Banners or Digitizing let us know.

[veena]

Just Curious,

You said you are getting your machine. How long have you been digitizing?

[Steve]

If this is your first embroidery machine, I would suggest putting your efforts towards learning embroidery, hooping, clothing lines, DesignShop and the Amaya OS. Once you have mastered those, then move into digiting. It will be complete overload if you attempt to learn everything in a weeks training.

[levelbest]

Great advice Steve! We did the same thing - spent the first few years perfecting our embroidery skills, selling, building the business and outsourced the digitizing.

[Boomer]

We have not been digitizing with embroidery but the programs that we have to use in our vinyl graphics are similiar. We have to change files to get it to a file that supports our cutters/plotters and printers. So the learning curve to digitize will be a short jump for us.Not to say we won't have some headaches but the learning curve should be easier. Thanks for the advice. Will keep it in mind.

[oldkush]

Sounds like you may be using CorelDraw or Illustrator for your vinyl business to create your vector images and plan on possibly using one of the vector capable "auto-digitizing" embroidery programs to create your embroidery designs.

Will you be using DesignShop or have you decided to go with something like DRAWings or Pulse Fusion ? If you are depending on auto-digitizing to create most of your designs, the truth is ....... auto-digitizing does have some serious limitations and should only be considered as a tool, certainly not the answer to all your digitizing needs.

I do not mean to discourage you but the learning curve to create quality embroidery designs may be considerably steeper than you believe. I'm not saying that you can't do it ... but there is much more to digitizing than buying the software and knowing which buttons to click. A good digitizer will need to fully understand embroidery basics [stitch densities, underlay stitching, push-pull effect, stitch length, different stitching requirements for different materials, types of stitches, pathing, detailing techniques, etc]. Will you know when to lengthen or shorten stitch lengths ? or Know the different requirements needed for a cap design as opposed to one which will be stitched on fleece ? or Understand the type of underlay stitching and it's density to use for a particular job / material ?

For most people, the ability to be able to consistently produce quality embroidery designs takes years of experience and knowledge. I have been doing it for 5 years and now consider myself good but certainly not great ..... there are others in this group who could make me look like a
beginner.

As others have already suggested, take the time to learn to run, service and maintain your Amaya first. Once you are comfortable with the machine, then tackle the digitizing. If you go into digitizing expecting to have a handle on all you need to know in a matter of weeks or months, you will likely be disappointed.

Good luck

Bob

[Boomer]

Thanks for all the(discouraging?) advice,We don't expect to master everything the first week (we were shooting for the second!)But we have been reformatting files to make them a cuttable object for a couple of years.The programs we won't have any trouble with.Yes we will have to learn more about embroidery but we WILL learn.We want to give our customers the best quality possible.Which is why we purchaces an AMAYA.Thanks in advance for any help.

[Judy]

The best piece of advice I could give you would be -- visit your local fabric shop, hit the clearance table or remnants section, and get a yard or so of different types of fabrics---polyester, double knit, denim, fleece, flannel, lightweight cotton, heavyweight. Try different types of designs on different fabrics. You'll learn a lot about density, fabric thickness, material feed, thread feed (same thing, diferent terms) backings, hooping, water soluable, wash away, cut away, and tear away stabilizers, sticky spray....HAVE FUN!

[Boomer]

Thanks Judy for the advice,we we're going to do that. We had to some testing when we started doing graphics.Also my wife says Hi from a former Santa Rosa girl.

[signman]

Take it from me...I've been doing vector lineart for graphics work for over 15 years...and thought the same thing-jumping into digitizing and embroidery would be easy because I 'thought' the programs were similar. Guess again! It isn't that easy-its a whole new animal to tame. My recommendation-which was not what we were told to do-is to IMMEDIATELY go to NJ and get the week of beginner training, then get DIGITIZING training and advanced embroidery training either in NJ or Denver-if you are going to offer digitizing you are going to need a LOT of training or you will spend unneccesary HOURS trying to do simple digitizing!
I thought it would be easy....until I spent about 2 weeks to do ONE intense logo!