Monday, July 16, 2012
Digitizing an Embroidery Design…..Sans Artwork
Customers come to me from time to time with a shirt from an old embroidery to digitize from. They either have lost the stitch file or can’t get the file from the previous embroiderer and their customer says they don’t have any art….so they’re giving us an old shirt. Now depending on the customer and the quality of the embroidery on the shirt, this could be a problem. Here’s why:
Remember, the customer doesn’t know how all this works. They just know they want more shirts and while they seem nonchalant about the design details at the beginning, rest assured they will closely scrutinize the design once you’ve done it. Save yourself some time, sweat and trouble by addressing the issues of the design before you begin.
The first thing I find out in this situation, is what they liked and disliked about the design on the garment….size, detail, colors, placement, everything. There’s no point in recreating the design exactly only to have them say they would like the font different or the shape of something changed. If they say they hated the whole thing (oh yes, it’s happened) press for artwork so you can start fresh.
You also should press for artwork if the shirt is distorted or warped in some way (like from multiple washings) and the design or lettering is crooked and puckered. It will take much more work to get everything straight without something straight to work from. Obviously, there had to be artwork somewhere, at some point, for the design to be done originally. Without artwork, the very fine details of the design are difficult to see and duplicate, especially from a poorly digitized design. 75% of the time, if you say you’re going to need artwork to move forward, they’ll magically be able to find it.
Conversely, I usually ask if the customer has had their logo digitized before. I’ve digitized designs from artwork only to have the customer tell me that it doesn’t look like the shirts they had previously done. Turns out the last design was either done from different artwork or was altered for the embroidery process in some way. Since I can’t recreate a design I haven’t seen, we have to start fresh, which wastes time and money.
Once you know what the customer really wants the final result to be, you can work accordingly, correcting your design to change the things they hated and recreating what they liked about it.
Customers still think what we do is somehow magical or that art gets fed into the computer and just squirts out a design on the other side. {Those are the $25 flat rate people :)} They don’t realize the technical knowledge it takes to program quality embroidery designs. It’s your job to guide them through the process and make sure they get what they want. Our job is to be in your corner and provide you with professional digitizing! Contact NeedleUp when you need stellar embroidery designs that enhance your efficiency.
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NeedleUp Digitizing LLC is owned and operated by Donna Lehmann, a 20yr veteran of the embroidery/digitizing industry. She can be reached at NeedleUp, donna@needleup.com or 303-287-6633 for digitizing, consultation and classes M-F.
Monday, June 18, 2012
The Cost of Creativity
It’s no big news that the embroidery industry is a very creative place, but realize from a business standpoint, it’s a highly technical place too.
If you’re a hobbyist, the creative side is most important to you and you probably have never gone too far down the road to figuring your business expenses and the cost of doing business.
First, list all your expenses for a year’s time. Everything from turning on the lights (if you have a shop) to yearly fees and subscriptions/memberships, supplies, office expenses, web cost (if you have a website) and any help (bookkeeping, accountant, web designer) everything…if you spend money on it, related to your business, count it.
Divide this total, breaking it into a monthly expense by dividing by 12 or a weekly expense dividing by 52 (weeks/year). This way you can see exactly how much work and money you need to bring in each week to break even. This is not profit, just cost to do business. If you want to know your daily “break even”, divide that weekly total by how many days you work per week. This can be scary and make you feel a bit pressured but it’s good to know.
Now, whatever this daily total is, you know that you have to exceed this to be “in the black”. You need to start pricing jobs by how long it will take you to do them, start to finish. How much do you need to make per hour? If an extra step is added, such as re-bagging the garments, the price needs to go up. To figure running time for a design: stitch count divided by machine running speed SPM (stitches per minute) = # of minutes to run. In this way, you can figure how many hours you will need to complete your order whether you have a multi head or a single head.
If you are a one person shop, it gets more difficult because you wear all the hats, i.e.: receptionist, production manager and machine operator. You can go a long way to being efficient if you schedule and organize your time. Don’t let the phone interrupt your production 50 times a day. If you have to, schedule call backs for a certain time each day and tell your customers exactly what you’re doing. If they understand that you will call them back and that you’re not letting other customers interrupt you while doing their orders, they will feel special and appreciate your attention to their jobs. Doing this will make you more efficient at the machine.
If you are a multi person shop, these figures can help you keep up with whether you can afford that new machine, an extra person to help or get another machine operator. Just so you know, a good machine operator averages around 35,000 stitches per hour.
This industry is a wonderful and creative way to make a living; you just have to be smart about your business costs and pricing. Cut expenses where you can to raise your profit margin and compete not only on pricing but quality and customer service.
Focus your time on the production and your customers and let NeedleUp take care of the digitizing for you! You’ll get professional designs that will run efficiently every time which will get you through your order faster and grow your profits exponentially.
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NeedleUp Digitizing LLC is owned and operated by Donna Lehmann, a 20yr veteran of the embroidery/digitizing industry. She can be reached at NeedleUp, 303-287-6633 for digitizing, consultation and classes M-F.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Machine Issues VS Design Problems
Embroidery problems are a pain in the…. BUT, learning to diagnose whether the problem is with the machine or the design will take you a long way past the frustration.
We’ve all been there; you just want to get the job finished and out the door and move on to the next one waiting, deadlines and all. That, of course, is when the gremlins visit and slow down the whole bit. Being able to discern where the problem is gets you quickly back into production.
Let’s start with registration problems. We can determine whether the problem is machine or design as long as we’ve taken care of a few pre-production things:
Hooping: On flats, always check that the design is hooped properly, meaning using the correct stabilizer and insuring that it is completely captured in the hoop all the way around and the fabric is taut but not stretched. Some cases may require an extra piece of backing and that can be tested quickly by adding it on the next run to see if it makes a difference.
On hats: registration is even a touchier point and some hat frames will fight you to be able to get the hat tight in the frame and it may take a few clips on the frame to help hold the hat. Always use your needle plate designed specially for hats to limit the amount of flagging under the needle.
Once you’ve assured these initial steps, the problem is either the design itself or the machine.
Design: Digitizing issues will be fairly consistent. If the design doesn’t line up, say a border around a fill, by just a bit, it’s probably the design and it just needs to be adjusted. If it is way, WAY off, check your hooping. Designs are created with compensation for the fabric push and pull in mind. If the fabric is moving way more than the digitizer expected, the result will be poor. (This is why we ask what type of fabric the design will be used for) For hats, the design needs to be digitized specifically for hat application and should sew center out and bottom up. Without the proper pathing, a design may bubble or ripple against the center seam and cause puckering.
Machine: Check the frame arms to be sure they’re tight and that the hoop arms are seated tightly in the frame. Cap frame bands should be tight across the hat with no movement possible once the frame is clasped shut. Assure that the pantograph is moving freely and not catching or bumping anything while sewing. Distortion such as a line of text that “smiles” or “frowns” means the hat is moving and pulling in when sewn.
Thread breakage is the other usual obvious problem. These are a bit easier to diagnose. If the thread breaks in the same spot of the design every time, it’s a digitizing problem. There may be stitches that are too close together. If it seems to happen virtually anywhere in the design, you have a machine problem, could be tension issues or needle burs (snapping or fraying). One exception is a “false thread break” where the machine will unthread after a trim. Even though this may happen in the same spot, it’s not the design. It could be the machine’s trimmers are acting up or the tension is way too tight.
Use your deductive reasoning. One thing to think about is if you’ve used this design before successfully, what has changed? If the design sewed well previous, is it a different fabric/application? Different brand of hat? Different weight or brand of thread? If it’s a new design, was it digitized for the fabric/application you are trying to sew? Are you hooping it properly? Checked needles?
Talk to the digitizer and get some input. If it’s a design issue, the best way is to show the digitizer exactly what the design is doing is by scanning the resulting embroidery and let the digitizer see exactly what needs to be edited and by how much. A good digitizer will recheck their design and adjust the stitch file to fix the issues. (There’s that customer service thing again!)
Once you get good at diagnosing problems, you’ll be able to get sewing again much faster with less hair loss!
***********************
NeedleUp Digitizing LLC is owned and operated by Donna Lehmann, a 20yr veteran of the embroidery/digitizing industry. She can be reached at NeedleUp, 303-287-6633 for digitizing, consultation and classes M-F.
We’ve all been there; you just want to get the job finished and out the door and move on to the next one waiting, deadlines and all. That, of course, is when the gremlins visit and slow down the whole bit. Being able to discern where the problem is gets you quickly back into production.
Let’s start with registration problems. We can determine whether the problem is machine or design as long as we’ve taken care of a few pre-production things:
Hooping: On flats, always check that the design is hooped properly, meaning using the correct stabilizer and insuring that it is completely captured in the hoop all the way around and the fabric is taut but not stretched. Some cases may require an extra piece of backing and that can be tested quickly by adding it on the next run to see if it makes a difference.
On hats: registration is even a touchier point and some hat frames will fight you to be able to get the hat tight in the frame and it may take a few clips on the frame to help hold the hat. Always use your needle plate designed specially for hats to limit the amount of flagging under the needle.
Once you’ve assured these initial steps, the problem is either the design itself or the machine.
Design: Digitizing issues will be fairly consistent. If the design doesn’t line up, say a border around a fill, by just a bit, it’s probably the design and it just needs to be adjusted. If it is way, WAY off, check your hooping. Designs are created with compensation for the fabric push and pull in mind. If the fabric is moving way more than the digitizer expected, the result will be poor. (This is why we ask what type of fabric the design will be used for) For hats, the design needs to be digitized specifically for hat application and should sew center out and bottom up. Without the proper pathing, a design may bubble or ripple against the center seam and cause puckering.
Machine: Check the frame arms to be sure they’re tight and that the hoop arms are seated tightly in the frame. Cap frame bands should be tight across the hat with no movement possible once the frame is clasped shut. Assure that the pantograph is moving freely and not catching or bumping anything while sewing. Distortion such as a line of text that “smiles” or “frowns” means the hat is moving and pulling in when sewn.
Thread breakage is the other usual obvious problem. These are a bit easier to diagnose. If the thread breaks in the same spot of the design every time, it’s a digitizing problem. There may be stitches that are too close together. If it seems to happen virtually anywhere in the design, you have a machine problem, could be tension issues or needle burs (snapping or fraying). One exception is a “false thread break” where the machine will unthread after a trim. Even though this may happen in the same spot, it’s not the design. It could be the machine’s trimmers are acting up or the tension is way too tight.
Use your deductive reasoning. One thing to think about is if you’ve used this design before successfully, what has changed? If the design sewed well previous, is it a different fabric/application? Different brand of hat? Different weight or brand of thread? If it’s a new design, was it digitized for the fabric/application you are trying to sew? Are you hooping it properly? Checked needles?
Talk to the digitizer and get some input. If it’s a design issue, the best way is to show the digitizer exactly what the design is doing is by scanning the resulting embroidery and let the digitizer see exactly what needs to be edited and by how much. A good digitizer will recheck their design and adjust the stitch file to fix the issues. (There’s that customer service thing again!)
Once you get good at diagnosing problems, you’ll be able to get sewing again much faster with less hair loss!
***********************
NeedleUp Digitizing LLC is owned and operated by Donna Lehmann, a 20yr veteran of the embroidery/digitizing industry. She can be reached at NeedleUp, 303-287-6633 for digitizing, consultation and classes M-F.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Editing your Embroidery Machine Designs Properly
With regard to digitizing, ever wonder how stitch files work? The original file holding the digital information for the design is actually a master coded file with all sorts of info about everything from how close the stitches are (density) to color breaks, stitch angles, trim commands, pull compensation and many other codes that tell the embroidery machine what to do. This file is a condensed (wire-frame) master file in a format native to the software and can only be read by someone else with the same software. This file is not the file that is read by the embroidery machine.
The stitch file that sews the design on the machine is saved from that master file and is in an expanded format the machine can read. It carries no coded information and is merely a list of stitch points telling the needle where to sew.
For this reason, changes to the design should be made to the original master so the integrity of the design stays intact. Once the changes are made, the stitch file version of the design is rewritten.
All this explanation is to tell you that each time you make changes to a stitch file without going back to the master, the design deteriorates a bit when the embroidery software tries to recreate the codes upon opening the design up in the software. Some coding is invariably lost, even if you open the stitch file up in the same software it was created in. Over time, this results in poor embroidery. It’s always better to return to the original master file format to make changes or go back to the person who created the master for changes.
This is not to say that editing expanded stitch files is not possible, however, there will most likely be more editing and recoding needed to get quality results. As always, turn to a trusted digitizer with the skills to help you properly.
Do you have customers that would like to change/edit their embroidery files and you don't have the original? We do that! When you’re looking for a digitizer, call NeedleUp. We have over 20 years in the commercial embroidery business! 303-287-6633 NeedleUp Digitizing ©2002 A USA company
The stitch file that sews the design on the machine is saved from that master file and is in an expanded format the machine can read. It carries no coded information and is merely a list of stitch points telling the needle where to sew.
For this reason, changes to the design should be made to the original master so the integrity of the design stays intact. Once the changes are made, the stitch file version of the design is rewritten.
All this explanation is to tell you that each time you make changes to a stitch file without going back to the master, the design deteriorates a bit when the embroidery software tries to recreate the codes upon opening the design up in the software. Some coding is invariably lost, even if you open the stitch file up in the same software it was created in. Over time, this results in poor embroidery. It’s always better to return to the original master file format to make changes or go back to the person who created the master for changes.
This is not to say that editing expanded stitch files is not possible, however, there will most likely be more editing and recoding needed to get quality results. As always, turn to a trusted digitizer with the skills to help you properly.
Do you have customers that would like to change/edit their embroidery files and you don't have the original? We do that! When you’re looking for a digitizer, call NeedleUp. We have over 20 years in the commercial embroidery business! 303-287-6633 NeedleUp Digitizing ©2002 A USA company
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