How to use your embroidery machine more efficiently

We’ve seen this happen time and time again: embroidery businesses delaying their deadlines due to improper utilization of their equipment.

What do we mean by utilization? Let’s take a very popular machine embroidery request as an example: sports jerseys.

Sports jerseys share common characteristics. They usually share an identical logo on an identicalshirt type that is then accompanied by differing sets of numbers with different names. And there are a lot of them, at one time.

In order to accomplish this feat in the best way possible, you will need to distribute the work among multiple embroidery machines, simultaneously. Here’s what we mean.

First, you will want to run one design to use as a sample for your customer. Samples are crucial in the embroidery world because they take some of the liability off of you as a shop owner and put it onto the client when they approve the sample.

Let’s say that you are accustom to receiving these types of large orders and already own a six-head embroidery machine, much like our CHT-1506 and an MT-1501 (our 15-needle, one-head machine).

You will want to run the sample on the single-head machine, not the six-head machine, because the six-head machine, or any machine with more than one-head, can only run a single, identical design on each head. Running one design on a six-head will deem the other five-heads unusable at the time that you are running the sample. Here’s how the process should work.

Use the single-head machine to run samples of work, that way, if you have other orders, the six-head machine can run those orders at that time. After the sample has been approved, run the identical logo on all six heads of the six-head CHT-1506 on all six jerseys.

Once the jerseys are finished embroidering, move one jersey at a time onto your single-head machine to embroider the individual names and numbers. As soon as the six-head machine is freed, immediately utilize it to run another set of six jerseys. This way, the machines are being utilized to their full potential.

Anytime a machine is idle, you are not making money. We want to make sure that you are educated on the systems that will allow you to generate more revenue. Keep in mind that a single head machine, although great for startups and small businesses, will not be able to keep up with the demand of a growing company.

In our experience, most startup businesses usually purchase a multi-head machine after two years of opening their business. As your business scales, the need of a single-head and multi-head combo becomes more important to maximize utilization and therefore your profits.