Computer-Controlled Embroidery Machines?

Togashi Heiwa asks: "I've been looking at doing some embroidery for a project I am working on (I do costumes for LRPGs, etc.), and wanted to try a computer-controlled embroidery machine. This way, I could do uniform insignias, etc. without being limited to the collection of cartoon characters & flowers that come with most machines. A brief search on the subject turns up several machines or apps that do this, but they have varying formats, and I'd like to get a technical review, as opposed to just a typical home user. Anyone have any experience with embroidery software and hardware?"

Comments

Wotsit has something.

[_narf_]

There's a download at:

http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?page=5&s=misc

It seems pretty rough... the begining attempt to reverse engineer the format, definately not a definative spec, but maybe a good start for writing a converter?

Heh

[sparkie]

The lovely help people give these days. Check out husqavarna. They have many many sewing machines, with many many different styles of connections / memory cards / what not. They have tons of stuff. Your local sewing store would have more info however.

Bernina

[kmahan]

My mother has had a Bernina "do everything" sewing machine for a couple of years now. The hardware is great (aside from the fact that it runs WinCE). It connects to a Windows computer via a USB cable. (at least that's what they say).

The "core" documentation isn't too bad. Using the machine with the horribly expensive Bernina memory cards is easy.

The PC Software & "Technical" Support is CRAP. The software limps along and requires all sorts of drivers and such. The documentation for "how to install" the software is pretty minimal. And it doesn't get you to the stage of a "working" implementation. Contacting the local store was pretty useless. Contacting the company was incredibly useless. The website is horrible. After several months of software updates and idiots the store finally found someone that had made it work before. They came out to my parent's house and got it working after several attempts.

So I'd recommend against Bernina unless you know someone that already has it working. If Bernina wishes to dispute any of what I said above they are welcome to contact me. My parents have a large papertrail covering their experience and I'm sure would LOVE to talk.

Also it is very nice to be living 1500 miles away so that I don't have to support the parent's computers. Getting that whole thing working sounded like a real nightmare.