I am looking to get some custom polo shirts for my business. I know a thing or two about graphics work but I know nothing about embroidery hardware or their business model.
All of these places charge a setup fee of $40-$60 claiming to need to digitize the logo.
I can understand this if a paper copy of the logo was provided, but I have coreldraw. I can save in about 80 different graphics formats and even have embroidery floss palettes, hell I can probably go hunting for a plugin to export to various machine formats if I knew what to look for… One of these has got to be able to drive the machine or at least load into their software and do a 30 second export to the machine readable format.
Is this charge just how they make their money or is there a real issue with getting proper file formats for the machines.
Any machine embroidery saavy dopers that can give me the straight dope on this?
There are programs that will convert a vector logo directly into an embroidery file, but the result will be rather flat and uninteresting.
An embroidery digitizer will look at a logo and decide what type of stitches and fills will be needed to make the logo look its best. For example, for areas of the logo that will need to “stick out”, the digitizer will use a satin stitch, as opposed to a fill stitch.
Outlines will almost always require human intervention, since they rarely line up on the first try, even if it looks right on the monitor. Knowing the correct stitch length to use on an outline is also important, and also requires human intervention.
A good digitizer will also adjust the design according to the type (and the color) of fabric used, as well as the type and color of thread used.
There are many other factors that software alone can’t figure out on its own: Pull compensation, underlay type, stitch density, tie offs, half stitches, etc, etc . Lettering, especially small lettering, is something else that requires human intervention for an optimum result.
The digitizer may have to run several sewouts until the result is perfect. $40-$60 isn’t an unreasonable charge for an average logo.
**Baraqiyal ** nailed it. Translating a drawing to commands that drive the embroidery machine is as much art as science. A friend does custom embroidery for a living, and they actually send everything to a person in LA who does all of the determination of what stitch types, what direction of stitching, what order of colors, do you lay down a solid field of an underlying color and stitch other stuff on top, or do you leave a “hole” in the background for the other color, and so on.
There’s just no way (yet) to throw an image through a plugin and have usable stitch commands come out the other end, at least not if you want it to look good.
OK this all makes sense now, I didn’t realize how much human involvement there was in the process. Given that $40-$60 seems perfectly reasonable to me as well.
TY
Drach