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Software Toys

Computer-Controlled Embroidery Machines? 34

Posted by Cliff from the sewing-in-the-21st-century dept.
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?"
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Computer-Controlled Embroidery Machines? More

Computer-Controlled Embroidery Machines?

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  • well, here's my solution (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I also needed to embroider some costumes for my friends.

    After surveying the market of machines, I decided the best thing to do is to lock myself in the bathroom, away from other people, and the internet, because the world needs less people like me.

    HTH!

  • Look into "hiring" the cute old ladies at the local nursing home. It's very cost effective, and the work is top-notch.

  • An additional question (Score:4, Interesting)

    by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Wednesday November 12, 2003 @05:14PM (#7457157) Homepage Journal
    I've been looking for either 1) a free/cheap means to convert between the typical formats for the files that drive the computer embroidery (.pes is the format I have, I want it in jpg or gif) or 2) a format definition for .pes so I can roll my own coversion.

    I've done a lot of searching and all I seem to be able to find are $900 packages that do it all and sing too. Absolutely no luck with the format definition, only pages that say essentially ".pes is a format for computer embroidery". Big help....

  • Wotsit has something. (Score:3, Informative)

    by _narf_ ( 21764 ) on Wednesday November 12, 2003 @05:28PM (#7457430)
    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 (Score:2, Informative)

    by sparkie ( 60749 )
    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.

  • Wow, my Grandma discovers Slashdot... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ..new poll next week:
    Sequins, how do you attach them?
    A) Hot Glue Gun
    B) Thread
    C) Liquid Nails
    D) Cowboy Neil
  • If you figure out how to write the code, see if you can do anything with this http://jpg2asc.hierklikken.com/ [hierklikken.com].

    That way, you can convert your "I'm with stupid" JPEG into ascii and embroider it to your cloak.

  • You are not alone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Wednesday November 12, 2003 @05:41PM (#7457640) Homepage Journal
    I've sat with about 15 or so people who could afford one and wanted one, but were stymied by the fact that we had no way of getting past the marketspeak and were loath to drop the money on a non-quantifiable and non-open system.

    Imagine being able to load up an xcf image of the Denton High path (from Brad Majors in RHPS) or a couple gifs of Tank Police insignia and just kick it to CUPS. Now that would be beautiful.

    It's an occasional topic at convention costuming panels, and the convention wisdom is "they are great, but only if you want Garfield or flowers". It's a shame, really.

    --
    Evan

  • Computing Comes Full Circle (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bluethundr ( 562578 ) * on Wednesday November 12, 2003 @06:18PM (#7458151) Homepage Journal
    Interesting, this story reminded me of the Jacquard Loom. [deutsches-museum.de] The Jacquard Loom used punch cards to control the designs it embroidered into clothing material.

    Herman Hollerith was hired to automate the 1890 US Census because it was apparent that information processing techniques simply weren't keeping up with the burgeoning US population. When it came time to do the 1890 census, they weren't yet finished processing teh previous census.

    When Hollerith [liv.ac.uk] encountered the Jacquard loom and realized the significance of its punch card method [columbia.edu] he realized that he had stumbled on a method for automating the input of information for later processing.

    He then took his information processing techniques and founded the Hollerith Corporation. This company later underwent a name change [ibm.com] and eventually came to dominate in the computing field.
    • Those Jacquard Looms are REALLY impressive pieces of machinery. Some of my customers still use them. They tend to have a paper tape that is probably 30cm across (I suspect exactly a foot, in primitive units...) and the machine reads the tape mechanically with a set of metal fingers to detect the holes in the tape. I have seen some of these equipped with a slightly more modern computer interface where the machine has a hardware device fitted which emulates the paper tape, but is connected to a computer.

      More

    • Look back a bit further, c. 1850-60.

      I personally find the Jacquard loom's influence to be much more interesting regarding Charles Babbage [st-and.ac.uk], "the father of computing", and Ada Lovelace, "the first programmer".

      The loom seems to have been a definite influence on his Analytical Engine (at least on the input design). Read the short bio linked above, it is really a must for anyone interested in computers.

  • Bernina (Score:3, Informative)

    by kmahan ( 80459 ) on Wednesday November 12, 2003 @06:34PM (#7458335)
    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.

  • Computer embroidery (Score:5, Interesting)

    by A. Craig West ( 3907 ) on Wednesday November 12, 2003 @07:08PM (#7458655)
    It happens that my job is writing software for controlling these machines, and for making the designs, as well. Unfortunately for your purposes, I am mostly familiar with the industrial versions of the machines, which don't use the same file formats as the home machines.

    The first thing you need to know is that the process of converting from an image file to an embroidery file is a lot more complicated than you would think, and requires a human being to do a lot of it if you want anything like a good result. Most conversion programs you will find will convert between the embroidery formats, but are fairly useless for conversions to and from image files.

    Ann The Gran [annthegran.com] is a site that is oriented at the home market you seem to be in, and it has a fair amount of useful information and programs you can buy.
    Amazing Designs [amazingdesigns.com] Also has software that may be of use to you, including auto-digitizing software, which sounds like the feature you need. There are other sites as well, I just mentioned these because they sell some of the software I work on, so I don't really have an unbiased opinion of them.

    If you are serious about trying to generate your own files, Wotsit [wotsit.org] has a partial description of the format for PES files, which is what you mentioned you have. That description is not sufficient for you to do anything with, but if you look further up the page to the description of Melco files, which is one of the industrial formats I am more familiar with, is somewhat more useful. The Melco description is also incomplete, but does contain enough information to create a complete functional embroidery design, and there are certainly programs available which will allow you to convert from melco to PES and back.

    I don't really recommend this approach, because it is a LOT harder than it looks, and even after you understand how the files work, you have not even begun to understand the best way to actually generate a design to sew on the machine. I've been working full time on this type of software for over ten years and have only learned the rudiments of 'punching', which is the term for creating embroidery designs. On the other hand, I've never really been that interested in punching, either. Creating software which allows others to 'punch' has kept me busy enougn...

    The term 'punching', by the way, is a leftover from the days when the embroidery machines read their stitch data directly from a paper tape, and the designs were created by punching the holes directly on the paper tape. I'm one of the few people I know who can read the tapes by eye... It's not a particularly useful skill now.
    • here [aol.com] is a better description than Wotsit, though it took me some time to work out that the descriptions talking about "+49" and "+512" etc were assuming that the first byte was numbered 1 rather than 0. It still isn't quite enough to just plop in place, but it covers a more recent format than Wotsit. I downloaded a .PES to check the Wotsit against and spent a lot of time being confused that the formats weren't particularly similar until I realized that the start of the file included a version number. Th
  • I worked at a place Stichin' Waves for a while running an embroidery machine made by toyota. Most of what we did was custom lettering and designs from books. The machine could handle custome designs, but you had to buy a 10,000 peice of software to make them. The machine itself was pretty solid, aside from broken needles or snapped thread it never broke down during the summer I worked there. It was easy to pick up how to use, and easy to work with. If you can get over the initial 20 to 30 grand it'd ta
  • My sister runs an Embroid-me franchise in St. Louis. Don't know whether you can find something cheaper, but their machines were really expensive.

    Also developing new designs is something of an art. It's not as easy as just bringing in a jpg and telling the software to convert it to an embroidery file.

    Check your local embroidery store. They might be able to do your stuff cheap enough for you to still make money off it.

  • I also shelled out at the time for the Palette software (version 2.0, I think it was, which got me by, which was a version back at the time I got it).

    Now, my reasons were a little different from yours -- I was fed up with the dress code changes at work, and they wouldn't accept my explaination that a T-shirt qualified as a "Shirt with a collar" as it had a crew-neck collar, so I embroidered 'A COLLAR' on the back of a shirt.

    I was personally rather frustrated with the software, as it made no sense to me, a

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