Talk:Machine embroidery

GA quickfail
The article has no references, please see what is a good article before renominating.-Yamanbaiia 06:59, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Tajima Ambassador software worthy of mention
This program is proprietary but free as in beer and will convert between most major embroidery design file formats. It is the only "free" publicly-available Windows program of it's kind with a GUI in the world that I am aware of at this time.

As far as I know, there is no open file format standard for embroidery, nor are there any free software drivers for any embroidery machines that I am aware of. If anyone knows of some please post.

Also of note is http://www.free-penguin.org/ which has Linux penguin embroidery files. --BenMcLean (talk) 16:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Embroidery Machines Section
Various explicit or implicit value judgments being asserted; for example, "Tajima is one of the best embroidery machine from Japan." Undue weight is given to the Brother SE 270D; while the statement may be factually correct there is no reason to call out that particular model. Also, none of these fact assertions are referenced, and thus need citation. --EgoWumpus (talk) 12:46, 24 February 2009 (Eastern)
 * Good call. A lot of this article appeared to have been written by someone who knew the industry quite well, but was less familiar with encyclopedic standards.  I've moved the unreferenced tag to the top of the article and excised the more commercial/how-to sections of prose.  Left the remainder that appears plausible and probably verifiable.  Durova Charge! 18:29, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Copy-editing
Please note that while I have attempted to clean up the syntax and fix the tone to be more encyclopedic, there are still many issues with this page, including a lack of citations and references. Yourstruly42 (talk) 01:05, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Types of machine embroidery
The lovely photo of chain link/chain stitch/lock stitch/ embroidery is not discussed in the article at all.

This work was likely made by a comercial machine with a small crank handle under the table that would control the direction that the 'dogs' would move the material. Controlling the machines took a lot of practice and may be a dying art. Being a chain link it had a single thread.

I found the following links with a quick search that describe the machines.  

Some good computer embroidery information from University of Geneva, not sure if it is linked on this page yet 

Idyllic press (talk) 22:07, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Computer embroidery formats
The addition of the chart is my doing. I've been researching machines in anticipation of buying one and this seems to be one of significant areas of consideration. Its organized by file format versus machine type so as to not have a bias towards any particular machine. I have also cited several 3rd party sources for the information.

I hope the effort is appreciated. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 00:53, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Pulse Ambassador really should be covered. --BenMcLean (talk) 22:32, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, where can we find the info and where should it go? --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 05:27, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I just saw the edit. We can't give undue weight or enphasis to just one of the many programs that accomplish this task. I'm in favor of creating a WP List page that lists as many programs as we can find. What are you thoughts? --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 05:32, 1 June 2013 (UTC)


 * So far as I am aware, there aren't any other programs that accomplish what this one does. Pulse Ambassador is 1. Free and 2. Supports more formats than any commercial program. In a sense, it has no competitors, as other comparable programs are not intended as format converters. It's too small of a market and too much incentive to continue the rampant vendor lock-in that Ambassador overcomes.
 * Ideally, a feature comparison chart should be constructed with a big list, as you suggest. Pulse Ambassador, which is free-as-in-beer, and Pulse's own embroidery package would need to be listed separately. In the meantime, this one is noteworthy because it really is the only ambassador (as the title suggests) between formats. The place I used to work was a Melco shop, with software that only accepted Melco file formats until I found Pulse Ambassador. From then on, we were able to accept most file formats, for free. --BenMcLean (talk) 05:53, 2 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I understand Pulse's uniqueness, but its inclusion in the article still gives it WP:UNDUE. Free or not, in order to make balanced contributions to the article we should list as many programs as we can find reliable sources for. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 17:25, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I have started a separate page for Embroidery software. Listing Pulse there would be much more relevant than in the embroidery formats section of this article. Red team316 (talk) 16:51, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow, great list! Nicely done! --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 16:08, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Apparently Wikipedia says this is blacklisted, yet this is one of the best discussions on computer embroidery formats history. www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Machine-Embroidery-Formats Discussion by a pioneer in Computer Embroidery Design - Bill Wilson 1999. Why can't this be included in the external links? Red team316 (talk) 06:55, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Blacklisted? --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 07:46, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, simply add http:// in front of www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Machine-Embroidery-Formats so that it creates a valid link and you will see what I mean(There will be a big popup on the page saying that it is blacklisted). Wikipedia won't let you do it. Red team316 (talk) 15:43, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Have you tried just using it as an inline citation source? --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 15:56, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean. Can you show me by adding it to this talk page? I've read a bit into how the wikipedia syntax works but haven't been able to get that particular link to work. Red team316 (talk) 16:51, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow, that's the first time I've seen that come up, but I understand why. NationMaster is basically a competitor to Wikipedia, but it includes advertising so I can understand why its banned. Basically we'll have to find the same material somewhere else if we want to cite it. Maybe one of the Bill Wilson video interviews has what you are looking for. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 17:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 22:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Learning and doing machine embroidery
I cannot agree that creating simple designs take hours and that learning machine embroidery is very difficult. It does take time, but no more than learning how to to create 2D designs for laser cutting or 3D models for 3D printing. Become an expert does take time in any domain (about 10,000 hours according to K. Anders Ericsson, i.e. 5 to 10 years). My students learn the basics in a few days and can do more complex things within a few weeks (part time).

I learned basic embroidery in about two weeks and I now can create an embroidery design from a simple hand drawing (taking a picture with my cell phone, image manipulation, vectorizing and digitizing) in about 15 minutes. The result is not professional but OK. Doing a "clean" embroidery takes some more time, but using resources from the noun project and or openclipart.org makes this fairly easy. The bottlenecks are just (1) understanding that embroidery is not wysiwyg (so make stuff overlap), (2) selecting good assets to start from (simple hand drawings or simple and clean SVG) and (3) being able to do some vector manipulations.

It is true that software is expensive, but not that expensive. E.g. there is good rentalware that for 100$/year. If you can bear working on a cellphone, there is a cheap app. Some open source software exists, but has limited functionality, e.g. this on source on github.

If I have time I will try to revise the article a bit to demystify digital embroidery. Since I need some other evidence than my own experience I just posted this comment here. I don't know if this or this (student work described in a private french wiki) would count as evidence ...  Daniel K. Schneider 18:34, 8 February 2018 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daniel K. Schneider (talk • contribs)

Update June 2018 - Ink/Stitch
Good news for open source. IMHO Ink/Stitch, an Inkscape extension, is perfectly usable for a number of use cases, e.g. education and is under active development: For the moment it can do configurable lines, fills (one type of pattern), simple zigzag, satin stitches, underlays for all of these and manual stitches. Below an example made by a amateur.

- Daniel K. Schneider 21:44, 18 June 2018 (UTC)