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How are Embroidery Machine Thread breaks so easily fixed?

What is your greatest Custom Embroidery challenge? For novice custom embroiderers, it's usually understanding the cause of continual thread breaks on some designs or garments. And once they get past such entry-level learning experiences, every embroiderer develops a pet problem — a nemesis that plagues their very existence. For many embroiderers, the granddaddy arch-nemesis of all is small lettering.

Producing small lettering is not one, single problem. It's a whole list of problems: underlay, density and stabilization problems. In fact, name any problem you can have with embroidery, and small lettering usually amplifies it. Still, every embroidery problem has a solution that lies in following the basics of good embroidery. If you understand the underlying physics of embroidery, the solution to virtually every embroidery problem becomes obvious. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce the solutions to small lettering problems, but you'll have an easier time of it if you follow his methods of deductive reasoning.

Elementary my dear Watson — it can be summed up in two words: short stitches. That is the long and short of it. Small lettering requires very short stitches, which can create a lot of problems. (Stay away from small stitches)

For starters, fabric seems to absorb small stitches. If you make a stitch short enough, it seems to disappear right into the fabric. Why is that? Actually, several physical properties combine to cause this problem. To begin with, if you place a stitch in one spot on a piece of fabric, then place the next stitch 3mm away from it, your resulting stitch length is apt to be roughly 2mm, not 3mm. Why? Because sewing machines traditionally use thread tension to manage thread output as you are sewing. When two stitches are formed concurrently, the tension of the top and bottom thread cinches the stitches together. That cinching action pulls stitches closer together than the points where the needle originally entered the fabric. Compensating for this cinching is referred to as pull compensation.

Even with the best backing solution, or with new embroidery machines that use motors to meter thread instead of traditional tensioning methods, some cinching will occur — it has to in order to hold stitches together. No matter how stable your backing is, with a traditional machine, every stitch you place on a piece of fabric will be shortened by at least half a millimeter, usually more.

But that is not the only reason that fabric seems to absorb short stitches. There are more factors we still need to account for. The effects of fabric nap rarely cross an embroiderer's mind, unless you are using corduroy or wool. Whenever you are dealing with tiny stitches, the nap of every fabric becomes a factor. Fabric nap refers to tiny fibers of the fabric, which are loose and protrude from the knit or weave of the fabric. Dull appearing fabrics usually appear dull because of a large presence of nap, while shiny fabrics have little nap, or very fine fibers affecting the nap.

When you embroider on any fabric, some nap will come into contact with the thread of your embroidery. Whatever amount of embroidery thread gets covered by nap fibers will be hidden from view. Most embroiderers realize that large, irregularly surfaced fabrics like corduroy can hide a sizable amount of embroidery thread, but as stitches get shorter, the nap of even the finest fabrics can hide critical embroidery display.

The optical illusion of the embroidery thread itself also factors into the problem of disappearing stitches. What makes most embroidery threads so special is their sheen, or the reflective quality that gives embroidery its characteristic glow. But the tables get turned when you create short stitches, and that same sheen that makes your thread desirable can create further headaches, thanks to “the great stitch disappearing act.”

Embroidery threads can appear to be different shades of color based upon the angle from which they are viewed. This phenomenon occurs because of the thread's smooth, shiny surface. From a side view, embroidery thread is like a fun house mirror, appearing brightest at the area that best reflects a light source to your eye, and darker in areas that reflect the majority of light away from your eye. As stitches get shorter, less and less of the total thread length attains this optimum reflective angle, and the stitches appear darker. The result? Stitches that were short to begin with can look even shorter than they really are. If you don't compensate for these factors, your small letters won't show up very well.

You can combat a short-stitch mess by starting with an embroidery type style made for small lettering. Most Embroidery lettering software manufacturers make at least one or two type styles specifically designed for small-lettering applications on shirts. These type styles are usually digitized to make very simplistic or grandiose corners and do not include liabilities, such as serifs or thin column/thick column arrangements. If your software can convert TrueType ^® fonts to embroidery type styles, using that capability may produce undesirable results with small lettering because short-stitch concerns may not be addressed when auto-creating each letter. If you are creating lettering that is going to be less than a quarter inch high and your customer wants a font with a second-color outline, know in advance that it just won't work straight from the keyboard — you'll need that digitized by a very good digitizer.

Fabric nap is going to fight your small letters, so how can you fight back? Whenever creating tiny embroidery elements of any kind, corduroy is rarely an embroiderer's fabric of choice. Loose knits or weaves are bad news too. One of the limiting factors determining minimum stitch length is the weave of the fabric. You can't sew a stitch that is so short that both ends land in the same hole of the weave of the fabric — it won't work. Encourage your customer to choose a finely knit or woven fabric for this type of lettering. Customers might not understand why unless you explain it to them, but the fabric will have a profound effect on the quality of the embroidery. Also consider using a topping to combat nap.

Since optical illusion causes stitches to appear shorter than they are, what can you do to combat this problem? As the saying goes, “If you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em.” In other words, by encouraging your customers to make the right choices, in terms of thread color, you can help optical illusions to play in your favor instead of against you.

For example, light colored threads on dark fabrics cause real problems because light reflection makes thread appear darker in areas that don't reflect light directly to the eye. But what if the thread is dark to begin with? Or by choosing a very dark thread for a very light colored garment, you can ensure that more of your total stitch length will be visible.

When laying out lines of small letters, there is a lot you can do at the design stage to compensate for short-stitch problems. First of all, try to avoid customizing the type itself. Warping, stretching or otherwise distorting small letters may change how corners are created or could decrease the widths of columns in the letters. These changes are usually fine with normal-sized letters, but they can raise havoc when specifications are strained to their smallest proportions.

The normal rules for column width and density go completely out the window when dealing with small letters. A letter that appears “fat” at normal sizes may appear sickly skinny when sewn at micro-proportions. Sometimes, you need to increase column widths to the point where letters appear “blobby” on-screen to get crisp letters on fabric.

I mentioned earlier that most stitches shorten up about 1mm due to thread tensions. In some cases, that distance actually increases, as stitches get shorter in a design, due to fabric and backing relationships. You need to compensate for a stitch-length loss that is not represented by a percentage of the column width of the letter, but by a specific statically measurable length. If you have a column that is 5mm wide, and you increase it by 20 percent, it becomes 1mm wider — enough to compensate for the stitch pull. If you have a column that is only 2mm wide and you increase it by 20 percent, you only add fourth-tenths of a millimeter — not enough to compensate for the same stitch loss. As letters get smaller, you may need to pull-compensate letters by as much as 80 percent of the column width.

When possible, you'll want to use a thinner thread, such as a 50-weight thread, for short stitches. Yet, you will probably want to decrease the density compared with your normal settings. The thinner thread helps because it bends better at sharper angles, without breaking, than a thicker thread would. Proper use of your underlay settings can help make sparse letters look richly dense.

Set your software to provide a sparse (but not non-existent) underlay on small letters. Also set your stitch length for the underlay to a very small distance, such as 1.5- or 2mm. Doing so will cause your embroidery machine to create a walk-stitch inline of every letter; then, embroider sparse columns over the inline. With the lower density, you get longer stitches because the needle travels further between stitches. But since your columns aren't much wider than the thread, the underlay that shows through will make the columns appear much denser than they are.

If you have the option to adjust tie-off stitches at the end of each letter, do so. Most small lettering has so little space between each character that it shouldn't need trimming at all. I like to leave two tie-off stitches per letter, but you could get by with none on all but the last stitch before any trim needs to occur. Most of your thread-break problems with small letters come from the increased friction of the thread passing through the needle so many times. Longer stitches and eliminating unnecessary stitches where possible really helps reduce thread breaks.

You should also slow the embroidery machine down when sewing small letters to reduce the heat caused by friction. The slower you go, the more time the thread has to dissipate heat before any point on the thread segment receives friction again. Also, making sure your machine's movements are in top condition helps ensure accuracy in stitch placement. A sloppy movement can cheat each stitch out of an extra millimeter of critical length.

Of course, all the basics contribute to the success or failure of every embroidery job. You need to use the right size and point of needle, as well as the right backing. And you also need to ensure your design has perfect tension in all dimensions. It can help a lot if your thread tensions are set to minimal acceptable settings to decrease the loss due to stitch pull too. Look at every facet of your design and how the physics of perceived stitch shortening apply. Using a little deductive reasoning, you'll figure out a embroidery solution.

Also See:Embroidery Machine Advice Yahoo! Google MSN HotBot or ask that Jeeves fellow also see: Embroidery Module Objectives Embellishment Sewing  Other Embroidery Tips More Embroidery Tips Embroidery Explained Embroidery Tips Other Embroidery Resources Embroidery Home Custom Tee Shirts Embroidered Shirts

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