Screen Printers Open - A Forum for Screen Printing and Embroidery

Don't waste your time.    Anything less than 4 heads that's not being used as a sample machine is a total waste of money.

I disagree about it being a waste of time and money. We have a single head and outsource the big jobs. It allows us to pop off the smaller orders. Most of our embroidery work that comes in is 5 to 10 pieces at a time. We have done a 100 piece order and it took about 3 days of non stop embroidery but when we have the time it is making money.

About Toyotas: We own an AD 860. As Toyotas go the 850 and 860 were the odd balls as they drifted from the standard Tajima style head and made their own design. the 850/860 use a needle pickup such that it doesn't just change which needle it is using but it physically moves the head and picks up a different needle. Many people hate this design however if you keep it in tune it is no problem. The earlier 800 series - 820/830 were 6 or 9 color and very similar to the Tajima head. You can get some of these at a good deal but the problem with all of the 800's is you are very limited on technicians. Some will work on the 820/830 but there are only one or two in the country who will touch an 850/860. The newer Toyotas 9000/9100 were jointly designed and manufactured with Tajima. They are identical physically. Some of the parts on each are labeled Tajima or Toyota. The only major difference is the OS. In fact you can actually load the Tajima OS on the Toyota and the Toyota on the Tajima. From the 850 series up Toyota OS allows you to configure a network "farm" of machines making it a modular system. The farm can be managed through Toyota's Expert Stitch Manager (ESM). ESM allows you to controll all of the machines in your network from a single software on your PC. You can watch the stitchout on your monitor. The 850/860 use only a serial connection, the 9000 added a LAN, and the 9100 added a USB.

It's my understanding that commercial embroidery machines have a "life span" of about 10 years........beware buying old stuff.

The 820 was state of the art in the mid to late 80s. The problem with old embroidery machines is they usually are worn out and one that old will be hard to rebuild. I think you are looking for problems.
I totally disagree with CNClark. We have three single head embroidery machines and they will out work a six head. We can run them all on the some job or run three different jobs at the same time. And single head
machine run faster than multi head. A single head is a good add on to your screen printing business but I wouldn't try and make a living with one.
Multi head machines are great if you plan on doing large runs in multiples of your machine. They suck when doing names on jackets, sponsors or any jobs that aren't repetitive.

Embroidery machine are getting inexpensive and easier to learn. If you are looking to buy used I'd look for some one who tried to make a living on a single head. They either get frustrated and quit and sell their machine for cheap or they get so busy they expand their business with more machines and would do your embroidery for you as contract work.
Just my 2c

Is the point of buying equipment not to make a living off of it?  If it is only profitable as an add-on and not independently, would it not make more sense to buy the machine you can actually make a living on?  I would agree with you if the OP were buying multiple single-heads, but I would put a 4 or 6 head up against one single head anyday.  WHy would you not want to make money 4 times faster?  

In my experience, which is doing bulk runs I would save for a multi-head machine.  If your doing monogramming and stuff like that, maybe the one-head would be profitable...can't say.....I don't take those kinds of orders.

we started out with a 4 head and bought a single head about 2 years later. There are advantages to both but true as true you will not make a living with a single head but you can turn out a bunch of stuff with a single head just the same.
If embroidery is a secondary product you will be well off with a decent single head. Used machines are as someone said bad news, we bought a single head used in VERY VERY good condition checked the service records and such against the s/n, same brand as our 4 head so the manufacturer  was most cooperative with the info. the seller was also local so we went to his place and operated the machine with a file or two we brought with us.
If you buy a used machine you need to go to where it is or hire someone locally who knows the biz to go and see and operate the machine. At the very least you should get a half hour run video of the machine cycling through all needles and operations, make sure the video has sound.
Lastly on used multi heads be real careful.
Multi heads are not as smooth and quiet as any comparable single head. additionally anyone with a multi for sale typically has used the piss out of it and possibly neglected it in the last months of use thinking they were going to upgrade or replace.
unless you know what you are doing do not buy used and do not buy used more than 3 - 5 years old. It is 10X worse than buying a used car that you should never buy untill your trusted mechanic checks it out.
just my 2 cents.....good luck

mooseman

Rob -speaking from past expierience - I would suggest finding a good embroidery wholesaler and sub that stuff out -all of it. . .do what you know and what you do well - and do it a million times. I tried to be that guy that did everything in house too, guess what, you have more fires to put out, the learning curve is a bitch. . you can make money printing while someone else worries about running their embroidery machine. You can be making money when you are relaxing on the water - you aren't stuck printing 1k shirts and then running a machine for another 5 hours. . UNLESS you want to step up a few notches and hire on some good help, then you may want to expand and recalculate things. . if that's the case, go for broke -get the newest, fanciest, 4 head machine you can get and get to work, become that guy that  offers wholesale embroidery and keep that machine going. . .put that chick  you use now with a single head out of business, take her embroidery AND screening work. .screw her, you can't up and leave with work on the table....

I understand that one, Personally, I'd keep my eye open for a good 2 head or 4 head.  A good embroidery machine should last longer than 10 years.  It's all in upkeep and amount of use.

We do in house embroidery and I wouldn't have it any other way, we do too much to sub out, I do sub out larger jobs that I am too swamped to do to other shops though.