Small letters Jagged Edges

[EarlsEmbroidery]

I sent a customers design out to digitize. the small letters on the logo appear jagged around the edges on sewouts. i have tried adjusting density, i adjusted column width and fill. still the edges appear jagged. im sewing on 100% cotton heavy weight tees. Lettering is about 1/4 to half inch tall and thin. ALL sent out for digitizing. tried solvy on top also. same result. used 3oz backing.

[Steve]

Have you tried replacing the digitized font with a micro block and do a test sew-out? This will determine if it is the digitizing or your error. I always use micro block for lettering under 1/4" and use a centerline underlay and really never had any problems with it.
No need to use solvy on cotton t-shirts, you are wasting money by doing that.

[sschroed2]

Check your Minimum Stitch length, set it to 8 or 10 and see if that improves it. Also try 2 layers of woven backing instead of 1 layer 3 oz.


Sue Schroeder
All Custom Embroidery

[EarlsEmbroidery]

tried the woven backing and the micro font and i still get the same appearance. funny thing is that it looked good on the dark tees but the white and light colors look jagged. slowed machines waaay down to 700 spm too.

[TinaK]

Put a top layer of solvy on the t shirt and make sure you are using a cutaway or no show mesh for the under stabilizer.

When I do my t's I always spray my stabilizer to the t's as it is more stable that way and it wont move around that much.

Good Luck!

[Aaron]

An edge walk underlay with fairly short length stitches (10-15) is always good for getting rid of jagged edges and and edge walk along with a light zig zag underlay works well too. I do this whenever I monogram towels or robes. Gives a nice clean look on a poofy fabric. If the letters are too small the edge walk may not work cause it will stick out the sides but its worth a try.

[EarlsEmbroidery]

thank you all, ill try that.

[HERB]

I found this posted on another sire and felt is was applicable to this subject. Have to admit I am still trying to fet my mind wrapped around the whole thing bit I think this is pretty good info.

The first step you need to take is to get rid of the "inches" mindset.
Embroidery machine format is written in milimeters.
Your digitizing software should have a regional setting to switch it over.
Absolute movement in embroidery format is
1/10th mm. (.1mm) This is the smallest movement you can write to the machine. Most digitizing sofwares are accurate to 1/100th mm (.01) This
is a means of increasing accuracy when resizing. When the digitized design is converted from lets say Wilcom emb to Tajima DST a process called clamping occurs were all .01mm absolute measurements from the emb
design are rounded to the nearest available machine format movement of .1mm.

This is why your letters look ragged. If you digitize at .45mm density you will see a smooth even column of stitches on the screen. When you
covert to DST to load your machine this smooth even column will be clamped to a series of .4mm and .5mm stitch spaces to form the column.

If you don't believe me take a DST or any embroidery "machine" format and load it into your digitizing software in a mode that does not modify its values. Zoom in on the origin. use this stitch (origin) to place a grid with the values set at .1mm X and .1mm Y. Scroll the screen, all the stitches will corrispond to grid intersection points. Now open the origional
file you digitized. Most stitches will land outside the grid intersection points.

Some basic small letter starting points:

40 weight thread/ Set your grid to .5mm set your density to .5mm

60 weight thread/ Set your grid to .4mm set your density to .4mm

If you are doing 3mm letters, 60 weight thread is required. 65/9 needles are a must

They will not work on all substrates, if you are doing a polo a backfill will be required to stabilize and support the letters. It sounds like this should'nt be a problem as the "badge" you are describing must have "rocker" shapes behind these small letters. available grid settings at .4mm density for a 3mm letter would be to make the Y columns 3.2mm or 8
stitches high or 2.8mm 7 stitches high. If you set to a true 3 mm high column, you will most probably clamp to 5 stitches at .4 + 2 stitches at .5 density (5x.4 + 2x.5 = 3)

[Juli in Kona]

Herb, You know the most fascinating stuff! Where do you learn this kind of thing?

So... Can this bad stuff with lettering (and other small objects) be averted by digitizing in DS and not converting to another format - just leaving it in ofm?

And, has anyone noticed that the newest designs from Dakota Collectibles come in ofm? I wonder if that is the native format. Would these designs be better for us than dst?

Having a blustery day here in Kona. In fact, over the last two days, the wind has gotten up to 50 or 60 mph in this state.

Juli in Kona

[HERB]

As I stated, I am not the author of that information and will not pretend to be as informed as the person that wrote it. I just felt it was pertinent to this subject and very informative. Am going to try to get my mind wrapped around the concept and see if I can make it work.