Inbro was a pretty popular brand of embroidery machines a few years ago. As a tech I have worked on a few of them and they seem like they were better than average quality. Their last machine model was a single needle, 12 thread, self threading machine.
From what I heard, the manufacturer in South Korea closed its doors one day and left a lot of customers holding worthless warranties.
I came across some information a few weeks ago that the technology for the self threader was sold to another company and they were now re-manufacturing the machine. Supposedly most of the problems that plagued the Inbro 1201c had been remedied.
My questions are: Are there any customers out there that was satisfied with their Inbro self threader? What do you think of the machine?
Re: Inbro out of the ashes???
Dennis,
Curiosity got the best of me when you mentioned self threading. Is this the beast you're talking about? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Inbro-Model-IB-RSC1201-Commercial-Embroidery-Machine-/120991429076?pt=BI_Sewing_Machines&hash=item1c2ba6b1d4
I'm guessing they require an air compressor to function or is the compressor built into the machine itself? One of the wife's sergers is self threading. What's your impression of the inbro's having worked on a few and seen them in action? Good stitch quality? Low maintenance or not with all the additional bells & whistles?
Rob
Re: Inbro out of the ashes???
Hey Rob,
That's the machine.
Inbro replaced the head on the machine with a pneumatic system. The thread traveled through tubes to the single needle on the machine. When the machine changed threads it would trim the old one then a puff of air would blow the thread to the needle and thread it. During the stitchout in the event of a thread break the machine would re-thread itself then resume stitching. It was pretty amazing technology.
I saw a working one in the distributors warehouse and the stitch quality on the self threaders seemed to be above average. I keep getting a lot of inquiries for parts for the self-threader, and I hear a lot of horror stories about customers paying thousands of dollars for the machine and it never throwing a stitch. I understand that the old-new system was plagued by bugs, like the underpowered air-compressor and a few of the electronics did not work as expected. Supposedly those issues are being addressed in this newer system.
They sent me a video of the new machine stitching out a picture of the Mona Lisa. You cant really determine stitch quality from the video but the video was cool.
The older, traditional style, machines were probably as good a quality as a SWF or possibly even Tajima.
I was just wondering if there were any owners of the self threader that were happy with the machine.
Dennis Wilson
Embroidery Machine Technician
ajstitch.com Dennis@ajstitch.com