Best Machine?

Are you considering different brands? You might get specific feedback if you ask questions about specific models.

well, i own melcos barudans and tajimas. and the no offense to melco users but the theyre pieces of garbage. Tajimas are by far the best machine for multi tasking embroidery hats t's it can do it all pretty easily. Now im not going to say that barudan isnt a strong machine because it is very strong, one flaw though hats are a nightmare. So difficult too many parts to change to get a hat on the machine. If you buy a older fx tajima though its not much different. The barudans have bobbin detection where as the FX series of tajima does not. if your doing flats barudan is by far the best machine. Its the master of flats. Tajima is a great reliable machine for both hats and flats. Melco has the tendency of breaking weekly people can disagree with me but ive owned 4 melco machines including the amaya and amaya xt and the sewouts trims reliability are just a disaster. Id decide between the other models ive spoken about. Another thing to think about is if your going to buy a machine try to find the biggest dealer with the most technicians. i've had a melco break and wait a month for it to get fixed so you dont want that. If your buying used have the machine checked. Just because it looks good from the outside doesn't mean its good on the inside. And NEVER buy a machine you cant physically see run. NO videos no pictures you want to see it with your own two eyes.

hope i helped.

I would recommend that you look into SWF, Barudan, & Tajima. All three company's make great machines, but just like Ford & Chevy you will see that everyone has their own loyalty.
When you check out SWF make sure that you take the time to review their 3 different models of 4 heads
-SWF 1504DF-dual function can do 2 different jobs at once
-SWF High Speed 1504DM- Built to run a 1500 SPM
-SWF Standard 1504- Has all the standard features Tajima & Barudan offer.
http://www.swfeast.com/en/multiheads.asp

hey you offer digitizing im interested i just lost my digitizer .

of course, i can support my opinion. the older melcos im not going to complain about they're pretty good machines.. its one word that comes to mind. Amaya the embroidery machine that can do everything but can actually virtually do nothing. ill start with the construction of the machine 98% plastic components the other 2 percent what seems to be cheap white metal. secondly the perfected actifeed system that is supposedly better, ill tell you something i've been operating embroidery machines for along time and not any machine i have ever seen has broken so many threads as the amaya. ive personally owned 3 of these machines so someone cant tell me i got a bum machine because 3 is just ridiculous. the first day i had it the control panel was half falling off from operation. The first one i owned was alright for a few months only a few minor problems. but than thread break after thread break. the technician from melco spent well over 3 weeks trying to figure out the problem with the machine. the problem was finally fixed . something melted in the back of the machine.!!!! plastic parts again. so i bought another one. 3 days later same thing. thread break thread break thread break. technician comes out same problem!!
so theyre all fixed up now. mind you while this happened melco released a new version of the amaya os which was a little buggy. So i would be half way through a design and the machine would disconnect from the computer. what the hell is that. So i bought a 3rd one mind you by this time im getting pretty stupid for buying these machines but i gave it one last shot. the first day i had it the machine had a stepper error. it would sew all over the hoop when this error would happen. to top it all off while the third machine was screwed up my other two were also broken with a registration problem. so i had no machine. and no technician to be found. Not to also mention when you buy this machine they neglect to mention to you that when its time to add on another embroidery head its 10,000 for the software. or when you buy a used machine its i believe 300 or 600 re licensing fee for melco to support the machine. and not to mention the machine claims it can sew at 1500rpm which is the max speed but who can run a machine at its max speed anyway its like driving a car at its max speed. another thing melco doesn't mention to you is they have virtually no faith in this machine. the actifeed is the death of this machine along with the computerized presser foot which i also may add this machine only had one presser foot. 16 needles 1 presser foot. this machine attracts new people comming into this business. with all its fancy gadgets which most of the time its a waste of time. they dont work half the time.

anybody know anything about a kenmore Platinum 950?

I've ran barudans and tajimas and agree with dangig. They are both really good machines but I'd have to say I had better luck on hats with the Tajima. They are both very reliable, but in my experience we had fewer breakdowns with the Barudan. I recently bought a used SWF single head and have been very impressed with it so far. It reminds me of the Tajimas on hats and so far I've had no problems.