I have seen the Brother machine and it seems ok (6-8 needle).
I have an appointment to see the Melco machine (16 needle) this Friday afternoon.
With all the bells and whstles the Melco seems to be almost double the price of the Brother.
My business plan is as follows: Start up internet doing it part time then get enough volume to put my wife to work full time in the home. Maybe $3000 per month in volume to justify that. (Say 150 pieces a month)
Would the Brother be able to handle that much work easily?
Is the Melco going to give me a better digitized product if the subject is complicated?
I have owned a few melco machines over the last 13+ yrs. They were great machines. Things have changed at Melco, they now have privatized all their service people. I found it was not the same anymore. When I bought new equipment, I went with SWF and have not een disappointed. ...... JB
I have 2 pr 600's - and they are work horses. They are 6 needle machines no 8 needle. Yes they can handle that amount of work . Service is the big thing with any machine. find out about the service techs. Talk to people who have used them. Doesn't matter what machine you have if the service is bad
You also better find local work your plans for just internet business is not going to pay the bills
I have 2 pr 600's - and they are work horses. They are 6 needle machines no 8 needle. Yes they can handle that amount of work . Service is the big thing with any machine. find out about the service techs. Talk to people who have used them. Doesn't matter what machine you have if the service is bad
You also better find local work your plans for just internet business is not going to pay the bills
I totally agree with Sally. I have been embroidery for several yeas and it 's becomming a hard business. There is so many people doing it and cutting prices. If you depend on internet alone, you are going to be disappointed unless you have some real attractive marketing to get business. ..... JB
Thanks Sally, I was pretty sure it was 6 and not 8 but I am old and get confused.
Yeah, and it is my intent to start out small on E bay doing some custom stuff and do some small business work. I have a few good contacts in my current job. I have a niche I want to try out also.
If the Brother has a local rep close to home for me, is that a big plus? Based on what I have read on other threads looks like Melco has a bad rap if the machine needs work. Do they break more often? How long is a machine out of service just waiting for a tech to get there to fix something? Does it void my warranty if I try to fix something myself? (I am handy, but just inexperienced with this equipment)
I'll second what Sally said... I also have 2 PR600's, the one we've had for 2 years has over 35 million stitches on it. The other machine we've had about a year and it has around 20 million stitches on it.
Each have been in the shop once since we've had them and they were out within a couple of days. Most times it's the automatic threader that acts up so you can just thread it by hand in the meantime. I also picked up a service manual off Flea-bay so that helps as well.
I have not had the Brother PR600 but I owned a smaller Brother machine and the problem I had with it was the tension. It was in the shop a lot get the tension readjusted. I have 2 of the Amaya XTs of which I traded up to from the older Amaya versions. I really love my Amayas. I have not ever had any of my Amayas in the shop and I have not had too many problems with any of them. I love the speed, no tension knobs, and reliabilty of my machines. I did pay more than the Brothers, but to not have any problems with them and can sew on just about anything. I sew on some of the most unusual objects, such as hair ribbons, luggage, wrist bands, etc. and I could not do most of those kinds of things and also the bigger items with the smaller Brother. I like being able to do just about anything.
I have owned Amaya's since they first came out. The first 3 years were horrible, I had one of the first ones out and after them replacing the machine twice and lots of service calls they finally got the machine running good. I decided to try the new XT so I leased 2, still have issues but it is a work horse when it's working. Service is the key I live in Alaska so service is a problem, I would really think before you jump right in with one of these machines. If you're just starting out and have no experience with embroidery I would purchase a machine where you know you have a service tech in your area. I'm not trying to discredit Melco I've made plenty of money with my machines but there are so many little things that goes wrong that a newbie would probably want to give up. They love to blame newbies for the problem, they do not like to take blame. This is just my opinion but if I had to do it all over again I would think twice, I did not know about this forum when I purcahsed so listen to the replies. Remember if you have an appointment with them and they show you how great the machine runs remember they probably have worked a long time getting it just right, like I said this is a good machine and if they would ever get their problems worked out it would be one of the top machines but Melco does not listen to their customers input and alot of their service techs have NEVER sewn on an Amaya. Hope this helps.
We have a XT and have not had one problem with it that was not operator error.So I can't really say anything about service techs. the phone support has been good and check out AmayaUsers: an independent resource for Melco Amaya users
That's exactly how we feel. We have had the Amayas since they first came out and we are really happy with them. I even sewed through my finger once and jammed the machine up and we did not need a tech to get it back to working quickly, now my finger on the other hand was another story. Do not ever (and I do mean ever get your fingers near the needle or head while it is sewing.) Made the mistake once will never do that again!!! But like I said even then we just got the machine back running on our own and have never needed a tech to fix our machines. We follow the routine maintenance and occasionally we have to do one or two of the steps before they are due because we hear it running a little different than normal. My favorite part of the Amayas is the accufeed feature for tension. I do not like tension knobs. That was the biggest problem I always had with any other machine.
Oh, I agree they are good machines, I've just had problems with the first one. I have 2 now and one runs like a champ the other well it had an attitude problem. I or (Melco) still has a few software issues that need to be fixed like the bobbin detection not working on caps, when your running 100-150 caps plus pressing shirts and waiting on customer and you forget to check the bobbin then you have a mess. Sometimes I think that I should try out other machines but then the tension thing really scares me. I really need to add another machine but weighing the options of another Amaya since I know it so well or adding a smaller (PR600) machine to do my small orders. I've had a brother home machine before and really loved it but not sure what types of problems I would have with the PR600 especially with software, now sure if it would work with Design Shop or if I would have to purcahse new software. Any one with a set-up like this, if so how does it work.
Brother PR620 vs Melco AMAYA XT 
