The model in one paragraph
A placement takes a fixed amount of needle time: the stitch count divided by the speed you actually hold, plus a few seconds for every trim and colour change. A multi head machine sews that many placements at once, so the machine side of the job is the number of cycles times the sew time. The hooping side does not divide by anything — every placement is hooped individually, and the only thing that speeds it up is more people doing it. The run takes whichever of those two is longer, plus the first batch of hooping before the machine can start at all, plus setup.
Why the head count has a ceiling
While one cycle sews, the hooper has to prepare enough placements for the next one. That takes the head count times the seconds per hooping, divided by the number of people hooping. As long as that is less than the sew time, the hooper finishes early and waits. Once it exceeds the sew time, the machine finishes first and waits instead, and every head above that point contributes nothing.
The calculator gives that ceiling directly. It moves with the design: a long dense design gives the hooper a lot of time and supports many heads, a quick left chest supports very few. It is also the reason two shops with identical machines get very different output — the difference is in the hooping, not the machine.
What is not in here
No stitch density, no underlay, no pull compensation, no digitising guidance and no thread. Stitch count comes from your file. Machine speed comes from your own logs, not from the plate on the machine, because a rated speed and a held speed are different numbers on anything dense or awkward. Thread consumption is a separate calculation entirely.
Related
Thread and bobbin use are in the thread consumption calculator. If you are comparing embroidery against a printed method on the same order, the setup and break-even calculator gives you the shape of that comparison, and the heat press cycle time calculator covers the pressing side. For sizing the garments themselves, see the size curve calculator.
Questions people ask
Why does the rated machine speed give me the wrong answer?
Because it is a ceiling and not an average. Machines slow themselves on dense fills, on caps, on anything with a lot of direction change, and they stop entirely for thread breaks that this calculator does not model. Take the stitch count of a design you have run, divide by the wall clock time it took, and you have the speed to put in this field. It is usually a long way below the plate.
Should trims and colour changes really be separate from the stitch count?
Yes, because they cost time without adding stitches. A design with the same stitch count split across twelve colours takes noticeably longer than one in two colours, and the difference is entirely in the stopping and starting. If your machine logs total run time and stitch count separately across a lot of jobs, the residual is the number that goes in this field.
What if hooping happens while the machine runs?
That is what the calculator assumes, and it is why the run is the larger of the two totals rather than the sum. It requires a second set of hoops so the next cycle can be prepared while the current one sews. If you only own one set per head, hooping and sewing are serial and the real time is closer to the two added together — which is a good argument for owning more hoops.
How do I count a job with a left chest and a sleeve?
Two placements per garment, which is what the placements field is for. Each one is hooped separately and sewn separately, so a hundred garments with two placements is two hundred trips through the machine, not one. It is also worth running the calculator twice with the real stitch count of each design if they differ a lot, because averaging them hides which one is the slow half.
Does the last partial cycle waste time?
It occupies the machine for a full sew cycle regardless of how many heads are loaded, which the calculator counts. The line showing idle head positions in the last cycle is how you spot an order that would finish in the same time with a few extra pieces on it. Filling that cycle costs blanks and thread but no machine time at all.