How often should you change your embroidery machine needle?

It can sometimes be difficult to gauge when your embroidery needles need to be changed. However, Jas Purba, technical advisor at ETC Supplies, is here to explain the steps to take to ensure you get the most of out your needles.

How often should your embroidery needle be changed? This is a question that is frequently asked in the embroidery community.

The sewing industry generally recommends changing needles every six to eight hours of use. However, for multi-needle, multi-head machines, adhering to this guideline can be challenging.

When to change your needles

If you only change your needle when it breaks, you’re waiting far too long. So, when should you change your needle? Here are a few noticeable signs that indicate it’s time for a change:

• Poor quality stitching or skipped stitches.
• Fabric puckering.
• Snags or runs in the fabric.
• Frequent thread breakage.
• Audible clicking or popping sounds.
• Visible wear on the needle.
• Frequent changes in fabric types.

Keep in mind that heavy or hard fabrics will wear out your needle more quickly than knitted fabrics, requiring more frequent needle changes.

Pre-empting potential problems

It’s wise to pre-empt potential problems by changing your needles regularly. Considering the average cost of a high-quality needle is only 20p, replacing needles is far cheaper than dealing with damaged goods or poor-quality embroidery.  So, our suggestion, regardless of the number of embroidery heads you have, is to implement a basic policy of changing needles weekly.

For example, if you have an eight-head, 10-needle embroidery machine, and you change one needle of the same number on each head every week, it will only cost you £1.60. If you also change the black and white colour needles every week, that adds up to just £4.80 a week over a 10-week period. This is a small investment to keep your machine running smoothly, prevent downtime due to thread breakages, and improve the quality of your embroidery.

What to keep in mind

Regarding embroidery needles, when speaking with customers, they often do not know what needle point they use. The customer just keeps using the same needle point and size that came with the machine. Embroidery companies will specialise in different types of garments and fabrics, so it should use the correct needle for its application. The most common system used in embroidery needles is DBxK5. The properties of the Schmetz DBxK5 enable the machine to create the best possible embroidered designs and protect the components involved in the embroidery process.

Reinforcing your needle blade

Here are some of the advantages to reinforcing your embroidery needle blade:

• Precise penetration for accurate embroidery contours.
• Low deflection of the needle, even in very dense embroidery designs.
• Less needle breakage, optimised hump scarf.
• Ideal distance between the scarf and yarn due to the formation of larger loops.
• Avoidance of skipped stitches.
• Extra-large eye, 2 NM larger in relation to the needle size, for effortless, gentle sliding of embroidery and sewing threads without any tearing chemical polish on the eye and groove.
• Completely smooth and burr-free needle surface.
• Thread glides easily through the eye with less thread breakage, even with special and effect embroidery thread.

Choosing the right needles

To achieve the best possible embroidery results, needle features such as the point shape, needle size and coating must be tailored to the respective application.

What size needle should you use?

Most embroidery thread is size 40 or 120. The most common size needle used for this embroidery thread is size 75/11. However, as the needle system DBxK5 has an eye two sizes larger than normal, you can drop down to size 65 if needed without the thread snagging or catching in the groove of the needle. For heavy items you can go up to size 90 needle which will prevent deflection and breakage.

Schmetz embroidery needles are great for use with rayon, polyester and other specialty embroidery threads. The special scarf widened groove and enlarged eye protect fragile threads and guard against excess friction allowing trouble-free embroidery and decorative stitching.

The 130/705 H is the needle system used by nearly all home sewing machines. 130/705 refers to a needle with a flat shank. The H refers to a German word, Hohlkehle, which translates to scarf. So, 130/705 H is a flat shank needle with a scarf. All brands of home sewing machines use system 130/705 H, including: Baby Lock, Bernina, Brother, Elna, Husqvarna Viking, Janome, Juki, Pfaff, White, and more.