And you think industrial sewing machines are expensive

[luxuryluke]

This thread is both incredible and insightful. Oh, and tons of wisdom. Priceless. 

[Bugstruck]

I recall a year or two ago coming across a German geotextile sewing machine, looking for something else. Was the size of a high ceiling room. All CNC programmable. Was circle sewing maybe 8 or 10 foot diameter tubing. Wish I would have saved the link. Most impressive I've seen online. Knowing CNC industrial equipment costs in wood processing, I would be surprised if that machine was less than $250K. The travel range or that sewing head was about unfathomable. Robotics.

Most impressive I saw in person was as a teenager. Emblem looms at Lions Brothers. The sound was as impressive as the many bolts of fabric they had spooled up. Fabric was on the vertical plane. If I recall correctly one side had a low catwalk. I do remember a tech fixing a broken thread on the fly and my Uncle explaining it saved that emblem. I doubt those big machines are still in operation, all seems to be sewn on multi heads with the fabric horizontal now. The newer emblem machines, even the 24 head are much smaller footprint than they had there at that time. Was quite the operation. Around 1973. 

[R8R]

Lol. Screen printing was my bread and butter for years. Basic manual machines start at $4k and full auto machines can easily go north of $100k (plus ancillary equipment like dryers, etc add tens of thousands more)

 

 

[chrisash]

I brought a Barudan 12 head 7 needle embroidery machine in the 1980's at £44,000 plus I think 15% vat back then with auto thread cutters and ran at 900 stitches per min, Very impressive machine. still probably the same price now days but with each head about 15 needle's and 1500 spm and some now about 20 head

Times they do a change