cmw0829

Hi, a friend has been offered a used longarm which is a couple of years old. She says it has a little over 2 million stitches on it and wonders how much use that might represent. Would you consider that a high number of stitches for the machine?

Thanks a lot.

Tashana

I have a slow LA machine that at fastest goes 700 stitches/minute. I believe this is the slowest on the market . If you multiply that by number of minutes it will roughly, very roughly, give you an idea how many stitches per hour. Multiply that by the number of hours to finish a quilt. From this point it is pretty easy to figure out how much usage the machine got. Needless to say you really do not go high speed all the time, so select a speed you think is average and do the math. I do not know how important number of stitches really is if a machine is well maintened. I have machine from 1922 that has been used and abused and is still going strong. Good luck. I hope somebody on QB will have a better answer for you than me.

dunster

To throw another number out there, the Innova can go at 3000 stitches per minute. I think that may be the top number for longarms. However, you are seldom stitching at that rate. Suppose the average rate this longarm has been stitching is 1000 stitches/minute. 2,000,000 stitches/1,000stitches per minute=2,000 minutes = 33 hours. Even if you figure that it has averaged only 500 stitches/minute, that's only 66 hours. That's not much time for a 2-year-old machine. I agree with Tashana that the real question is how well the machine has been maintained, and whether it stitches well now, but I definitely wouldn't worry about the 2 million stitches.

cmw0829

Thanks Tashana and Dunster for your replies. They've helped to put some perspective to that big number Those stitches do add up, don't they?

alleyoop1

And for your research and helping her decide - hope she lets you use it!!!