[amayausers] Re: AM I TICKED
- From: Captain Gold <captaingold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: amayausers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 08:40:03 -0400
Everyone's experience with the Amaya machine is different. While it's
important to research any equipment purchase thoroughly, don't sell any
machine short because a few people have had problems. One of my closest
friends swears by Ford products and has never had a problem with the many
cars and trucks she's owned over the years, but the single Ford we owned
turned out to be a lemon. Sure, we'll probably never buy Ford again, but
that doesn't mean that she shouldn't.
I'm definitely not saying that some of the machines that are out there
don't have problems. These issues may have originated in the factory and
they may have been caused by a rough shipping or set-up. However, in every
case that I've heard about Melco has made sure the customer is taken care
of. Again, like an automobile, there are a series of procedures to diagnose
any problem and the technicians are trained to follow those procedures. Not
that down time is ever an acceptable alternative, but sometimes it is
necessary to find the ultimate solution.
I'm sorry to hear that there is such bad press going out about the Amaya. I
don't know the statistics, but I'm pretty sure that there are a lot more
satisfied customers than there are dissatisfied. I'm pretty sure that there
are several thousand machines out there now, and only a couple hundred of
the owners are represented on-line in formats such as this one.
Perhaps those of us who haven't experienced the problems are too busy
running the machines to post our experience on the web. I've now owned mine
for nearly two years and have had no problems that couldn't be corrected by
operator error. Prior to my purchase, I'd only looked (not even run) my
friend's home embroidery machine - I didn't even know what commercial
embroidery machines looked like!
As for claiming that Sharon and Rod are not in the same boat with the rest
of us because Rod took tech training isn't very fair. When I was
researching Amayas and other machines they were fairly new owners. When I
joined the list (prior to making my decision to purchase), they were still
working out the "bugs" on their first machine. Rod was extremely helpful
and realistic in his evaluation of the Amaya and discussions with him and
others like him helped me with my decision. I've never regretted it.
I'm proud to be on the cutting edge of the embroidery business. The Amaya
is a new design and is changing the way embroidery is done. Many
experienced embroiderers balk at change without giving the new guy a chance.
I've noticed this with the Amaya and with digitizing/punching designs. I've
been told that I can't digitize because I never learned to do so the
"correct" way - when it was punching. I've been told that to digitize
properly I would need to give up the embroidery business and concentrate on
digitizing only. I've been told the "new" class of digitizer is giving
embroidery a bad name because they don't know the how's and why's of
"punching" embroidery. Yet every day I learn a little more and improve the
quality of my work because I continue to try. I don't claim to be in the
same class as someone that has been digitizing for decades, but I also
don't think my skills should be ignored because I'm a relative newbie either.
I like the Amaya because it works for me. Maybe it works for me because I
didn't have any preconceived notions about how tensioning worked or how
many thread breaks I should expect. Heck, I didn't even know how long
thread tails should be. I took the machine at face value when it walked in
my door. I followed the instructions religiously, asked a lot of questions,
and then jumped right in.
Sure, I've hooped things too loose, too tight, and crooked. I've sewn
towels together around hoops, broken needles and come close to throwing
thread across the room at times. I've fought with looping thread (set the
fabric thickness way wrong), breaking thread (hooped too loose), and trying
to use a font at .15 that was designed to be run much larger (really need
to print that PDF file with all the font details for reference).
I find the Amaya very forgiving in some ways and very demanding in others.
A loose hooping will cause more problems than I've seen on any other
machine. However, even my earliest, worst attempts at digitizing have
stitched well on the Amaya if the foundation was firm (even though I watch
them stitch out now and mentally groan at how bad my layout is). The same
design on any other machine will be slower, have more thread breaks, and
looks horrid.
If you've not tried the Amaya, go see it in action. Contact your local
sales rep and make arrangements to visit a current owner's site. Take your
own design and watch it stitch out. Maybe even set it up yourself (if the
owner will let you, of course). You test drive a car before you buy it, why
not do the same for the Amaya.
For those of you with mechanical problems, I hope you keep working with
Melco to find solutions.
Good luck,
Connie
Wyvern Productions
Painting masterpieces in thread.
http://www.wyvernproductions.com
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