8/7/26

Ok so update on the embroidery machine. The power supply I ordered was rated for 24v at 15a (360w) but was also $13 so it lied, and dropped to 14v when the machine tried to draw more than one amp from it. It's currently sitting in a return box BUT I didn't want the day to be a complete waste so I dredged up an old desktop pc power supply and hooked it up in series with the 12v supply that was already in the machine:

The "on" terminal is currently bridged with a paperclip and I've got some other stuff that I'm not completely sure on the function of shorted with a clothespin :b

The color change motor was also unplugged which was causing another plethora of issues but the power supply restored a lot of functionality. I also 3d printed part of a hoop I was missing (bc it uses rlly rare magnetic hoops which are rlly cool but a pain to find any parts for ?????)

Software-wise there's a fuck ton of paths I could go down. I ended up taking the completely free four-step route of
paint.net -> potrace -> ink/stitch -> Embroidery Fonts Plus

- Paint.net lets me convert an image into something that's much higher contrast and broken down into only a few colors.

- Potrace lets me convert that into an SVG rather easily and on my own hardware rather than relying on an online service.

- Ink/stitch is a free plugin for Inkscape that lets me create a file with stitch data from an svg. It's not the most straightforward but the extra complexity actually nets me a lil couple more spots in which I can tweak the file a bit easier. The next closest software that does just-this I found was $70, so I'll take what I can get.

- Embroidery Fonts Plus lets me actually transfer the file to the machine. It's a lil bit of an ordeal getting windows 10 to play nice with both this and serial converters (tho I'm still gonna try eventually) but in the meantime I also dredged out my old asus T2 motherboard since it had a native serial port and was running XP:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaand it works !!

Here's a test embroidery I drew up in paint.net in a minute:

There's still a lot I need to do (testing usb a serial connection, working with satin stitches, getting the correct kind of thread and backing material, cleaning up the setup so it isn't a mess of power supplies sitting in the open, etc) BUT. I'M. GLAD. IT. WORKS.

The night I fixed the main issue of the color change not working I speedran getting the rest of the setup together to test if I could actually talk to the damn thing and use it. and I'm ecstatic. I'm gonna be so powerful once I can make silly little patches to give to my friends

8/2/26

I've been silently searching for an embroidery machine on marketplace for a while now. Occassionally the big commercial machines go up for cheap. Businesses go under or people grow old, machines break down. TLDR I managed to find a 90s toyota machine for a couple hundred (which is cheaper than a new single needle consumer model !!)

It had a couple issues, but the larger of which I believe I've narrowed down to the power supply undervolting the machine (it's a 24v machine soemone put a 12v supply into ?????) I've got a new supply on order and am hoping that just fixes all my problems. and holy is this thing big, 9 needles !!! It's really funny how these are just a regular sewing machine but with a toolend for swapping to another needle and a cnc table underneath.

The software is gonna be the next step, but these toyotas seem to be a lot easier to interface with than the melcos I've used in the past, and I think some free communication software + inkscape will net me all I need

7/3/26

A couple weeks back I went on a trip across the state to a friend's childhood town. It's interesting hearing about all the stuff she remembers, the stuff that's changed, and the stuff that hasn't moved an inch. It was a very nice change of pace to just take a day to sit and chat, to relax.

Chatting with strangers out there was also a nice refresher; our car battery died so we got to chat with the owner of a l'il auto repair shop. He got the place and started working "Halloween night of '74." My friend talked with him about shops she had worked at before, while I thumbed through vintage auto magazines.

While at a junkyard, while joking about how a totaled car "just had a couple of scratches," we met the guy that rolled it. He gave us the play by play of the event, glad he's alright but it was also a once-in-a-lifetime event meeting that person then and there. It's just, interesting, to share bits of life and time with other people.

The weekend AFTER, another friend and I watched Mae and Hazel invade the Channel Awesome Movies, which is 10 hours worth of Doug Walker movies that two trans sisters edited themselves into. We started at 9am and pregamed before each movie. The act of hitting a dab while reading a controversies section on wikipedia, fully knowing we still have five hours of "To Boldly Flee" left, is certainly an experience. An excuse to cuddle and homoerotically writhe together is always nice tho, even if it is to Doug Walker

buge 🡓