How many stitches has this machine embroidered?

How many stitches has this machine embroidered? That is a very common question asked when people are looking to purchase a used commercial embroidery machine.

However, the vast majority of all the most famous makes and models of commercial embroidery machines, never included stitch counters. Unfortunately, stitch counters have never been implemented in most, if not all, the most common brands out there. Therefore it is impossible to know how many stitches one machine or another has embroidered. There may be anomaly brands of machines here and there which included stitch counters. However, most all of these are easily reset and used only for temporary purposes, such as hourly stitch counts for managers to refer to. Any machine that has an authentic way of recording stitch count, and not easily reset, are very far and few in between and probably never seen on the common market. Over the years most companies that really needed stitch counters, for management purposes, would have custom hardware created to track the stitch count. These were custom made.

Therefore it is impossible to ever know how many stitches a machine might have embroidered. Fortunately commercial embroidery machines have very few movable parts, compared to automobiles for examples.

As long as a machine is well maintained, cleaned, and not abused then you should be able to get many years out of it. Not unlike those old brands of sewing machines you might have seen in relatives houses, which have received generations of use. A machine that looks well maintained, clean and not abused probably still has plenty of life left to it.

It is not highly uncommon to see commercial embroidery machines with over 40 year of use, still in daily production embroidery.