Archive for the ‘Long Arm Quilting Machines’ Category

ABM Innova Discussion Forums

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

There have been some questions on where people can go to discuss and learn about the ABM International Innova and the AutoPilot robotic system.  Here are links to the yahoo groups:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/innova_autopilot/  The AutoPilot discussion group that I moderate

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ABMLongarm/ The original Innova discsussion group moderated by Carrie Dugan.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/InnovaLAQ/ The latest Innova group moderated by Sherry Rogers-Harrison.

 

I hope this helps!

Posted in AutoPilot, Innova, Long Arm Quilting Machines | No Comments »

So you want to buy a long-arm – why you should buy an Innova (from me!)

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

You’ve been thinking about this for a while, I can tell.  You really want to quilt large quilts, but hate the thought of shoving all that fabric through the arm of your domestic machine.  You’ve finally decided that you want to buy a car.  Whoops — no, strike that:  You’ve finally decided that you want to buy a longarm quilting machine (which can cost about as much as a car!).  Let me help you with your purchasing decision.

I started out a few years ago quilting on a 9″ Juki 98 on a Hinterberg frame with Max Throat (a system theoretically designed to allow you to quilt larger spaces with a small machine; it didn’t work amazingly well, and is no longer being sold).  After going through some generational upgrades, I finally purchased the ABM International 26″ Innova.  If you are thinking of purchasing a machine, I think you should do the same thing!  In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I became a sales representative for ABM.  Here’s why:

1.  If you’re just starting and want to get into long-arm quilting at a reasonable price, you can purchase the 18″ Innova complete with professional frame for about the cost of the lower-quality machines (HQ16, Tin Lizzie, Grand Quilter, etc.).  Many of the lower-end machines out there are clones of each other (along with their frames) — they all have fundamental limitations because of their need to cut costs.  The Innova 18″ is a fully professional machine, yet still cost-competitive.  Trust me, you want to get as good of a machine as you can — upgrading later can be a pain, because most dealers with not take “trade-ins” of your old machine.  Get what you want, now.  (Ask me how I know this….)

2.  If you want to become a professional quilter, you need a machine that has good support.  Innova has 24/7 toll-free telephone support — really.  I got my machine over Easter weekend; I had a question, called support on Easter Sunday evening, and immediately my problem was resolved by Michael, the father of the CEO.  Yes, ABM is a family owned company — the “M” in ABM is for Michael, who enjoys talking to and supporting quilters.  Try that with any other company.

3.  Hopefully, you don’t need support.  The machine should work all the time.  And the Innova does just that.  Once I got my Innova up and running, I haven’t had to call that support number once.  (Maybe that’s why ABM can afford to do it!).  If you join any of the yahoo ABM groups (do a search on ABM Innova), you’ll find that there is no grumbling on machine problems.  Join some of the other groups from other manufacturers and compare — no problems are unheard of.

4.  You want a machine that is the best engineering to date, and a company that is continually working to improve their machine.  Because Innova is a relatively new player to the home longarm market (despite making industrial versions of these since the early 1900′s), they are agressively courting quilters.  As a result, they are continually coming out with new improvements and add-ons to their system.  And, these improvements and add-ons are plug-and-play!  Everything in the Innova design is modular — you can buy what you need now, and add on future improvements later.  Other companies have massive retrofit fees and workarounds that result in ugly systems.

5.  Toys.  (Oh, maybe I should say “extra features”.)  I love things that make my life easier and more efficient.  Innova has so many features to their frame and machine system that are simply not available anywhere else — from the powered takeup roller to the integrated crosshatch system to the pivot buffer roller.  New features are coming out soon as well!  The advantage of having engineers design your system is that they are always coming out with new features.  Way cool.

6.  If you want to go computerized, you want a machine that the robotic system integrates with seamlessly.  I’ve used 3rd-party robotic systems, and it can be a pain coordinating between two companies when you have issues.  The robot that Innova sells (the AutoPilot) is the same basic robot that they use in their proven industrial machines, so you know it will work perfectly.  The software is designed in house, so you can quickly communicate features you need and the software program will be updated.  No waiting three years for a new software version like other manufacturers.

I hope I’ve convinced you to seriously consider the ABM Innova for your longarm purchase.  I can help you further — contact me and I can provide you more details.  If you purchase from me, you’re purchasing from a professional quilter who uses this machine on a daily basis.  I can give you all the ins and outs, useful tricks, and detailed support on the computerized Innova AutoPilot system.  If you live locally in the Colorado / Wyoming area, you can stop by and play with the machine and the AutoPilot yourself.  I hope I can help you learn to love the Innova as much as I do!

Posted in Innova, Long Arm Quilting Machines | 2 Comments »

ABM International Innova AutoPilot Hands-On Report

Monday, July 27th, 2009

I finally have the computerized Innova fully up and working!

Innova AutoPilot

Innova AutoPilot

Here’s an acronym for the day: BLUF (Bottom-Line Up Front).  I will challenge any other computerized system to have the same stitch quality as the ABM Innova AutoPilot.  It is fantastic!  The detail of the stitching, and dead-on accuracy, is beyond what I have seen before.  That alone should make you buy this system.

Key useful pieces of information: The robotic system consists of two x-axis belts (very tight tension for high accuracy), a y-axis belt. a modification to the carriage that does not take up any more width than your original carriage, a set of motors on either side of the frame, and two computers:  One is the HP touchsmart computer that you see hanging from the frame, and another is a dedicated “grey box” running the robot itself.  The advantage of having two computers is that if Vista decides to do something “interesting”, the dedicated robot computer just keeps on running.  This is the right way to run a computerized robotic quilting system.  The touchsmart computer can either be run by wireless mouse or by actually touching the screen — this seemed a little cheesy to me at first, but is actually a good interaction method when you’re running the robotic program and need to make minor changes.

The software itself has some nice features — you can flip a pattern on the x-axis or y-axis, connect multiple patterns together with groups or without, scale, rotate, set sequences, crop, resave patterns that you have manipulated, etc.  All the core features that you would want to have on a robotic system.  For example, if you are doing a 6″ tall edge-to-edge, you can set up one run, copy a second run below it, reverse the stitching order, and sew multiple passes back and forth in one programmed sequence, rather than having to re-program in each pass.

The sewing itself is outstanding — the AutoPilot has an active feedback mechanism that the robotic computer knows where the head is at all times and therefore will not skew the pattern due to drag on the machine.  This means that your 68″ long pattern will stitch out to exacltly 68″ long, not 67″, not 69″.  Because I can see the head location on the computer screen, I know exactly where my pattern will stitchout as the robot executes the pattern.  There are other systems out there for the Innova, but I think that this feature is what justifies the higher price-tag for the AutoPilot system.

The AutoPilot software is being developed in-house by ABM International — that means that if you have a feature request, it goes right to the programmers for evaluation and implementation.  Some major improvements have been made since I first saw this system in February, and they are not stopping development.  Try to get that from Statler!

Summary: I am exceedingly pleased with the AutoPilot and highly recommend it to any Innova owners who are looking at robotic systems — it’s well worth the money!

Posted in Long Arm Quilting Machines, Shopping | 11 Comments »

ABM International Innova AutoPilot Report

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Well, I just got back from Houston, TX, where I spent a day at ABM International working with the Innova and their AutoPilot robotic quilting system.  Here are my impressions and thoughts (my apologies for no pictures; the ones I took turned out all fuzzy).

The innova machine itself looks to be the next generation in quilting machine design.  For example: the only place that you oil is in the bobbin mechanism — everything in the sewing head itself is sealed and requires no oil!  No more adding 3-15 drops in multiple places every few hours.  It is also very tolerant of different threads.  My Tin Lizzie 18LS simply cannot handle Superior “Lava” thread — I think it is too smooth, and develops loops on the backside of the quilt.  We went through most of Superior’s standard quilting threads: King Tut, Rainbows, Lava, Poly Quilter, and a few others — the machine handled everything.  The one time the thread broke was when it was improperly wound on the cone; not the machine’s fault.  The stitch speed regulator is fantastic — it will go up to 3000 (stitches per minute? rpm?) before you overwhelm the stitch regulator.  Compared to the Tin Lizzie, where you have to go relatively slow to stay within the stitch regulator’s capacity, I could not go too fast for the Innova.  It will sew quickly and well.  The ecording system is pretty dramatic when you see it; I’m not sure of the uses for it yet in my business, but will definitely be an add-on at some point.  Machine-wise, this is a great value for your money; better than Tin Lizzie, Homesteader, Voyager, Handiquilter, or the OEM’ed Pfaff and Babylock systems that just came on the market.
Frame:  The frame is all-steel, and has a couple of unique qualities: First, the pick-up roller is elevated above the quilt (there is another roller directly beneath it — see the picts on their webpage for a better description) — effectively, this means that the quilt bed itself is always perfectly parallel, and you do not have to keep on raising and lowering the pick-up roller to allow for the increasing roll of the quilt.  You could add up a large time-savings just with that.  A couple of features that I found more interesting than I expected: the electric quilt advance is actually very useful for loading and advancing your quilt with excellent tension.  It moves slowly enough that you can smooth the backing on as it loads, and use a touch of advance to control the backing tension as you move the quilt around.  It’s actually very nice — much more useful than just being easier to advance the quilt.  They are also offering electric channel locks controlled by a remote, which will save a lot of time when doing crosshatching or basting.

Okay, now to the AutoPilot robotic program.  The program is running on an HP touch-smart all-in-one computer; you could probably also run it on a non-touch screen computer.  The advantage to the all-in-one system is saving all the messy cords running around.  The actual robotic motor system sits under the frame out of the way.  The carriage runs on two x-direction belts and one y-direction belt, all of which can be disconnected in about a minute total.  Freehanding on the system works very nicely; I did not notice the drag when the machine was off the belts.  You could do some basic straight-line stitching while the machine is connected to the robot, but I doubt you could freehand since the belts are so tight.  The program is encoder-based; you set the quilt area by marking the upper-left and lower-right corners, and off you go.  The autopilot can import .dxf files or their proprietary .pat file.  The stitch quality is _very_ good; the robotic system controls the speed of the head based on the complexity of the pattern.  This can save significant time when stitching open, flowing designs, yet doesn’t lose quality when the pattern hits and intricate point.  The software has all of the basic features that you would want.  There are a number of things still in the works — one very important point to make is that their hardware and software engineering support and development are all in-house; the company is very excited about the new system and is eager to add-in new features to the software.  I think that the software will rapidly over-take Statler’s capabilities, since they are continually upgrading the software and talking to the actual quilters.

Summary:  this is a system you should look at if you are wanting a top-of-the-line quilting system with robotic capability.  There are unique features that you cannot find on other systems, and an active development group to continue to improve the software base.  ABM will be at a number of shows this year; I recommend you check them out!

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Posted in Long Arm Quilting Machines, Shopping | 18 Comments »