Zsk or barudan

[Jag]

Narrowed my choices down to the Zsk or barudan machines. Which would you recommend, based on durability service  and any other experience with the machines.

[GraphicDisorder]

Love our Barudans. Can't stress enough how great they've been. Gonna be several here that will echo that as well. We've had no major issues from ours.  We have 2 - 6 Heads.

[mk162]

we've been running our 6 head barudan for about 8 months now.  We freaking love it.  Our single head arrives tomorrow, we are excited about that too.

[GraphicDisorder]

They sew so well and stop so little.

[dirkdiggler]

got a new Barudan back in November, maybe had 3 thread breaks since then!

[bimmridder]

It's been years since we had a ZSK. I found it did very well on flats but always seemed to struggle on caps

[JBLUE]

Barudan here for over two years. Never a day down they run hard 40-50 hours a week non stop. The only brand I will ever own.

[Jag]

Thank you for your experience. Looks like I'm going barudan

[mk162]

Barudan KILLS it on caps.  We always struggled on the SWF with those.

[GraphicDisorder]

SWF can do caps fine, but you have to spend a lot more time in digitizing to make them happy. 

[Printficient]

Of the two I would go Barudan.  Can I ask what eliminated Tajima?

[Jag]

I worked in a shop that had Tajimas and had constant problems with it. Could have just been that machine but left a bad impression.

[Printficient]

I worked in a shop that had Tajimas and had constant problems with it. Could have just been that machine but left a bad impression.

Fair enough.  Thanks for the response.

[alan802]

I can't really say anything about the ZSK but generally speaking, Barudan and Tajima are the top embroidery machines and then there is everybody else.  Definitely can say your experience with that Tajima is not normal.  There might be machines that are AS reliable as the Tajima but there isn't anything MORE reliable.  If I were buying a new embroidery machine it would be between Barudan and Tajima.