Product Tips

Using USB with your PR600/EMP6 Embroidery Machine

There are a number of well known ways to get your designs into your embroidery machine. The PR600/EMP6 will accept Compact Flash Cards, 3 1/2" Floppy Disks, or Brother Design Cards. One other method you may not have tried is through a direct USB connection between your computer and your machine. If your desktop computer, or notebook computer, is in the same room with your machine, you might want to consider this option if you haven't already. It can save you a few extra steps.

If you are running Windows XP or Windows 2000, there are no drivers to install. The operating system will recognize the machine just fine. If you are running Windows 98 you will need to install additional drivers on your computer. The drivers you'll need are available from Brother. You can download them here:

http://www.brother.com/E-ftp/pr600/usbdriver.html

Even if you don't feel all that comfortable around computers, there is no reason to be intimidated by this method. If you know how to copy design files from your computer to Compact Flash Cards, you should not have any trouble using USB. It's really quite simple, so allow me to explain how it works.

The first thing you do is connect your machine to your computer using a standard USB cable. It is impossible to insert the wrong type, so you should not have a problem there. Just be sure not to force the cable if you happen to get the connector upside down. It should slide in easily if the orientation is correct. Both your embroidery machine and your computer may be either powered on or off when you connect or disconnect this cable.

After the USB connection is made, and both the computer and the embroidery machine are powered on, your computer will recognize the PR600 as a removable drive. Exactly the same way as it recognizes any other type of removable drive such as a thumb drive, Compact Flash Card reader, or other PC Card storage device. Once your computer has recognized the machine as a removable drive, you are ready to transfer designs. On your embroidery machine's display screen, select the USB icon as your input device. Another window will open, but it will be blank. There will be no designs showing at this time. That's OK because the next few steps will make the designs available to your machine.

It may help to set up a hypothetical drive configuration for your computer. Naturally you will have a C: drive which contains your operating system and probably most of your programs in various folders. If you have a CD ROM drive, it will most likely be designated as the D: drive. In our example, let's assume there are no other storage devices attached to your computer. As soon as Windows recognizes your embroidery machine as a removable drive, it will assign the next available letter. On our hypothetical computer it will assign the letter E: to this drive. If we double click on the "My Computer" icon on our desktop, a box will open that looks similar to the photo below.

On your computer, locate the design(s) you wish to sew in what ever drive and folder you normally store them. An example might be: "C:\My Designs\PES\design123.pes." It might be helpful to click on the "Folders" icon in the menu bar near the top of the "My Computer" box. This will give you a split view that will make navigation somewhat easier. When you click on "Folders," the box will now look something like this.

Once you've located the design that you wish to transfer to your embroidery machine, right click on the design file and select "Copy." Now double click on the removable drive letter (in our hypothetical example E) to open a blank panel on the right hand portion of the box. Right click on the blank panel and select "Paste". You will now see the design file listed in the right hand panel. Go back to your machine and you should see the design on the screen ready to sew as normal. As you continue to copy designs to removeable drive E:, the list will continue to grow and more designs will show on your machine's control panel.

If you are working on a design in your digitizing program, you can export it directly to the removable drive from your program. Using our example configuration, you'd export your design to the E: drive. The design is instantly in your machine and ready to sew. No cards to carry to your machine.

Once you've done this a few times, you will see how quick and easy it can be. It just might save you a little time, and you may need to purchase fewer Compact Flash Cards.

There are two things to keep in mind when using this procedure. Do not create folders for your designs on the removable drive. The machine can not read folders using this mode. Also remember that the designs are not stored in memory. When you power down your machine they are erased unless you manually save them to the machine.

Happy USB-ing!

R & M Crafts
http://www.cigarcityarts.com