Baby Lock Venture 2 Multi Needle Embroidery Machine

Ten needles, so the machine stops asking you for thread

A multi-needle machine is really a tricked out thread rack with a needle bar attached. It is like a magic trick. The Venture 2 holds ten colors at once, which is enough for nearly every commercial logo, most licensed and team designs, and a logo plus a name in the same run. You thread it in the morning and the machine works through the queue while you do something else. This is the machine for someone whose embroidery has turned into orders.

Angela Huffman, host of Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting PBS show and founder/owner of Quilted Joy.

Buying a production machine is a different conversation from buying a sewing machine, and there are things to sort out before it arrives: where it will live, whether you want the floor stand, and whether hats are in your plans. Call (502) 718-7148 or send us an email and we will work through it with you. When a machine is earning its keep, having a service team you can actually reach matters more than anything on the spec sheet. The Venture 2 can only be sold from our showroom. We aren't allowed to ship it.

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What ten needles actually change

Needle count is not about speed. The Venture 2 stitches one needle at a time like any other machine, at 1,000 stitches a minute. What ten needles change is how often a human has to walk over. A six color design runs start to finish untouched. On a mixed day you can often load one set of ten cones that covers two or three different customers' jobs and never re-cone between them. Over a run of twenty shirts, that is twenty interruptions you do not have.

The camera shows you the garment, not a grid

The NeedleCam digital camera scans what you have hooped and puts it on the screen, so you position the design against the actual shirt rather than against a diagram of one. On a pocket, a placket, or a jacket with a seam running through the placement area, that is the difference between a first-time-right stitch-out and a seam ripper. IQ Designer is on board too, so you can draw a design on the screen, scan artwork, load a file from USB, or send one across wirelessly and have it converted to stitches.

Four hoops, from a monogram to a jacket back

The field goes to 7 7/8 by 14 inches, which is 200 by 360mm, and four hoops come with the machine, all with grids: the full 7 7/8 by 14, a 5 1/8 by 7 1/8, a 4 by 4, and a 1 1/2 by 2 3/8 for cuffs, collars and small monograms. Frame holders A and B are both included, along with a narrow support table for working on tote bags, sleeves and anything else that has to slide over the arm rather than lie flat.

It threads all ten, and tells you when it needs you

Push-button automatic needle threading covers all ten needles. Upper thread break sensors stop the machine the moment a thread goes, and the thread trimmer is automatic. The bobbin is a front-loading vertical rotary hook that takes pre-wound bobbins, which is what you want when you are running all day. The IQ Intuition Monitoring app puts all of that on your phone: it tells you when the bobbin needs changing, when a thread breaks, when it is time for a color change and when the job is done.

Built for a working day

There are 120 built-in designs and 65 fonts, including a 3D font, three monogramming fonts and fourteen large lettering styles, plus 140 frame patterns. Matrix Copy repeats a design across the hoop in a grid for allover patterns and multi-up layouts. The business features are the ones you notice in month three rather than week one: an administrator lock and an operator lock so a helper cannot change settings they should not, key optimization, an embroidery shortcut key, on-screen speed control, auto save and recall, and a link function that lets you drive several machines from one design queue. Five LED lights, 10MB of built-in memory, and three USB ports.

What you may want to budget for

The narrow support table is included with the machine. Two things are not, and you may want them. The floor stand, the wheeled metal stand with hoop storage and locking castors, is a separate purchase, and at 92 pounds this machine really does want one. A cap frame set is also separate, and you need it if hats are going to be part of what you sell. Ask us and we will price both alongside the machine so there are no surprises.

Where the Venture 2 sits

This is a different category from a single-needle machine rather than a bigger version of one. On the Ursa, which is a lovely machine for one-offs, samples and quilt labels, every color change is a thread change you make by hand. A five color design on a run of twenty-five pieces is a hundred thread changes. On the Venture 2 it is none. Many people end up owning both, using the single-needle machine to test a design and the Venture 2 to run it. If you want to talk about where your business actually is right now, call us and we will be honest about whether you need ten needles yet.

Specifications

Warranty service is handled here in Louisville by our own factory-certified technicians, so your machine does not have to travel to a stranger when it needs attention. If you live outside of Louisville, any Baby Lock dealer in the country will service your machine under warranty. Note that the multi-needle warranty covers parts for two years rather than the ten years on Baby Lock's home machines, which is worth knowing when you plan for a machine that will run production hours.