29/10/2026
Same logo. Same operator. Same eight-hour shift.
68 garments, or 49.
A chest logo on a polo: 5,000 stitches, six colour changes, ten trims.
A standard single head runs at a realistic 1,000 stitches a minute. The ZSK Sprint 9 runs at 1,400.
Nobody runs flat out all day, so our calculator works at 80% of maximum. That's 800 against 1,120.
Full cycle per garment — stitching, colour changes, trims, thread breaks, hooping and unloading:
8 minutes 22 seconds on the standard head.
6 minutes 1 second on the Sprint 9.
Two minutes twenty-one seconds a garment. Nineteen more garments a shift. Across 220 working days, 14,925 against 10,721.
Most of that gap is raw speed, but not all of it. A six-colour logo stops sixteen times for colour changes and trims, and the Sprint 9 gets through each one quicker, worth around half a minute a garment.
WHERE THESE FIGURES COME FROM
They are approximate, and they model one job.
That job is a 5,000-stitch chest logo with six colour changes and ten trims, on a single-head machine, running flat or tubular work. Both machines are set to 80% of maximum speed and 85% productive time, across an 8-hour shift and 220 working days. The cycle time includes hooping, unloading, bobbin changes and a 5% allowance for thread breaks.
Colour-change and trim times are our own reference assumptions, not manufacturer datasheet figures.
Your results will differ with the design, the digitising, the fabric, the operator and how the machine is set up.
Caps are slower on every machine, ZSK included, at around 1,000 stitches a minute. A cap is a curved, structured surface and nobody sensible runs one flat out.
And if the operator cannot keep up with the hooping, the machine stops being the constraint at all.
So run your own numbers rather than ours.
Stocks is the sole UK and Ireland distributor for ZSK.
