29/08/2026
🚑🖥️ Open-heart surgery at Print it Stitch it this week…
Our main workhorse PC has been on the operating table after developing a habit of continually crashing. After a bit of investigating, the old graphics card appears to have been the culprit, so rather than replacing the whole machine, we decided to see if we could bring the old girl back to life.
New graphics card ✅
New fan ✅
A very overdue deep clean ✅
Approximately half a print shop’s worth of dust and fibres removed ✅
Running computers in a print and embroidery shop isn’t exactly the cleanest environment. Between garment fibres, paper dust and everything else floating around, they definitely get a harder life than your average office computer.
This particular PC was custom built over nine years ago and has been our flagship machine for most of that time. Before we moved to custom-built PCs, we seemed to burn through computers every year or two, so this one has more than earned its keep.
Thankfully, even though it’s been out of action for over a week, customer production hasn’t been affected. We have a second custom-built workstation, and because our customer files are stored separately on an SSD, we were able to move the drive across and carry on working with very little disruption.
There’s probably a business lesson in there somewhere too: sometimes you don’t need to replace something just because it develops a fault. If it’s been built well in the first place, it can be worth repairing what you already have.
And apparently running a print shop now also requires learning how to diagnose graphics cards, buy PC components and work out which tiny cable plugs into which tiny socket. 😂
Special mention to Kirsty’s boyfriend, whose mechanical and electrical engineering knowledge came in very handy when it was time to actually fit the new graphics card. Team effort. 😂🔧
Fingers crossed, she’s now ready for another few years of artwork, embroidery files, print queues and abuse. 🤞🖥️