DST File: Tajima Embroidery Format Explained

DST embroidery file format

A DST file is Tajima's embroidery format and the closest thing machine embroidery has to a common language. It records the stitches, jumps, trims and colour changes of a design together with a short text header, but not a single thread colour. Commercial multi-needle machines of many brands accept DST, and many home machines read it as their second format.

Updated October 3, 2026

At a glance

Made for

Tajima and most commercial multi-needle machines; many home machines read it as a second format

Header

512 bytes of text: label, stitch count, colour changes and the design's extents

Thread colours

Not stored: every machine shows its own default colour sequence

Trims

No trim command: a short burst of jump stitches that the machine interprets

Longest stitch

12.1 mm per stitch record; longer moves are split into several jumps

On Embroidly

In every download, written by our digitizer's own DST encoder

What a DST file stores

A DST file starts with a 512-byte header written as plain text. It holds a label of up to 16 characters (LA:), the stitch count (ST:), the number of colour changes (CO:) and the distance from the design's starting point to each of its four edges, in tenths of a millimetre. Open a DST in a text editor and you can read those lines before the binary part begins.

After the header come the stitches: three bytes per record, each a move of up to 12.1 mm in any direction plus a flag that says stitch, jump or stop. A colour change is simply a stop. The file never says which thread comes next; on a multi-needle machine the operator assigns a needle to each stop, and on a home machine the screen shows a default colour.

Why DST has no colours, and what that means at home

DST was designed for production machines, where the operator decides which cone sits on which needle. At home that decision is yours. Brother's PE800 manual explains what you will see: "Since Tajima (.dst) data does not contain specific thread color information, it is displayed with our default thread color sequence." Older Brother models don't even show a DST's picture, only its file name.

So treat the thread chart as part of a DST download. Every Embroidly design lists its colours in sewing order, and the all-formats ZIP includes a colour sheet you can print.

How trims work in DST

There is no trim command in the format. A trim is written as a quick burst of jump stitches, and the machine cuts when it counts the number of jumps it has been set to expect. Brother's PR1055X manual warns that "if the jump number is not matched, either unexpected trim or no trimming at trim expected point will happen."

Our DST files write each trim as three short jumps that cancel each other out. If trims are skipped or appear in odd places, compare that with your machine's DST trim setting before you change the design.

Which machines read DST

DST is the shared format of commercial embroidery. Wilcom lists it as the format for Tajima machines, the Barudan (DSB), ZSK (DSZ) and Happy (TAP) formats are variants built on the same Tajima layout, and Melco calls DST one of the "industry-standard file types".

Home machines are a different story, and DST is not as universal as its reputation:

Brand	DST support (examples from manuals and product pages)
Brother, Baby Lock	Read on every model checked
Janome	MB-4S, MB-7 and Skyline S9 read it; the Continental M17, MC550E, MC9850 and MC400E don't list it
Husqvarna Viking, Pfaff	Read by the flagships with 15 formats; VP3-only models such as the DESIGNER JADE 35 don't
Singer	Legacy SE300 and SE340 read XXX and DST; the SE9150 to SE9185 family loads VP3 only

When the manual lists both DST and a native format, the native one keeps the colours and the preview.

Converting DST files

Converting from DST adds colours rather than restoring them: DST to PES, DST to JEF and DST to VP3 assign palette colours that you then correct with the thread chart. Converting to DST, for example PES to DST or EXP to DST, drops whatever colour information the source had. The stitches and the design's size stay exactly the same in both directions. Check the result in the embroidery file viewer before you hoop fabric.

DST files from Embroidly

Our DST files come straight from the digitizer's own DST encoder, not from a converter. Each one is read back after writing and compared with the digitized design, stitch by stitch, so the trims, colour stops and extents in the header match what you see on the design page. Our EXP format page and U01 format page cover the two other colourless formats in every download.