EXPMelco, Bernina →PESBrother, Baby Lock
Convert EXP to PES
An EXP on its own is a stitch file with no colour in it — which surprises people, because on a Bernina the design certainly had colours. Those live in a separate file that travels beside the EXP, and if you only have the .exp, they are already gone before the conversion starts. That is the one thing worth understanding here; the stitching itself crosses to PES without difficulty.
Stitch preview
EXP FILE PREVIEW · SAMPLE DESIGN Showing a realistic stitch-out sample — choose or drop your own file.
Sampler · Roundel
Stitches—
Threads—
Width—
Height—
Jumps—
Avg. density—
Thread order
Hoop fit
The two formats
.EXP · MELCO, BERNINA
Melco EXP
Melco and Bernina machines read EXP. Like DST it stores movement only; colours travel beside it in a separate INF file, so a converted EXP arrives uncoloured.
.PES · BROTHER, BABY LOCK
Brother PES
Brother's own format, used across Baby Lock and Bernina Deco machines. It carries thread colours and a design thumbnail, so a converted file arrives with its palette already set.
What to watch for
Look for a .inf file next to your .exp
A Bernina USB design is normally three files with the same name: the .exp holding the stitches, a .inf holding the thread colours, and a .bmp thumbnail. We read the .exp only. If you still have the original folder, open the .inf in a text editor — the colour list is in there, and you can set the threads at the machine from it. If all you were given was the .exp, the colours are not recoverable from the file and the palette we show is ours.
We write PES version 1, on purpose
Brother files carry version headers from #PES0001 to #PES0060, and older machines refuse newer versions outright. We write the original, which every Brother and Baby Lock machine since the PE-300 can open.
Bernina EXP and Melco EXP are not quite the same thing
The same extension covers a commercial Melco file and the file a Bernina writes to a USB stick. They share a stitch layout, which is why both read here, but they came from different lineages and the surrounding files differ. If a particular .exp will not read, that is the likeliest reason — tell us the machine it came from rather than assuming the file is damaged.
Related conversions
Your file is used only for this conversion and deleted as soon as the download is ready. We keep no copy, and there is no account to store it in.