Hi Emblove 5 million stitches is nothing...I do Millon stitches in one project, done about 8 projects so far with it, I hope to do a hundred or more projects before I would retire my machine . I have had this Machine ( Janome 550E ) for about 18 months and have not had a problem with it . I do a complete oil every month as per the service manual which comes with the Machine. If you are getting shredding there is something sharp along the course the thread is traveling. Could be a bad batch of thread, I have this sometimes and finished up throwing the spool out, just not worth the effort to try and save it,I use Elegant thread and have had very few problems with it.