This is the beginning of the project. I am currently investigating the details and develop the specs of what this machine will need to do. I am not exactly sure how embroidery machines work beyond having seen one or two running. But I see this project as being split into 3 main areas.

• Mechanical Design
  • The mechanical design will consist of a frame, xy table, and needle assembly. I believe the needle assembly will be the most complicated mechanical assembly. While building one from scratch would be ideal, it might be possible to find replacement parts for an off the shelf machine to start with.
• Electrical
  
  • The electrical should be fairly similar to a cnc mill or 3d printer. A microcontroller to run everything, some stepper motor drivers, possibly a dc motor for the needle, some encoders on the needle, and perhaps a few other bits. Options include using an arduino mega with RAMPs board, Smoothie board, Beagle Bone Black, or some other board. It is probably quite easy to use any of these and make it work.
• Software
• There will need to be some digitizing software to take an image file and convert it into the standard format for embroidery machines. I would like to be compatible with current standards for embroidery machines. The software for embroidery machines is quite expensive. If the machine firmware can read the standard format, then you could generate the code using any method you like. This allows the user to generate the code in whatever method you like. If someone has a old embroidery machine but doesn't have the software then they could use the open-source software to run their machine. It just makes sense to follow the standard format.