I have been doing some research to try and figure out the necessary parts. Their is a really good description on the SmoothieWare website with a lot of details.

smoothieware embroidery

The part that I am struggling with right now is to figure out the needle assembly and how to either build my own or finding a suitable replacement part that I can hack. Below is link that show the mechanism while the needle plunges.

How a Bobbin Works

I have been told that they call the needle assembly an Embroidery Foot. It seems like it should be reasonable to find a replacement foot for an embroidery machine. There are quite a few industrial companies out there so the trick would be to find one that will work for this project. So I am currently looking into finding a suitable source for these parts.

Also it seems like there are really two styles of embroidery machines. The home user one style and the commercial style. The main difference as far as I can tell is that the home user one is basically an upgraded sewing machine and can only ever do 1 color of thread at a time. I think if you were to try to build this style you could just get a cheap sewing machine and hack it together.

The commercial versions look a little different. I think this is the design that makes more sense to try and build as an open source design. It can support many more needles at the same time and if you could develop an open source design you could make it modular and scalable. You can start with a single needle and over time add more. So this is the design I am gonna work toward building.

I also learned a little bit about the software. Almost all embroidery machines accept the DST file format. So the software should be able to accept this format.

I also did some reading and the design should allow for a cap attachment, so you can embroider on round objects. Shouldnt be too hard If we keep that in mind from the beginning.

Random Links to Useful bits of information

Sewing Machine Arm

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Embroidery-Machine-head-parts_1411840432.html

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Chinese-Embroidery-Machine-Parts_51047854.html

List of Machine Field Sizes

These two links have a lot of good details.

Brother PR-650 Operation Manual

Janome MB-4 Operational Manual