Autodesk Open Sources the Ember 3D Printer’s Schematics, Firmware

Software and hardware giant Autodesk today made the schematics and firmware for the 3D printer Ember open source and available for download.

“We’ve released Ember’s design for two reasons: it’s a commitment to how we’re thinking and acting differently about hardware and it allows our customers to easily extend Ember making it perfect for their needs,” said Eric Wilhelm, director of communities for Autodesk and founder of Instructables, of the move to open source.

The printer’s electronics — design files, schematics and PCBs, bill of materials, approved vendor lists, and assembly drawings — are licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike and the firmware as GNU GPL. Autodesk had previously shared Ember’s mechanical designs and even the recipe for the resin it uses.

“I think its great to see that Autodesk have taken the initiative to share their work under a pair of standard copyleft licenses: CC BY-SA for the EDA schematics and the GNU GPL for the software,” says Creative Commons technical lead Matt Lee. “All future improvements made by the community and Autodesk can now be freely shared, and hopefully we’ll see useful improvements that can be used by other freedom-respecting 3D printers, such as the Lulzbot.”