I am looking for a cheap or free program that turn images and or .svg files into machine code for an embroidery machine. So far everything i have found costs 100’s of dollars.
I know this isn’t a sweing thread, but we have a diverse community and this is still computer numericly controlled tooling 
I’m assuming ‘softwear’ is a pun lol.
I have come across this before and yea usually it’s really expensive. Although I just checked out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_embroidery_software and Embroidermodder is listed as free?! http://embroidermodder.org/features.html
There’s also Ink/Stitch, an Inkscape extension. PEmbroider. Thred. And SophieSew all listed as free.
@brent113 beat me to it 
Just be careful to check the file format used by your embroidery machine—nearly all of them are proprietary.
I have a relative who is deep into embroidery. Very very expensive machines. I was asked to help survey the market for software compatible with her machine and found nothing - it was very locked down to the proprietary software.
You’re probably right, good chance of only the vendor’s software working.
We have a husqvarna designer SE… a Google search indicates it can use these file types:
.HUS, .SHV, .DHV, .VIP, .VP3, .PES, .PCS, .JEF, .SEW, .XXX, .DST, .EXP
Heard the .XXX file type comes up with some pretty nice ‘softwear’.
-S
I looked into this a few years ago. There’s no particularly good free software. All the decent stuff is proprietary.
Embroidermodder is (still) half-dead. The mailing lists on sourceforge are dead, for example.
Seems like inkstitch is the best free option right now… but honestly I don’t even care if its free, if its good I’m willing to pay, just not much more than $100 for a hobbyist usage level
Also I want to say thank you all, I never expected to get so many good responses from this thread. Way to prove me wrong! I really appreciate the help and insights.
Cunningham’s Law in action
Not very helpful, but I can just add that yeah, the embroidery stuff is very proprietary, we used to have a tenant who did hats and jerseys and stuff, also did the vinyl tshirt printing etc, and he wasnt even comfortable talking about the software he used due to fear someone competing with him hehe
I downloaded Sophie Sew for the exact same reason. Just be careful and pick advanced during the download so you don’t get unwanted things with the free download. Version 1.13 is what is available now…2.0 will be comeing in 2021 from Carlos Mandell. https://sophiesew.com/SS2/the-software/
I use it because its the best for Laser images on glass and acrylic/
My wife uses Embird software. pretty cheap but feature loaded