Universal API for 3D printers

With this research we propose the implementation of a overlay restful API for 3D printers to expose these machines to the Internet for utilization within cloud services. This is to abstract the underlying communication structure and means for accessing and controlling a 3D printer resource which is performed in one of three ways. The ®rst method of accessing and controlling a 3D printer is via a proprietary protocol or a printer driver in Microsoft Windows. The second method is the control via a USB-serial connection between a controlling computer and the printer resource. This protocol can either be proprietary or based on open standards like GCODE (ISO 6983-1:2009). The third method of control is based on physical storage devices attached to the printer with machining instructions stored on them. This research excludes the communication and control means involving proprietary protocols or drivers due complexity restrictions within the implementation. The approach is designed with extensibility in mind so that future access to proprietary protocols can be added to the control API. Printer resources with only the third control method available are also excluded from this research as they are currently lacking the capability to be remotely controlled. This work describes the design and implementation of an abstraction API layer between varying softand hardware components with an extensible architecture for future hardand software components for within the domain of Additive Manufacturing (AM).