August 4, 2005 We are VERY excited about this machine and the prospects for what the future holds in the general area of desktop production. The CraftRobo is a desktop cutting machine which when used in conjunction with your desktop printer can produce remarkable colourful three dimensional objects or complex stickers. The CraftRobo also has a kiss-cut (half-cut) function so you can cut around stickers and decals on vinyl while leaving them attached to the carrier sheet, or cut fully through paper or card to produce cut-out designs, or produce fold marks. There’s ROBO Master (windows) software and a Cutting Master ROBO Adobe Illustrator plug-in so you can make up your very own designs or you can download from an extensive library of designs and make your own four-colour origami. Maximum cutting size of the media is 200 mm x 1000 mm (7.9 inch x 39.4 inch).
When Saul Griffith, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral candidate, won the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a desktop machine which “printed” low-cost eyeglass lenses, Gizmag’s story noted that his interest in rapid prototyping and personal fabrication could someday lead to what he terms, “low cost digitally enabled machine tools that allow more people to build their own stuff.”
“I am still extremely interested in this area,” Griffith enthused. “The idea of Open Source Hardware and people sharing their design code over the web is very powerful. I think it’s actually more relevant to more people than pure open source software. I'd love to see everyone involved in product development by sharing designs on the web and manufacturing their own personal items at home or in properly resourced local libraries.”
Robocraft is distributed in Japan, America, Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain and Korea and distribution is available in all other countries by filling out this form.
Of course if you can't be bothered with the origami thing, and you think pop-up Christmas cards are old hat, you could go straight to 3D printing. If it's good enough for F1-champion-in-waiting Renault, it's probably good enough for anyone.
