This s is the best execution of one of these I've seen. I loved the one that hung on wires and pulled itself around but it didn't have true awareness of its surroundings. This one can update for slippage on the material and correct.

Love the ideas this could make possible and at an accuracy that a home builder could only dream about.

Once these get into the rental market it's really on.


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I looks like it does work in a Z axis. I watched it closely and appears to be plunging. I wonder about the traction (accuracy) of those wheels when the surface gets covered with enough sawdust?

All very well but the feed rates are terable and so slow it would take hours and I'm sure people will say speed is not important but a big unlimited board can take up to 8 hours to cut and you do need to keep eye on it and my machine runs over 4 x the speed. Any good diy cnc guy will be shaking there head at this knowing even a basic gantry cnc will far out perform this and that before even contemplating what will happen if you hit say a knot or something were the density changes and causes the tool to jump. I tryed my cnc on some ali for the first time yesterday and it cut it but only just and that was going ever so slow, it needs far more  rigidity .

The day they make an autonomous free-form curved surface sander, I'll be very interested. Lots of automated cutting devices, but I haven't seen anything that takes care of the shitty part of building boards.

I'm picturing a scanner that senses the material thickness and determines the amount how required sanding needed to achieve a specific uniform thickness at the region being scanned. Maybe a scanner like this?
 http://www.micro-epsilon.com/2D_3D/laser-scanner/

If you plow through their kickstarter page you can see the list of prototypes. This isn't rev 1 by a long shot. The reason for the weird wheels is that in the case of loss of traction, you always have 1 more wheels to grab.

Also, remember that it's aware of where it is so traction and flex isn't as much of a problem. Pono's point about this the whole time has been that rigidity and traction aren't as important once you can error correct.

Think about an R/C helicopter vs a drone. Used to be only a highly skilled pilot could fly a rotor craft. Now anyone can do it due to the sensors.

Also, remember that it's aware of where it is so traction and flex isn't as much of a problem. Pono's point about this the whole time has been that rigidity and traction aren't as important once you can error correct.

the problem is not with correcting itself its with the damage to the part that it does the split second it hits something hard. when you have a bit and motor spinning at between 10,000-20,000 it tends to have quite some momentum behind it so the force created if that is suddenly acted on it quite some. Its why cnc are so big and heavy so there is a lot of mass behind them which helps absorb vibrations and dampen these sort of effects.

How much damage can you do routing through a stringer if you get it wrong!

considering a lot of the time it looks to be just dragging one set of wheels around I'm not sure how much traction there really can be.

you have to remember that to cnc something its not as they make it look in the video. First there is the design which you are unlikely to in a dusty building site and then there is the cam which has to be done to get it to cut how you want which also takes time and lets not forget the price of this thing its not cheap!

I'm not quite sure where this tool would be a good but if you want accurate and reliable repeatable and perfect cuts it just not going to be like this.

the gantry design cnc are like it for a reason. if space is the problem just flip the gantry style machine on it side and to do the same job but more reliable it could easily be made portable.