diatom studio: piccolo drawing bot

‘piccolo’ by diatom studio

based in both london and lisbon, diatom design studio (tiago rorke + greg saul) has collaborated CMU CoDe lab (cheng xu and huaishu peng) to create a pocket-sized drawing robot known as ‘piccolo’. the stand-alone machine provides an open-source platform for digital fabrication at a small scale. powered by an arduino board, it allows for flexible programming. for those that are not familiar with the software, ‘piccolo’ has access to uploaded libraries, for creating custom drawings in a less technical way. many robots can be synchronized to create larger illustrations, while access to the z-axis results in more dynamic prints. 

the CNC-bot is easily assembled using laser cut plastic parts and costs less than 70 USD. 

‘meet piccolo’ by diatom studio 

the CNC pieces are small and light enough to fit into the user’s pocket 

the robot in process of drawing 

stand-alone CNC platform