AIO Robotics breathing life into the complete scan-to-print eco-system

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In the 3D Printing Marketplace here at the 2015 International CES there are 3D scanners and 3D printers-a-go-go but unlike the 2D printing world there’s very little combination between the two. XYZprinting are making a go at it with the DaVinci AiO range but with such a spread across a range of technologies it hardly seems a priority.

To find a company, who are specialising in making a closed off scan-to-print eco-system you have to venture marginally further afield to the Eureka Park zone of CES. Eureka Park is akin to the TCT Start-up Zone – smaller companies offered an opportunity to showcase their projects amongst the Boschs, Whirlpools and Samsungs of the world. Far from being a place of little interest Eureka Park houses some of the whole shows most talked about technologies including Neil Young’s music player Pono, AIO Robotics are in good company.

After being fully funded in just a day on Kickstarter the team showcased their prototype at last year’s CES, this year they’re back with a fully working production model and suitably impress. The incredibly likeable founder and CTO, Kai Chang gave us a demo of the machine’s capabilities and without doubt this is the best example of the AiO theory on the market today.

Kai is particularly proud, and rightly so, of the machines true standalone nature; the term plug-and-play is used fast and loose to heap praise on many machines in the industry failing to mention that for a large majority of them you need to use a computer to design and a computer to print the files in the first place. Not so with Zeus – AIO Robotics flagship machine, you can scan, fix, scale, rotate, adjust print settings all directly on its gorgeous huge tablet-like touchscreen, the machine has true auto bed-levelling even with a removable build platform.

Then there’s the quality too, an example of a small statue scanned, scaled up by 3x and printed without using a single USB cable showcases how truly plug-and-play the printer is without compromising on quality.

AIO Robotics’ team is enthusiastic and dedicated to making all-in-one system work. The use cases are huge as Kai suggests it could be used for somebody with no CAD skills to place together, scan and print a hinge or bracket in the home but it can also be used by autoshops who don’t want to open the moulds in order to reverse engineer parts.

The machine is futureproof too as though the current generation printhead/extruder is only designed to print in PLA and ABS it is easily detached and newer print heads with different temperature resistances are on their way.