Maslow 4: Large format CNC routing made accessible

There was a Roomba equivalent company out there, which would have wheels that drive the motor around, but they never shipped. Maslow moves itself by pulling on belts on fixed anchor points.

The Shaper Origin has you move the machine, and it makes corrections using machine vision to track its position. It will give you more accuracy than a Maslow; but at a much greater cost and more attention.

A jig saw does not make as clean cuts as a router, and you need to have the workpiece suspend so the blade can go through the work. With a router, you can just have a spoilboard underneath.

>The Shaper Origin has you move the machine, and it makes corrections using machine vision to track its position. It will give you more accuracy than a Maslow; but at a much greater cost and more attention.

I really don't understand the market for the shaper. Even the youtubers that get paid to shill them don't seem to have a compelling reason to be using them.

Broadly the same market as the Festool Domino. The Domino doesn't do anything that you can't do with a dowel jig or a biscuit jointer, it's just does one thing quickly, accurately and well. The Shaper Origin isn't a replacement for a full-sheet CNC router with an ATC, but it is an excellent alternative to a plunge router and a stack of custom templates. Nobody needs one, but for someone who does high-end custom cabinetry and joinery, the Origin should give a good ROI.

Being able to cut complex shapes on site for art builds, where a designer knows Illustrator but nothing about tool paths, has paid for my Shaper Origin several times over already.

I've not bought an origin, but think it definitely has a niche. You can do almost everything you can do with a Shaper Origin with a regular router, but you'll need a template or jig to do it.

For example: - It can do dovetails, etc. instead of purchasing a Leigh jig and using a standard router. - You can do hinge mortises for various hardware. - Cutouts in hardwood floors for various registers, without having to make a template for just that thing.

When you get into curves instead of just straight lines it can be easier to work with the Shaper than a template/jig. You can also use the Shaper to build a template that a standard bearing guided bit will follow.

You can do all of that with another tool, but the Shaper origin does it with less setup. The trade-off is if you have the setup then a regular router is probably going to be much faster to batch things out.

>where a designer knows Illustrator but nothing about tool paths

I guess that's probably the best use case, you've changed my mind.