Easter is this Sunday, meaning eggs are going to be swept off supermarket shelves and arts and crafts stores will have to work overtime to sell colorful dyes. But painting your own Easter eggs can be a hassle. You can get dye all over yourself, if you’re not careful you can accidentally crack the eggshells, and one wrong stroke of a paintbrush can ruin the entire design you had in mind. No worries. Egg-Bot will take care of making your Easter eggs look as good as a designer product.
The Egg-Bot is an impressive piece of robotics. The machine comes with a software that allows you to map your illustration on your computer, then import the design so that Egg-Bot will meticulously draw it on your egg. Egg-Bot can draw on both empty and raw eggs. It also has template patterns if you need help to get your creative juices flowing. The software is free and compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux operation systems, and it only takes a USB connection to transfer over information. You do need a basic power supply to get the Egg-Bot running though.
You have to assemble the machine on your own, which the makers say will take a couple of hours and require a screwdriver and a medium and small Phillips head. Egg-Bot is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The kit does not come with ink, however, so you will have to provide your own set of colorful Sharpie markers to make your design dreams come to life.
“The original design was motivated by simplicity: drawing on a round object does not require any complicated mechanics,” says Egg-Bot inventor Bruce Shapiro to MarthaStewart.com. “My hope is that Eggbot will not only be used for decoration but also as an introductory experience for people wanting to experiment with robotics.”
Of course, what he means is you can use the Egg-Bot to add designs to any other objects for other times of the year. As long as it’s somewhat spherical, you can insert the object in the slot and let Egg-Bot do the work. The machine is adjustable to fit “golf balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses,” according to the Egg-Bot official page. Pretty much, as long as your circle canvas is anywhere between approximately 1.25 to 4.25 inches (4 – 10 cm) in diameter, it will fit in the Egg-Bot. This will be a great product to reuse to design your own Christmas ornaments later this year.
Lastly, if you take a gander at the Egg-Bot FAQ, one of the questions answered is “Is this cheating?” Eh, kind of.
“Only if you are trying to pass off your eggbot art as something else, like handmade pysanky,” the Egg-Bot site answers.
The Egg-Bot kit is $195, or $220 for the Deluxe edition. Yes, it’s a hefty price to pay for something you can probably paint yourself, but how can you resist how gorgeous these eggs look?
