Scion

2012

Live sculptural milling for Toyota in Las Vegas.

Concept

For Toyota’s annual National Dealer Meeting in Las Vegas, our team at Bot & Dolly was asked to propose an installation for an event celebrating the Scion marque.

We pitched a “live fabrication performance”: robot-controlled milling of acrylic panels, using Scion’s design language, over the course of the two hour event.

With dramatic lighting, flying swarf, and a slow reveal of the final graphic, the robotic performance was a conversation piece for the duration of the night. The finished panels were shared with the client for installation at their headquarters.

Technology

This project relied on toolpath generation software—implemented in Rhino / Grasshopper—to produce a trajectory that was kinematically feasible, respected material constraints (speeds & feeds), and maintained a visual appeal.

Teammates integrated the end-of-arm tooling, an endmill and VFD, with our standard robot hardware.

I was responsible for calibration of the workcell, the toolpath pipeline, and on-site support.

Critically, the acrylic panels waiting for us on-site did not meet the flatness tolerances we had provided. I took measurements of the as-built panels and wrote software to project the toolpath onto this warped surface in the hours (minutes) before showtime.

Result