PROMETEO

PROMETEO

An open source design so any school can build its own CNC machine.

I founded PROMETEO, and I carried it between 2018 and 2021. I saw two things: education needed to catch up, and imported kits were being resold under other people's labels. What I wanted to offer was something else — a modular, open design that anyone could cut, assemble and improve. The files are below, free.

THE FILES
Why it exists

Why it exists

I saw that education needed to catch up, and that imported kits were being resold under other people's labels. What was missing wasn't a more expensive machine: it was a design anyone could cut, assemble and improve on their own.

The design

The design

Out of one 5 mm MDF board, cut in fifteen minutes, you get the whole structure of a machine. Because it's CNC cut, to a tenth of a millimetre, the frame comes out square by construction: it doesn't depend on whoever assembles it. The RepRap movement worked with printed parts, and for a single kit you needed a machine printing for twenty-four hours. With this design, in twenty-four hours you have fifty kits.

Who builds it

Who builds it

It goes together with a screwdriver and no mechanical background.

How far it went

How far it went

Oscar M. Ciuró, from the maker space at Transit Projectes in Barcelona, got the house to sponsor the development, and that's how I built the final prototype. I presented it to representatives from Italy, Romania, Spain and Canada, and it ended up inside a European project.