Feb. 26, 2015 | By Alec
Thanks to the advent and convenience of web-based communication through email, text messages and WhatsApp, tweets and even Facebook updates, people rarely pick up a pen any more. In fact, penmanship is quickly becoming something of an old-fashioned art form with style and class about it. It’s no wonder that so many wedding invitations are nowadays printed in fonts that try to emulate handwriting.
Of course, communication is so much easier now than ever before – remember deciphering doctor’s notes? – that there’s no point in going back, but for those special occasions a handwritten note is far more meaningful than any other alternative. And that’s exactly where the Bond comes in. Not Bond, James Bond, but just Bond, the handwriting robot. This robot is capable of producing gorgeous handwritten notes through an unusual combination of 3D printing technology and Montblanc pens and therefore is a true combination of technology, convenience and old-fashioned style.
And its remarkably simple to operate. Using the Bond website or app, you can easily compose a note, card or letter, choose a stationary and fill in the recipient. The Bond takes all this information and writes the handwritten note for you, puts it in a wax-sealed envelope and sends it by mail. And for those of you who want to pretend that you’ve written it yourself, there’s also an option of submitting a handwriting sample that bond will scan and emulate. Prices start at just $2,99 plus postage (though learning your handwriting can cost as much as $199) and can be ordered at any scale.
So how does it work? Well the whole setup essentially revolves around a Makerbot 3D printer, but instead of a plastic extrusion toolhead, it features a pen. Running on custom software to move the pen in handwriting patterns, this typical Cartesian 3D printer thus ‘3D prints’ handwritten notes. Or would that be 2D?
It's a remarkably clever setup and was first developed by founder Sonny Caberwal in reaction to the modern gift-giving and e-commerce mass production. As he told reporters: ‘We made a strategic decision to focus on building handwritten note technology, because it was most core to our goal of helping people articulate the appreciation of their relationship.’ And that proved to be a very fruitful descision, as the business generated a massive $200,000 in just its first ninety days of operation, through a whirlwind of positive feedback.
While originally relying on a autopen-like machine that was a common sight in 1940s and 1950s offices, Bond was further developed by a team of roboticists, software engineers and typographers to ensure competitive success at a large scale. ‘We pair our engineering efforts with our own team of handwriting experts, all of whom have advanced degrees in type design,’ Caberwal says. ‘The design-focused handwriting team overlaps with hardware and software engineering and operations in a very unique way, to inform software design, hardware design, hardware maintenance, and operational execution.’
As a result, its writing has a very natural and human style that emulates quirky human conventions. Thus the ‘O’s’ don’t have to be perfectly round, while the lower-case ‘t’ can also be written with an up-and-down movement, rather than a more efficient two-stroke style. ‘We’re always thinking about speed optimization versus the natural rate of ink flow from a traditional pen, and how we can re-engineer that rate of flow while increasing the speed of the movement of the pen,’ Caberwal reveals.
Little options like that, that have all been incorporated in the software and can be copied from your own handwriting, are probably exactly what makes the Bond robot such a success. While we all applaud technological advance, we seem to simultaneously harbor a lot of love for human input as well. Perhaps that’s the same reason why so many people are gravitating towards 3D printer technology – it's the epitome of computer-controlled creation, but revolves around and enables human originality at the same time.
Caberwal also sees that human emotion as the core to his success. ‘It’s shown me that people gravitate toward things that make them feel,’ he says. ‘It’s why we love certain musicians, actors, chefs, and designers—because they inspire emotion in us, and make us feel something.’ If you’d like to try it for yourself, visit the Bond website here.
You can see the Bond in action here:
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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Um, its called a "pen plotter". Been around since forever.
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