Obsessed, I decided to leave my medical practice to devote more time to experimenting with my steppers (and to raising our young children). But my first demo underwhelmed my curious and concerned family and friends. Soon afterward, when my kids bugged me about Easter egg coloring, it hit me that I might be able to use steppers to draw precise, intricate designs on eggs. Within a couple of days, the first Egg-Bot was born.

In the years that followed, local companies like 3M were dumping all sorts of automation machinery and components onto the local scrap market, and I used some of this bounty to build more machines, all inspired by my Egg-Bot: a Dremel CNC engraver, a plasma cutting table, and a 3-axis router. I began making sculpture using these “studio machines” and later incorporated the machines themselves into kinetic artworks, like my 35-foot-tall Pipedream I, which uses solenoid valves to generate bubble patterns in the lobby of the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM).

The Egg-Bot had changed my life; now I was a professional artist, and I began teaching a robotics class at the SMM that used the Egg-Bot as a project. I knew it would make a great kit, so, long story short, with significant help from my son, Ben, and others, we brought 50 beta Egg-Bot kits to the 2009 Maker Faire in San Mateo. We sold half of them and won an Editors Choice blue ribbon, but honestly, the kit had problems, including a terrible solenoid pen up/down mechanism.

Fortunately, I met Lenore and Windell from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories at Maker Faire. I suggested collaborating on an Egg-Bot kit, and happily, they agreed soon afterwards. They brought their characteristic care, aesthetics, expertise, and hard work to the project, making a kit that was easy to use, cross-platform, affordable, and superbly documented. The first batch sold out in two days, and its popularity continues, which is tremendously gratifying to me.

-Bruce Shapiro