DIY Workshop Robot Tools and Where ABB Cobots Fit

For years, computer precision in a home workshop meant a CNC router, one of the large tabletop machines that can only cut shapes smaller than themselves. A DIY workshop robot today can also be a router you hold in your hands that corrects its own path, or a desktop arm built from open plans. Both are turning up in garages, makerspaces and small shops. This post goes from router planes and the first electric routers to hobby CNC and fab labs, then to Shaper Origin and this autumn's open-source arms, and asks where ABB's small cobots could fit.

A woodworker guides a Shaper Origin handheld CNC router across a workbench. Photo: Shaper Tools

From router planes to hobby CNC machines

Before power routers existed, woodworkers did the same jobs with a router plane, cutting grooves and recesses by hand. The machines came one step at a time. A foot-pedal Barnes Former/Shaper was on sale in 1877, and a portable electric router was patented in 1906, though the early electric routers were heavy and only nominally portable. Oscar and Rudy Onsrud built an air-powered router in 1915, Stanley Works bought a line of portable routers from Roy L. Carter in the 1930s, and ELU in Germany invented the plunge router around 1949.

A Stanley No. 71 router plane, the hand tool for cutting grooves and recesses before power routers. Photo: J Jongsma / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Computers reached the workshop through numerical control. The first NC machines, built in the 1940s and 1950s, moved their tools to points fed in on punched tape, and computer control replaced them as computing costs fell. CNC routers now range from small home-style desktop machines to industrial routers with 4 by 8 foot beds, and most hobby CNC tools simply rely on the accuracy of their stepper motors. Fab labs spread the machines further: the first began in 2001 at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, the first one outside MIT opened at Vigyan Ashram in India in 2002, and by November 2019 there were 1,830.

Material being processed on a CNC machine in the FabLAB of LABNL in Monterrey, Mexico, 2021. Photo: Ricardo Burnes / LABNL via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The handheld robotic router came out of a research lab. In August 2012 Alec Rivers, Ilan Moyer and Frédo Durand of MIT presented a router at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles that maps the material with a camera, finds its position from black-and-white stickers and moves the bit with motors to follow the plan, so the user only has to stay within about a quarter inch. Rivers started the work after a picture frame he built with inherited tools would not line up. Because the user does the rough positioning, the tool could in theory cut shapes of any size. Shaper, founded the same year, began with a handheld CNC router called Origin.

Setting cut depth and passes on Shaper Origin's touchscreen, above domino-style markers like the ShaperTape its camera uses to track position. Photo: Shaper Tools

Shaper Origin and open-source arms today

Shaper calls Origin a handheld CNC router, a category it says it invented almost a decade ago. The user steers it along a path on its screen while an on-board camera and ShaperTape track its position, and the tool makes small automatic corrections of up to about half an inch, retracting the bit if it goes out of bounds. It cuts up to 43 mm deep, takes standard quarter-inch router bits and lists at 2,699 dollars. Origin is designed in California and assembled by Festool in Germany, and Woodworking Network reported in August 2026 that Shaper's products are joining the Festool portfolio, a move Shaper dates to 2027.

A woodworker in an apron cuts with Shaper Origin in his shop. Photo: Shaper Tools

Makers are also building their own robot arms. On 21 September 2026 Open Source For You reported on Seeed Studio's reBot-DevArm, a six-axis desktop arm with a parallel gripper whose CAD files, bill of materials and assembly notes are all public. One version reaches 767 mm and carries 1.5 kg, the other reaches 754 mm with 2.5 kg, and both claim repeatability better than 0.2 mm. It works with ROS 2, MoveIt, MuJoCo, NVIDIA Isaac Sim and Hugging Face LeRobot, so makers can collect demonstrations, simulate the arm's behaviour and try robot-learning models before running them on the real hardware.

A uArm Metal desktop robot arm, 2016. Photo: Siaopan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not sell a hobby robot, and no source puts its arms in home workshops, so any fit is a possibility. The closest match is small shops and makerspaces. The single-arm YuMi weighs 9.5 kg, can be mounted on a table, wall or ceiling and is taught by moving it by hand. ABB designed it for small parts assembly and says it lowers the barrier for new robot users, particularly small and medium enterprises. The GoFa CRB 15000 cobot can share a bench with people without fences, and a cell with either arm can be simulated first in RobotStudio.

A single-arm YuMi cobot at work on GE Healthcare's prototype assembly line. Photo: ABB

Where DIY workshop robots go next

Both kinds of tool are getting easier to teach. The reBot arm can be used to collect demonstrations, and ABB's Wizard Easy Programming lets first-time users teach a robot with drag-and-drop blocks in about 10 minutes, the approach covered in our post on teaching robots by demonstration. Origin needs no programming for designs made on the tool itself, and its design app, Shaper Studio, runs on any device and sends designs straight to Origin. From 2027, Shaper's products will be part of Festool's portfolio, and Origin already comes with a three-year Festool warranty.

Programming a GoFa cobot from the FlexPendant touch screen. Photo: ABB

For homes, price is a hurdle. Origin lists at 2,699 dollars, and an open arm like the reBot lets makers buy parts and build it themselves from the published files. Shared workshops spread the cost, since a fab lab gives its members a 3D printer, a laser cutter and a three-axis CNC machine under one roof. For small factories, the single-arm YuMi and GoFa are the ABB arms that suit a short-run bench, and welding cobots heading into home garages are covered in our post on cobot welding from job shops to garages.

The fab lab at Vigyan Ashram in India, the first fab lab set up outside MIT, 2019. Photo: Komal Sambhudas / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Safety comes first in a small shop. Origin retracts its bit automatically when it goes out of bounds, and ABB gives GoFa power and force limiting through torque sensors built into its joints. Cheap arms have limits of their own: in Seeed's tests, sustained heavy loads at long reach tripped the motors' thermal protection. Skills are the other gap. Makers still need to draw parts in CAD or Shaper Studio and set up machines safely, and small shops need someone who can teach and maintain a robot, which is the job Wizard and RobotStudio are built to make easier.

A teacher and students at an ABB Robotics Education Package cell with a GoFa cobot. Photo: ABB

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