{"slug": "i-milled-an-android-figurine-out-of-a-solid-block-with-an-ai-powered-5-axis-cnc", "title": "I milled an Android figurine out of a solid block with an AI-powered 5-axis CNC machine", "summary": "InfiMaker founder and CEO Bowen Xie demonstrated the InfiMaker K1, a desktop 5-axis CNC machine that uses AI to convert a 2D image into a machine-ready toolpath in minutes, carving an Android figurine from a single solid block. The K1 is designed for non-experts, with a clean, enclosed form factor inspired by espresso machines, and can machine materials including aluminum, steel, and titanium.", "body_md": "Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. [Learn more.](https://www.androidauthority.com/external-links/)\n\n# I milled an Android figurine out of a solid block with an AI-powered 5-axis CNC machine\n\nJul 24, 2026 — 6:51 AM ET\n\nTake a look at the little white figure in the video above. It’s an Android bot from the Android 6.0 Marshmallow era, and at first glance, you might not think that this is all that impressive. But what makes this model special is that it was carved from a single solid block on a desktop machine, and the design process — from a flat 2D image to a machine-ready toolpath — was handled by AI in a matter of minutes.\n\nI was invited to InfiMaker’s HQ in Shenzhen, China, to watch a machine transform a solid block into one of these Android bots. And that machine is the [InfiMaker K1](https://bit.ly/4y8MpLb), a desktop 5-axis CNC machine designed to turn digital ideas into real products. The interesting claim is that it isn’t just a machine that can machine aluminum, steel, and even titanium; it’s designed for people with an idea without needing to become a machinist first.\n\n## A lot of the stuff around you started on a machine like this\n\nBefore this trip, my knowledge of CNC machining hardware and industry practice was pretty basic, but I definitely didn’t appreciate how many products around us began on a machine like this. What I didn’t appreciate is just how much of the physical world around us starts this way. Photo frames, camera parts, drone components, robot joints, and countless automotive parts all begin as a block of material on a CNC machine before they become the finished product you actually hold.\n\nThe problem is that the machines capable of making those parts are typically expensive, huge, and built for people who’ve spent years learning how to run them. InfiMaker’s pitch with the K1 isn’t just “smaller CNC machine.” It’s “CNC machine you don’t need to be an expert to use,” which is a much bigger claim.\n\nThe first thing I noticed about the K1 is that it doesn’t look like industrial equipment at all. It’s enclosed, clean, and would look more at home on a kitchen counter than in a machine shop. I asked InfiMaker founder and CEO Bowen Xie why that mattered so much to the design.\n\nHe told me traditional CNC machines are intimidating by design: exposed mechanisms, an industrial look, and built for trained operators, not casual users. Bowen traced his own thinking back around a decade, to robotics competitions where he says he spent more time learning how to operate machine shop tools than actually developing his ideas. That experience shaped how InfiMaker approached the K1: the team says they kept coming back to the idea of a beautiful espresso machine as a reference point, something that should feel natural sitting at home or in a studio, and that you’d want to use every day rather than wait until you feel “qualified” to touch it.\n\nBowen was upfront that this isn’t only about looking premium for its own sake. The design is meant to signal that the K1 isn’t only for machinists, but for people with ideas who’ve never run a CNC machine before.\n\n## 5-axis, explained\n\nI completely understand why they designed the K1 the way they did. But this machine has something else I hadn’t heard of before: 5-axis. It’s worth explaining what this means. Most CNC machines move in three directions. A 5-axis machine adds two more by allowing both the cutting tool and the workpiece to rotate simultaneously. This means the machine can approach a part from multiple angles without repeatedly stopping to reposition it.\n\nBeing new to CNC machines, I asked Bowen how he would explain a 5-axis machine to someone who’d never touched one, and what is possible with all those 5-axis working together. He gave an analogy: 3-axis is like your wrist in a cast, only able to carve straight down without moving around. With 5-axis, your wrist is free again, able to move around. The two additional rotation axes allow the machine to approach the material from almost any angle, opening up a new world for complex geometries.\n\nI kind of get it, but I also wanted to see if he had any examples of what these machines could make that aren’t possible with a 3-axis machine. He showed me a propeller fan and a pineapple, explaining that only 5-axis CNC machines can handle such geometries. Having those two extra axes might not sound like a massive deal, but it is. As Bowen said, it gives you the ability to create models that are just not possible with a regular 3-axis machine. I saw many models made with the K1 at the office, and the intricate details you can achieve are very impressive. When the K1 is actually cutting a 5-axis toolpath, with the X, Y, and Z axes and both rotational axes moving together, it genuinely looks like it’s dancing rather than milling.\n\nI kept thinking that the K1 could not have been easy to make. When talking with the engineers about taking an idea to a final product, I was interested to know what challenges creating a desktop 5-axis CNC machine presented. The hardest thing is finding a balance between price, size, rigidity, and weight. They conducted many experiments and simulations, as well as real-world cutting tests, to find the best specifications for the machine.\n\nI was curious about the weight. The K1 weighs 110 kilograms, which seemed heavy to me. I wondered why it weighs as much as it does and if it could get any lighter in the future. The weight, they explained, is pretty much the limit for this size because, during operation, precision reduces over time. The more I spoke to the engineers, the more it became obvious that every design decision was about delivering industrial capability in something compact enough to sit in a studio or maker space.\n\n## Building my own Android bot, without opening a single CAD program\n\nThis is the part that actually sold me on what InfiMaker is trying to do.\n\nWith a conventional CNC setup, getting from an idea to a finished toolpath typically means learning CAD software to model the part, then CAM software to generate the actual machining instructions, a process that can eat up hours even before the machine starts cutting anything. InfiMaker’s software, InfiStudio, is built to skip almost all of that, at least for the kind of image-driven, creative work I was doing. You give it a 2D image, or describe what you want in words, and its AI generates a 3D model directly. InfiMaker says precision parts can still be driven from imported CAD/CAM files directly, but that wasn’t the workflow I tested.\n\nBowen didn’t just want to show this to me. He wanted me to actually do it. So I sat down at the laptop, dragged the classic Marshmallow Android bot image onto the desktop, and dropped it into InfiStudio. It took roughly one to two minutes to generate a full 3D model I could then rotate, inspect, and tweak before saving.\n\nFrom there, the process was picking a material and setting the rough block dimensions, which don’t need to be precisely accurate since InfiStudio has a built-in system that works out the real dimensions of the material itself. We picked the white modeling board for this build. The whole thing felt closer to using a 3D printer than anything I’d associate with CNC machining: import, make a couple of small adjustments, and click generate. InfiStudio even shows you the generated toolpath and an estimated machining time before you commit.\n\nBefore the K1 got to work, Bowen also pointed out its automatic tool changer, a six-slot unit that handles tool swaps mid-job without any intervention from you, including the touch probe used for setup. That meant I could genuinely walk away while the machine finished the job on its own, which is a meaningfully different experience from babysitting a machine through manual tool changes.\n\nWatching all five axes move together to actually carve the bot out of the block was the moment the “dancing” description from earlier in the day actually clicked for me.\n\n## Testing precision with two puzzle pieces\n\nSoftware convenience is one thing, but I wanted proof the K1 can actually hold precision, not just cut interesting shapes. InfiMaker had a simple demonstration ready: two separately machined metal pieces designed to fit together like a puzzle. If the machine’s accuracy is off even slightly, they won’t mate cleanly.\n\nI watched the two pieces click together cleanly. InfiMaker’s official spec lists 0.01mm precision for the K1, and the puzzle-piece test is a reasonably convincing real-world demonstration of accuracy that’s normally associated with much larger, and far more expensive, industrial machines.\n\nI asked Bowen the obvious follow-up: if the K1 can hit this kind of precision, why not chase even higher-end industrial specs? His answer was pretty direct. InfiMaker was never trying to build something capable of cutting parts for a SpaceX rocket, the kind of machine that takes years of dedicated training to operate safely. He described the company’s actual goal as accessibility: taking industrial-grade 5-axis capability and packaging it for designers and creators who’ve never touched a CNC machine before.\n\nThat framing also shaped how I think about whether the K1 is a serious tool or just a well-designed hobbyist toy. InfiMaker’s own answer is that “serious” comes down to two things working together: output capability and workflow simplicity. In Bowen’s own framing, the output side comes down to a 1,500W spindle that cuts real metal, like aluminum and brass, not just foam or plastic, and the workflow side comes down to the six-tool ATC and InfiStudio generating toolpaths on its own, so you’re not manually babysitting the machine through every step.\n\nInfiMaker’s published specs go further on both fronts: the spindle is rated up to 20,000 RPM, and the K1’s full materials list also includes copper, wood, acrylic, machinable wax, jade, resin, and steel and titanium for lighter-duty work.\n\nFor InfiMaker, the real measure of “serious” isn’t the spec sheet, it’s success rate: you press start, walk away, and come back to a finished part.\n\n## Pricing and availability\n\nThe InfiMaker K1 is headed to Kickstarter, with InfiMaker’s own site pointing to a July 2026 campaign launch. Ahead of that, InfiMaker is offering a refundable $50 deposit that locks in a $4,999 VIP price, compared with a $5,199 price for backers who don’t reserve a spot in advance.\n\nAfter spending a few hours with the K1, from picking an image in InfiStudio to holding the finished Android figure, the thing that stuck with me wasn’t the spec sheet, it was how little I had to think about the machine itself. I’ve never opened a CAD program, I’ve never learned a toolpath strategy, and I still walked away from InfiMaker’s HQ with a finished metal-capable part built from an idea and a photo.\n\nWhether the K1 turns out to be a smash hit on Kickstarter is a separate question, but on the strength of what I saw and made myself in Shenzhen, it does what InfiMaker says it does: it takes a genuinely industrial capability and makes it feel approachable enough to a potential hobbyist that you’d actually want it sitting in your personal studio, not just a factory.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-milled-an-android-figurine-out-of-a-solid-block-with-an-ai-powered-5-axis-cnc", "canonical_source": "https://www.androidauthority.com/infimaker-k1-hands-on-3690782/", "published_at": "2026-07-24 10:51:50+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-24 11:10:10.135937+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "robotics", "ai-products"], "entities": ["InfiMaker", "InfiMaker K1", "Bowen Xie", "Android Authority", "Shenzhen"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-milled-an-android-figurine-out-of-a-solid-block-with-an-ai-powered-5-axis-cnc", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-milled-an-android-figurine-out-of-a-solid-block-with-an-ai-powered-5-axis-cnc.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-milled-an-android-figurine-out-of-a-solid-block-with-an-ai-powered-5-axis-cnc.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-milled-an-android-figurine-out-of-a-solid-block-with-an-ai-powered-5-axis-cnc.jsonld"}}