About

The best tools are those that enable a consistent outcome irrespective of the user.

We value simplicity. Making CylinDraw easy to use is our #1 priority.

Our vision is to be an innovation leader offering the highest value proposition on the cup customization market with products that are a joy to use.

CylinDraw is proudly developed and built in Portland, Oregon, USA.

You can learn more about the maker behind the CylinDraw here.

FAQ

Q: How can I support the CylinDraw project? A: Share our social media pages with a friend, its free and helps us a lot! You can buy a kit or even just a cool sticker in our shop here. You can support us by buying your cups/pens from our affiliate partners: Shop on Amazon or Shop on eBay. You can buy the primary developer a coffee here.

Q: How large of a cup can the CylinDraw fit? A: The chuck holds up to 3in (76mm) in diameter and the frame can fit any cup 10in(254mm) tall & depending on the cup shape a maximum of 11in(279mm) tall. It is designed to hit the sweet spot of being large enough to hold any commonly used drinking cup without adding unnecessary extra expense or being too large for a desktop. It does not currently fit a wine bottle but we may release an upgrade part kit at a future time to enable it to do so.

Q: The software only uses metric (mm), why is there no inch version? A: Depending on what you are measuring, either US Standard or metric may be favorable. In this case, its easier to measure cups in metric. Trust us on this one. The CylinDraw needs to know the cup size to do its job. Accurately measuring the cup diameter or height in inches leads to using weird fractions or inaccurate decimals which will lead to reduced drawing quality. Its much easier to measure to the nearest millimeter. We provide a metric ruler with our kits for this purpose.

Q: I love your software, any plans on releasing a paper plotter? A: You betcha! 🙂

Q: How does CylinDraw compare to a laser cutter, vinyl cutter, chemical etcher, or silkscreen? A: First we should separately compare industrial processes vs DIY processes. The CylinDraw is to an industrial cup silkscreen machine like a 3d printer is to a plastic injection molding machine. Nothing is going to be faster or have a lower unit price at a high volume than a hundred thousand dollar industrial machine. But at low volume our technology shines.

  • Startup Cost: A CylinDraw is 10% the price of a rotary laser.
  • Convenience: Our software includes an image vectorizer and takes far less time to setup than a rotary laser cutter. Drawn cups are easier to align, can be in multicolor, and don’t require tedious ‘weeding’ like decals.
  • Engraving Resolution/Speed: A laser moves faster to be sure. But the CylinDraw gives you the option to easily choose the stroke size by changing the engraver bit diameter. With a 2mm bit CylinDraw can engrave 0.5mm width strokes, & with a 0.5mm bit it can draw 0.15mm strokes. That is the same range of a laser.
  • Cleanliness/safety: No hazardous chemicals required for CylinDraw though engraving requires a dust vacuum for safety. A laser creates hazardous gasses and must be vented to the outdoors.
  • Range of Capability: Only the CylinDraw can readily color, engrave, and mark on just about any material a cup might be made out of.

Q: What do I need to control a CylinDraw? A: You need your own computer to generate the drawing files and to send those files to the machine. Currently we support Windows & Linux, and soon mac too.

Q: Can I control 2 CylinDraw’s with 1 computer? A: Yes! You just need one USB port per CylinDraw. And each CylinDraw can be run in a separate instance of “Run Mode” simultaneously. We like to unzip a totally separate CylinDraw Control SW folder to keep them totally seperate.

Q: Can I run jobs with an SD card & a small LCD ? A: Currently no, but here’s why you wont miss it. Human feedback is intertwined with the use of the machine. The machine prompts you to change the pen color; you can play/pause/alter/restart the job live; most CylinDraw jobs take less than 20 minutes! In any case expandability is built into the DNA of the hardware, so if SD card control is a feature you are willing to pay for let us know and we can reprioritize it. If remotely operating the device is important to you we will recommend you use a raspberry pi, which will give you the same experience as a PC and you can remotely login to it over the internet.

Q: Can I Use the SVG files created with CylinDraw DePixelizer on a vinyl cutter? A: No. There is a surprising variety of SVG (scalable vector graphics) file types, and DePixelizer creates a special type among them. Namely, what we call a ‘pre-scaled SVG’ . The result is intended for use on a plotter and is not likely to work properly on anything else.

Q: Can I use SVG’s that weren’t created with CylinDraw DePixelizer? A: Yes, any kind from anywhere! However, one warning. Inkscape uses a special SVG format that can lead to weird misshapen images in our software so for Inkscape SVGs you must ‘apply transformations’ to them via this opensource extension located here (It’s easy): https://github.com/Klowner/inkscape-applytransforms

Q: Does this tool require internet access in any way? A: Nope! We believe ‘smart’ internet connected devices too often represent a security and planned-obsolescence threat to end users. In other words, CylinDraw is designed for an indefinitely long and productive working life!

Q: What are the Computer requirements to run a CylinDraw? A: CylinDraw requires a computer to run our software and a USB port to interact with the machine. We currently support Windows 7 and above. (Linux & Mac to be supported very soon!). The software is not resource intensive. Minimum 2gb ram & a 1 ghz processor should do it.