Ever increasing processing power is making ever more sophisticated machinery not only possible but also affordable. It can only be a question of time before robots like the one pictured on the right at the Marmomacc exhibition in Verona this year start to become familiar sites in masonry workshops around the world.

The robotic arm works in conjunction with a rotating table that the workpiece is held on to produce three dimensional stonework, including sculptures that can, using laser scanning, be exact copies of existing works or new works, that are now normally produced in resin for scanning. They can also create real-world work from the virtual world of CAD.

The robot was on the Isimar stand in Verona. It is produced by HTM Group (High Technology Machines), which is a joint venture involving IMT Automation and Isimar. The machines are not new. They have been appearing at the major stone exhibitions since the turn of the millennium and one has been producing carvings for the amazing Spanish development of the Sagrada Familia since 2000 (see this year\'s June and October issues of this magazine).

HTM, who claim to have made the first robot for the stone sector, now have three versions of the machine available, ranging in price from 7135,000 to 7200,000 (£94,000 to £140,000). That puts them in the same arena as CNC workcentres, although features such as automatic tool change are optional extras.