The things people ask us most.

Because nobody made it until you asked. There is no warehouse of RoboBolts waiting to be bought, and no two orders are the same.

Your price covers four real things: the material and the printing, which on the bigger sizes is more than a third of what you pay; the cleaning and polishing a fresh print needs before it looks like the thing you designed; the inspection and packing, both done by a person; and the card processing every order carries.

A mass-produced toy is cheaper because a factory made fifty thousand identical ones and a warehouse has been sitting on them since. Yours is the only one of its kind, and it did not exist two weeks ago.

Because you are paying for material, not height. Something three times taller is also three times wider and three times deeper, so it uses around twenty-seven times the material.

A 2 inch robot is a few cubic centimetres of resin. A 6 inch is nearly thirty times that. The price follows the material, which is why each step up the ladder costs more than the one before it.

Every print carries a fixed cost before any material is used at all, and on a small robot that fixed cost is a large share of the total. It is why the little ones look expensive per inch.

If you want the most robot for your money, the 3 inch is the sweet spot, and it is the one most people choose.

Five dollars once, however many you add, then twenty-five cents per piece. Five decorations is six dollars twenty-five. Twenty decorations is ten.

They cost something because they are not stickers. Every decoration is fused into the model and printed as part of it.

Because a patterned robot is printed a different way, and it is the one choice in the builder that changes how your model reaches the printer.

A plain robot can be sent as flat colour: each surface is one shade, and the printer simply fills it. The moment any part wears camo, carbon or hazard stripes, the whole model has to be sent as a fully textured file instead, with every tile tinted to the colour you picked and wrapped onto the shape. That file is far bigger, it takes longer to prepare, and more can go wrong once it is on the machine. Fine motifs sit close to the smallest detail the printer can hold, so a pattern that looks crisp on screen can come out muddy and need printing again.

The twenty-five dollars is charged once, however many parts wear a pattern and however many different patterns you use. It is a charge for the extra work and the extra risk, not per tile, so patterning your whole robot costs exactly the same as patterning one arm.

Yes. The total updates as you build and is itemised before you confirm, so you can see what each choice added.

When you check out, the price is worked out again from your saved design rather than taken from your browser. That is a safeguard for both of us, and it means no surprises at the last step.

Yes. Every combination of parts, colours, decorations and pose is printed to order. Two people would have to make exactly the same choices, down to where each decoration sits, to end up with the same robot.

Two weeks to a month. Your robot does not exist when you order it, so it is worth knowing what those weeks are.

Your file goes to our printing partner, where it is printed, cleaned, polished and packed. It then comes to us, where we inspect it by hand, pack it properly and send it on to you. We would rather take the extra week and have a second pair of eyes on your robot than ship you something nobody has looked at.

You get a tracking number the moment it leaves us, and you can follow the status in your account the whole way.

Fifteen dollars on every order: ten of postage and five of handling. It is shown on the price breakdown while you build and again on the payment form, so it is never a surprise at the last step.

The handling is not padding. Your robot is printed, cleaned and polished by our printing partner, then sent to us, where a person takes it out of the box, checks it against the design you approved, and packs it again for the journey to you.

That second pack is the one that matters. A RoboBolt is printed resin, which looks far better than moulded plastic and is more delicate than it. Antennae, fingers and small decorations will snap if a box is thrown, and couriers throw boxes. Packing it properly costs a little and saves your robot arriving in pieces.

The United States only, for now. We would like to ship further and will say so here the moment we can.

Your design is frozen the moment you pay, so anything you change in the builder afterwards will not change what gets printed. That is deliberate: it means you can keep playing with a design without putting your order at risk.

If you need to change something, contact us quickly, before your robot goes into production. Once printing has started it cannot be undone, because the object only exists for you.

If your robot never arrives, or arrives broken from our printing partner, tell us and we will replace it or refund you in full.

What we cannot do is take back a robot that broke after it reached you safely. Every one is made for one person and cannot be resold, and it is a display piece rather than a toy, so please treat it as one.

A full-colour resin, printed on a Mimaki UV printer. The colour is laid down as the object is built, so it runs through the surface rather than sitting on top of it as paint.

Nothing is painted, so nothing can chip off.

A display piece. We have held the real thing: it is smooth to the touch, the colour is genuinely good, and the joints hold firmly.

It is not built for a toy box. Think of it as a model for a shelf rather than something to be thrown across a room.

We recommend RoboBolt for ages 10 and up, and an adult should be the one making the purchase.

We genuinely want kids building these. They are one of the people we make this for. But we are not going to pretend the object is something it is not. It is printed resin, not moulded plastic. Thin parts such as antennae and small decorations can snap, and a broken piece can be sharp, or small enough to choke on.

Above about 10 that is manageable with a bit of care. Below it, we would rather you waited.

Very close, and that is deliberate. The builder shows you printed colour rather than screen colour, so what you approve is what you unwrap.

A screen glows and a real object cannot, so a few very vivid colours come out a little softer. The colour picker tells you when that applies to a shade you have picked, rather than letting you find out when it arrives.

No. Your whole robot, every arm, leg and decoration, is fused into one solid object before it is printed.

No glue, no seams to line up, no instructions. It comes out of the box finished.

Only to save a design or place an order. You can build for as long as you like without one.

If you sign up part way through building, your robot is waiting for you when you come back. You will not lose it.

Yes. Your designs stay in your account, so you can print one again, or tweak it and order the new version instead.

Your order keeps its own copy of the design, so deleting it from your account never affects a robot already on its way to you.

You can play with the car builder, but cars are not for sale yet.

The robot builder is further along, and we are not going to sell you a car we cannot yet make as well as we make a robot. It is coming.

Tell us and we will make it right with a replacement or a refund. A photo helps, because it tells us whether it happened in printing or in transit, and the second one is something we can take up with the courier.

That should not happen, and if it does we want to see it. We keep an exact copy of what you ordered, so we can put your print next to your design and work out what went wrong.

Through the contact form, and we read every message. We are a small team, so expect a reply within a few days rather than a few minutes.