Once the new machinery was in place at Granberget in early May, the next major task began.
Machines do not build anything by themselves.
For a five-axis CNC machine to produce parts for a dome, every detail has to be described precisely enough for the machine to know what to do. Every angle, bevel, hole and machining operation has to be translated from our digital model into the right program, tool and machine movement.
That became Rok’s major task over the summer.
Component by component. Operation by operation.
Everything we had learned from the manual prototypes now had to become a digital production process. The stakes were high, because we had launched our pilot programme at the same time.
Interest had been strong. From around a hundred expressions of interest, we eventually selected three pilot customers. And we made a decision of principle: the pilot domes would not be built using the old manual process.
They would be the first domes produced entirely in our new digital workshop.
That meant the programming had to work in practice.
A dome is not made up of just a few standard components. It has around 600 parts in all, which must be machined, labelled and checked in different ways before they meet at the construction site. With the digital machinery, we can now make the critical timber components with a precision and repeatability that would have been very difficult to achieve by hand.
Provided the program is right.
That qualification matters. A CNC machine does not make a design more intelligent. It does exactly what it is told to do—with very high precision. So part of the craft moves from the hands to the preparation: the model, the programming, the checks and an understanding of how timber actually behaves.
And that may be the most important lesson from our move to digital production.
Our aim was never to feed a piece of timber into one end of the workshop and receive a finished dome from the other.
Despite our investment in digital technology, a finished dome still involves more than ten working weeks of manual craftsmanship. Many tasks cannot—and perhaps need not—be automated today. Timber has to be selected and handled. Components have to be checked. Polycarbonate, seals and other parts have to be prepared. Finally, hundreds of components have to be assembled into a complete building.
The main benefit of digital production, then, is not primarily to remove people or time spent on craftsmanship.
It is quality.
The fit.
Repeatability.
Once a program has been verified, the same component can be made again and again with the same geometry. Digital production gives craftsmanship an industrial backbone.
Over the summer, the first pilot dome began to take shape through the new process. Component by component, the pieces came off the CNC machine. We assembled them for trial and checked the results.
And the fit was unlike anything we had experienced before.
It was a special confirmation after a journey that had taken us from mathematics and CAD through hundreds of manual test pieces, scrapped components, digital angle gauges, two full-scale prototypes, documentation, supplier evaluations and months of programming.
Now the parts for a real dome lay before us.
The first to have been made through our entire new digital production process.
We packed the components.
The next step was Hemavan.
That was where the first pilot dome would be erected.
During the summer of 2026, we selected three pilot partners from almost 100 applications from Sweden and abroad. The pilot year has now begun with installations in Hemavan, Åre and Borgafjäll.
Under sommaren 2026 valde vi ut tre pilotkunder bland närmare 100 intresseanmälningar från Sverige och andra länder. Pilotåret har nu inletts med installationer i Hemavan, Åre och Borgafjäll.
Tillsammans med våra pilotkunder kommer vi under det kommande året att vidareutveckla varje del av Scandinavian Domes – från materialval och hantverk till logistik, installation och långsiktig hållbarhet – inför den bredare marknadslanseringen 2027.