Make Your Own Lego Fabricator (and Lego Skill Crane)

October 20, 2010 12:35 PM

There was the home-built Lego + Mac + felt tip pen printer and a 3D chocolate printer made out of LEGO bricks (and some other bits), and now: the MakerLegoBot, a 'bot that can build models out of 1×2, 2×2, 3×2, 4×2 and 8×2 Lego bricks. Want to give it a go yourself? Here are the instructions, in 447 easy steps. Or you can skip the tricky stuff, and watch a small Lego house be built in under 3 minutes*

* Actual time of construction is longer, but the video is sped up because real time video is for the really patient.

And if the Lego model "printer" wasn't what you were looking for, how about a Lego skill crane, aka The Claw? The process is a breeze, with a mere 139 steps. Both models were designed in MLCad.

posted by filthy light thief (9 comments total)

"You know nothing of future time," pronounced Deep Thought, "and yet in my teeming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, but which it will be my fate eventually to design."
posted by anigbrowl at 1:14 PM on October 20, 2010

Now design a MetaMakerLegoBot, which knows how to make a MetaMakerLegoBot.
posted by Mwongozi at 1:50 PM on October 20, 2010

I had the same thought, Mwongozi. Then, set it loose at LEGOLAND ...
posted by Songdog at 2:01 PM on October 20, 2010

Beyond the meta-idea of a Lego bot making CAD Lego buildings - it boggles my mind that you can actually make a Lego structure strong enough to force Lego bricks together and not take itself apart in the process.

Granted I realize they're using Technics pieces so they can use a complicated array of parts for connections stronger than basic stud-to-stud connections, but it's all awfully, recursively Hofstadterian - a Lego machine that builds Lego but doesn't disassemble under the forces involved.
posted by loquacious at 2:10 PM on October 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'd imagine it would be trickier to pull other lego pieces apart, but I think it would all work out, if you distribute the stress.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:22 PM on October 20, 2010

It's lovely and I'm impressed.
posted by mdoar at 3:02 PM on October 20, 2010

Yo dawg, I heard you like Lego so I put a MakerLegoBot in your MakerLegoBot so you can make MakerLegoBots while your MakerLegoBot makes MakerLegoBots...
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 3:12 PM on October 20, 2010

Previously and Previouslier.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:20 PM on October 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

loquacious: it boggles my mind that you can actually make a Lego structure strong enough to force Lego bricks together and not take itself apart in the process.

The bricks with holes and the double-sided pins make it really easy to do this, no complicated assembly necessary. With the right gearing, the motors also have enough torque to do the pushing. In fact I imagine the most difficult bit would be getting the motors to stop once the pieces are in place.
posted by vanar sena at 11:13 AM on October 21, 2010