Because he could. That's why.

September 13, 2012 6:51 AM

Clockwork - K'nex Ball Machine
posted by flabdablet (30 comments total)

Hmm, carter jr. is just about the right age to be getting into something like this ...
posted by carter at 7:08 AM on September 13, 2012

He's using up to many simulation cycles. Now a fly will have to die.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:14 AM on September 13, 2012 [3 favorites]

That's gorgeous. I'd never get anything of any utility done if I could afford that much K'nex/Lego/whatever.
posted by Ickster at 7:17 AM on September 13, 2012

Awesome. Made better by the fact that it seems to be cramped into a crappy, cluttered apartment.
posted by TurkishGolds at 7:17 AM on September 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

You can get tons of K'nex for a lot cheaper than retail if you know where to look.
posted by DU at 7:20 AM on September 13, 2012

Yup, our local thrift store always has buckets of used K'nex for a few dollars.
posted by carter at 7:23 AM on September 13, 2012

Where should we look?
posted by Lord_Pall at 7:23 AM on September 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thrift stores, flea markets, Freecycle, yard sales, etc. Once you are looking for it, you'll see it everywhere.
posted by DU at 7:25 AM on September 13, 2012

K'Nex are awesome. Silly company though. They should have beat Legos with the Mindstorm concept. But then, a bit of glue is all it takes to make Mindstorms compatible with K'Nex, so there is that ;-)
posted by Goofyy at 7:37 AM on September 13, 2012

Sonic lives!
posted by Mblue at 7:37 AM on September 13, 2012

Once you are looking for it, you'll see it everywhere.

What is true for K'Nex is also true for love.
posted by notyou at 7:39 AM on September 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

Wow. That is somewhat amazing.
posted by grouse at 7:45 AM on September 13, 2012

Isn't this the entire purpose of K'nex? Granted, it's on a larger scale, but they've sold K'nex roller-coaster kits. The Lego stuff is typically impressive because it's off-label usage, like a Rubik's Cube solver.
posted by explosion at 7:51 AM on September 13, 2012

By the end I had to try really hard not to scream at him/her for failing to turn off the room lights completely so that I could watch the LED balls go cruising around in the dark.
posted by aramaic at 7:51 AM on September 13, 2012

a bit of glue is all it takes to make Mindstorms compatible with K'Nex

Not even that. K'Nex makes a Lego-alike product that interfaces with both systems. I've never intentionally bought K'Nex "lego" but I've had it show up in lots of Lego I acquired.

(BTW, the reason Lego beat K'Nex to Mindstorms is that Mindstorms was based on an MIT program that used Lego and a microcontroller to make a "smart brick".)
posted by DU at 8:03 AM on September 13, 2012

It's good to know all those kids in their 20's who are forced to move back home with their parents are making good use of the time they're spending, waiting for their real lives to start.
posted by crunchland at 8:25 AM on September 13, 2012

That's a mighty fine display of procrastination — and it's only the third week of the new semester!
posted by Nomyte at 8:33 AM on September 13, 2012

By the end I had to try really hard not to scream at him/her for failing to turn off the room lights completely so that I could watch the LED balls go cruising around in the dark. -- Maybe this will help. Someone on reddit asked him to make a darkened room, long exposure and this is the result.
posted by crunchland at 9:02 AM on September 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

It's good to know all those kids in their 20's who are forced to move back home with their parents are making good use of the time they're spending, waiting for their real lives to start.

This is real life. There's more to it than work and breeding.
posted by grouse at 9:03 AM on September 13, 2012 [4 favorites]

Well it looks like we know what won out in the dating vs K'Nex debate.
posted by stormpooper at 9:07 AM on September 13, 2012

Maybe this will help

Eeeeeeeeeeeee...(inhale)...eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

(for future generations, here's an imgur link)
posted by aramaic at 9:09 AM on September 13, 2012 [4 favorites]

Way back when, that's kind of what I imagined cyberspace to look like.
posted by carter at 9:25 AM on September 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

My favorite part is the startling waste of potential energy at 4:35, when a ball follows a rail five feet straight down in less than a second without doing anything interesting. Ball factories always work very hard to convert height into complex motion, but this guy is beyond that. Above it. He sees the negative space and understands that nothing can be an interesting thing too. He is a ball factory zen master.
posted by rlk at 9:59 AM on September 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

Building the K'Nex roller coaster was probably the height of my life's achievement. I have the set again but without instructions and more than likely without a lot of necessary pieces.

Such a shame to have peaked so young.
posted by TheRedArmy at 10:27 AM on September 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

That was beautiful, flabdablet.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:36 AM on September 13, 2012

TheRedArmy - and this is why you have kids! The most fun I had, building stuff with my son using K'Nex and of course Thomas' railway kits.
posted by nostrada at 11:48 AM on September 13, 2012

My fingers reflexively hurt watching this. So many hours snapping hard plastic bits together. That must have been so much fun to build. (I had the K'Nex coaster, too.)

The dude gets major points for using a piece of music other than the breakfast theme from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, cos I think that's the usual choice of music for these kinds of things, but I re-watched the video with that song overlaid and it was very very enjoyable indeed.
posted by Spatch at 12:41 PM on September 13, 2012

The dude gets major points for using a piece of music other than the breakfast theme from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure

Agreed. I felt the music he chose had just the right amount of epic, and just the right amount of whimsy. I think that's what this project is: epic whimsy.
posted by kilozerocharliealphawhiskey at 3:26 PM on September 13, 2012

According to that reddit post I linked to above, he wrote the music himself.
posted by crunchland at 3:36 PM on September 13, 2012

Roller Coaster, "Hyperspace Training Station", "Big Ball Machine" (my first), and more, are what I've got and built. And some other original things. My notion was always to build a big wall-sized machine that was both entertaining as well as providing the time (by ball placement). But that kind of thing gets readily procrastinated when one is moving between countries every few years, while all the while getting older.
posted by Goofyy at 2:08 AM on September 14, 2012