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A 3D Lego Fabricator Made of Lego
eldavojohn writes "Making a Lego printer is pretty cool if you've never seen The LegoMakerBot. The creator has instructions on his site on how to make (out of Lego bricks) a machine that 'prints' Lego models — much like a 3D fabrication machine — after you model them in MLCad. The sped up video is nothing short of impressive."
Next step? Lego C&C machine.
I'm sorry but I disagree that the sped up video is nothing short of impressive. Even at 16x, I quickly lost interest.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
The builder made a colossal mistake. He included a design readable by the machine to build itself. This is how Skynet REALLY got started!
We are doomed!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Can it print itself? There's a model picture of itself at the end.
It seems that our robotic overlords are coming from the most unexpected place: Lego!
I for one ...
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Of all the ways humanity could be exterminated by its own creations, this sounds like the coolest.
Hell, I think I imagined this back in the '80s. See, I built this huge monstrosity out of a mish-mash of bricks and had it attack all my space-suited minifigs in their sleek spaceships...
Why the hell did I have to grow up?
That's nice and all, but can it build an exact copy of itself? That would be awesome.
It would rock if they programmed it in Lisp...
... until 3D printers are affordable and everywhere, like Cory Doctorow describes in Makers . Now that I've got a kid, I keep wanting to print small, one-off plastic bits to repair and enhance toys.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Too busy marveling at this to make any lean/robot/overlord jokes. Very cool.
I went to an estate sale recently and bought a 5 gallon tub filled with Legos for my son. The owners were moving and many of the Legos appeared to be circa 1980 vintage blocks that their kids had (eg, the old-style wheels with the metal axle that snaps into the 4x2 brick with the 4 holes and the innards for snapping in the wheel axles).
While most of the bricks were pretty much the same as in some of the new "generic" brick sets, a few pieces like some windows and doors are not. I'm not a big Lego hobbyist, but my understanding is that a number of bricks (styles, colors, shapes, etc) are no longer made, and given the number of Star Wars sets I've helped my son assemble, there's probably an awful lot of oddball bricks only used in a handful of sets that would be handy to have without buying an entire set.
Given the rise of rapid prototyping machines, will Lego ever allow anyone to custom-make bricks no longer made? I'm not sure how well the materials used in rapid protoyping would work as Legos (there's a certain springyness required, it seems) but it also seems like a market that could operate pretty quietly even if Lego didn't agree with it.
...I heard you like building things out of legos, so we gave you instructions on how you can build something out of legos that will build you something out of legos.
reminds me of that autism simulator from two weeks ago (minecraft)
Maybe they should have called it "GCC"...
FLR
On a macro scale, with blocks that are built for children, we have something like this. Wow.
Look, I know that on a molecular level you have to deal with all sorts of physics that would not apply in what we see here but dammit I am hopeful that we are getting closer to having nano-bots. Of all the tech that I think we can do this is the stuff I think we could see in a lifetime.
Time travel...we don't have the energy yet to close the loops or so Hawking says. FTL travel...the physics that I know seem to say it's in the same league as time travel. The energy we currently view as high is not even in the same league as what we would need to have these types of tech. And as such there is very little research into such ideas.
And that is fine. We do need to have a stable planet such that we can actually progress. And as such the research into what we can do on our scale is very valid. Lets make some nano-bots that clean out our arterial walls and such. Do it. Go.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I seriously thought this was about a 3D printer that could print the blocks, but instead I'm presented with a pretty unimpressive assembly machine.
1. Build Lego assembly machine
2. ???
3. Profit!
Call me when you've got something to custom fabricate Lego blocks.
1. Build Lego block printer
2. Sell one to every Lego store on the planet
3. Profit!
...build hardware that runs the MLCad package.
And I'll panic when it can write, build, and deploy MLCad from scratch.
Legos? Clearly we need a human replicator machine, one that could say whip you up a girlfriend... then we'd be in business. Realistic robots would be an acceptable compromise...
"I love you, PHILIP J FRY"
I doubt that a fabrication machine will ever be able to create parts w/ the precision which Lego demands in their molds (tolerances are just 2 micro-meters, molds are discarded when they wear out, they use _tons_ of pressure to force the ABS plastic into every bit of the molds).
I am a serious Lego collector, and not only are you wrong about it ever being possible to do this, there are people already doing this. Go checkout Brickarms or Brickforge for some examples of high quality third party accessories.
To date, Lego has chosen to ignore them legally, since they have been very respectful of not stepping on Lego's core business or violating their IP. I am sure that they would not be so considerate if you made copies of their unique elements.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The machines won't take over until they surpass us and solve one problem that even mankind hasn't solved: what to do when you're missing that one last piece.
If by fabrication device, you mean a 3d printer, then you are correct about Brickarms not using one.
However, you are still wrong. There are people that have posted images of Lego compatible parts that they have created using 3d prototyping machines on Brickshelf and flikr. I don't have any URLs handy, but the last one I saw was custom race car parts.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I specifically noted in my post that one could make such parts ``one would be able to make them (w/in the tolerances of one's fabrication machine)'' --- what isn't happening, and I doubt will ever happen --- is making them w/ 2 micrometers of precision as Lego does for their bricks.
The Shapeways link notes ``The printer resolution goes to about .1mm, but the material can change it slightly. Overall, .5 should be fine, just make sure that they are not any sort of support walls or they may get broken during shipping or printing.'' .1 mm == 100 micrometers
So the fabricators are off by a factor of 50 from the precision which Lego invests in their bricks.
Find me a spec sheet for a fabricator which claims a precision measured in single digits of micrometers and I'll retract my statement, but until then I stand by it.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.