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3D Printer Models For Universal Construction Toy Connectors
dangle writes "F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab have officially released their Free Universal Construction Kit, allowing builders to freely interconnect parts from Lego, K'Nex, Fischertechnik, and other common building sets. ZomeTool and Zoob patterns will be available after related patents expire. The makers have also spent considerable effort investigating and anticipating legal complaints from manufacturers, using an Inverse Think of The Children Argument: Some may express concern that the Free Universal Construction Kit infringes such corporate prerogatives as copyright, design right, trade dress, trademarks or patents of the supported toy systems. We encourage those eager to enforce these rights to please think of the children — and we assert that the home printing of the Free Universal Construction Kit constitutes protected fair use."
Model files are available over at Thingiverse. The designs are all covered by the CC BY-SA 3.0.
Free Universal Construction Kit... F... U...C... mmmhmmm....
more importantly, why in the living hell did I not come up with this?
If someone has really trademarked F.U.C.K, we're f***ed.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Is the BEST THING EVER!
Lincoln Logs to Lego adapter? Brilliant.
Though that time spent looking for that *one* piece I think will double, and become increasingly frustrating.
Also, these things look like a huge threats to people heels.
...but why am I immediately reminded of the "genetic fusion" technology from Invader Zim?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Interesting but, do any of the various "home" 3-D printers have the ability to produce things with enough accuracy? You can't be off even a tiny bit with thickness or sizing for a LEGO to not fit, etc
I've seen the output from a Makerbot plenty of times, and never got the impression it had the ability to make something that fine grained, much less strong enough.
In my day, if you wanted an interconnector for your construction kit you made it yourself with a rusty hacksaw, milliput and a hand drill.
In fact, you made your construction kits the same way. And that's how we liked it!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
3d printers have a precision tolerance of something on the order of about eighty to a hundred microns, or often worse... particularly for non-commercial home 3d-printers.
Lego is manufactured to a precision of less than 2 microns.
We're probably at LEAST another 5 to 10 years away from being able to use 3d printing technologies with tolerances in the 1-2 micron range, which is what would be required to adequately fit together with Lego.
For comparison, Megabloks is manufactured to a precision of approximately 10 microns.
Megabloks routinely slip, Lego does not. I shudder to imagine how poorly these 3d printed connectors are going to work.
We're not reliably connecting to Lego anytime soon. At least not with 3d printing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Shame- it won't be until my grand-kids generation that Makerbots become really good and common cheap house-hold appliances.
I'm officially not going to heaven/hell/land of 16 virgins/nirvana whatever when I die. I demand to be reincarnated so that I get to play with stuff built with 3D printers and get to have these type of adapters whilst still a kid.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Get enough of them- and you could build a house out of home-made lego.
Building a house with lego has to be better than dealing with drywall.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Free pubs? Let the beer and knowledge flow! Where are they???
How about Creating a Open source construction kit? That is unique, easily printable on current 3D printers/ or off the self parts from your local hardware store. and does not violate someone copy right. This way all parts will interconnect and improve over the current line of Toy construction kits limitations.
Eric
If I didn't know better I'd say this is a deliberate caricature of the misappropriated hype around 3D printers.
3D printers are good for making unique parts. As soon as the worldwide demand for a part exceeds more than about 100, the time and energy cost of manufacture per part will exceed the cost of tooling up one of the many mass manufacture processes available to make the part in bulk. That is highly unlikely to change - not least because the better 3D printing gets, the quicker and cheaper it gets to make the unique tools for a bulk operation.
If it wasn't for the total unsuitability of 3D printing for press fit interfaces, this might have had a niche application for circumventing the IP restrictions on establishing a mass manufacture operation. As it is, it's just another chapter in the myth that one day we will download and manufacture most of our own hardware at home. The world is a big place with a lot of people in it, and against the odds we are actually relatively efficient at cooperating with each other when it comes to products that lots of us want.