3D Lego printer

The MakerLegoBot is a Lego Mindstorms-based 3D printer that turns software descriptions of Lego builds into completed Lego pieces, automatically, picking and snapping down pieces as it goes. Next step would be a MakerLegoBot that prints other MakerLegoBots, of course:

A Java Application that runs on the PC takes an .ldr MLCad file, determines a set of print instructions, and then sends the instructions via USB over to the MakerLegoBot for printing...

The core concept that makes 3D print of Legos possible is the sticky grab and axle release mechanism. The printer head selects from an array of Lego bricks, moves to the correct location, and then places each Lego in its determined spot...

It took many nights and many iterations to get the feed system working consistently. The current design works with 1x2, 2x2, 3x2, 4x2, and 8x2 Lego bricks. Once a brick is grabbed, the next brick in line falls into place.

MakerLegoBot: A Lego Mindstorms NXT 3D Lego Printer (via Makerbot blog)

• [Beelzebuddy]

  Personally, I’d like to see more automation of the material science side of things. It’s exciting and all to make something which takes some all-purpose goop and makes more things which take all-purpose goop, but the goop doesn’t make itself.

  I would find it interesting to see how complex the goop-creation process is. I assume plastics, including PBS (what Legos are made of) are petroleum derived. Naturally automating that would be impossible, but for metal parts, ore smelting and casting isn’t too far out there. You’d just need a bigass smelting furnace which bots would dump ore into. Which means you’d have to build a bigass smelting furnace, from rocks of some kind probably. Automated building construction is a neat problem, I think. It has immediate uses – bots on the moon digging moonbases for humans – with Von Neumann implications. Not to mention I haven’t the foggiest idea what to use for mortar in a water-poor environment. Molten basalt? Or maybe it’d be easier to carve your desired shape from solid rock, then use it already in place underground?

  To summarize, I’d like to see robots that can build things larger but simpler than themselves.

• [Anonymous]

  can it print itself?

• [Anonymous]

  Cool, we’re one step closer to the replicator from star trek. (or at least as close as we can make it)

• [lecti]

  I so wanted to build something like this, and looking at three NXT bricks, I don’t feel so bad now. Amazing work!

• [turn_self_off]

  I take it that block feeder need to have the blocks stacked in the right order. It would be even more impressive if it had a vertical feed of common blocks that it could pick from as needed. I guess that would be a v2 project.

  • [Comedian]

    It already has that feature, you just can’t tell in the video.

    The current version has a vertical magazine system that holds “about 35 of each” type of brick, each type in its own column.

    http://battlebricks.com/makerlegobot/

    • [turn_self_off]

      Thanks, i should really have checked the source after seeing the video.

      Looks about how i expected it to look to, given my attempts during youth at building a self loading brick gun that used 2×4 bricks as ammo.

• [george57l]

  Cory

  As to “Next step would be a MakerLegoBot that prints other MakerLegoBots, of course”. I hope someone, somewhere will be working on a string of MakerLegoBots that each make one part of a MakerLegoBot and a new machine that assembles the parts. Other than making it in such sub-assemblies, I cannot see how this machine can make a replica of itself. But I so want to see a video of that assembly line, one day!

  Secondly. I want to thank you for your restraint, and accuracy in using the word “pieces” there, rather than what we might have expected in the past given your usual usage of the “L” word ending in an s (I cannot even bring myself to type it). Well done. Your rehabilitation is complete! ;-)

  • [muteboy]

    I guess at the moment it’s like a virus – self-replicating, but not self-assembling. Adrian Bowyer’s original RepRap talk makes that distinction.

    Plural comment seconded.