JK Brickworks, a prevalent force in the Lego community, pumps out interesting brick creations regularly. The pointless machine, gravity powered walking animals, and a version of De Vinci’s flying machine can all be found among his creations.
Today’s “certainly-not-in-the-instructions” build is a mosaic printer.
Using parts from the computer/Lego hybrid Mindstorms, the machine scans a hand-coloured grid using a colour sensor and then “prints” a copy of the image, turning the grid into a mosiac (with each square in the grid becoming a single Lego piece).
The pieces required to build the mosaic are supplied by a gravity feed that holds up to four-hundred and fifty pieces of up to nine different colours. A single small print takes almost twenty minutes, but it’s magic to watch:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4neo4fRw2M&w=560&h=315]
We’re going to file this under “extremely interesting with very little use”.
In other news, if you haven’t had your share of Danish plastic for today, the Batmobile from Batman v Superman is getting the Lego treatment, as is the classic Ferrari F40. Prepare your wallets.
[Source – Youtube, Images – The Wall Street Journal, Brickset]