I had assumed the link would be about a 3D printer that cranks out lego pieces.

This is way, way more awesome.

Well, why not combine a 3D printer AND lego?

Since I've got a long summer, I'm now really tempted to make a RepRap (http://reprap.org/) with lego like this. Imagine how cool it would be to show that to kids: A lego-robot making lego!

I've thought about a Lego-building robot made of Lego before, but mostly in the context of an illustration of why atomic assembly by nanobots is probably impossible.

I'm thinking specifically of the "sticky fingers" problem, which says that if something binds strongly enough to an atom to "pick it up" then it's going to be very difficult to get it to "drop" it again. I imagine you'd have the same problem with Lego... although at least with Lego you can usually pick a block up by its sides, which you can't do with atoms.

> I've thought about a Lego-building robot made of Lego before, but mostly in the context of an illustration of why atomic assembly by nanobots is probably impossible.

Bacteria are proof that nano-assembly is possible, if you define assembly broadly enough.

Sure, it's most definitely possible with a limited palette. Anything you can build out of proteins is easy. Other stuff is either harder or impossible, which is why I believe that nanotechnology will enable all sorts of great things, but a "universal assembler" will not be one of them.

And here, I was assuming it was a 3D printer that made objects with Legos.

Either way though, it was great.

You can print out lego pieces on a Makerbot pretty easily. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:591

I was thinking of a 2D printer which builds pixel-mosaics out of Lego blocks. That would probably be a lot easier than the 3D Lego printer.

Same here. Also, this reminds me of a TV program where it showed some Japanese hackers that hacked printers drivers so the motors synchronizes to tunes like super mario bros (couldn't google it for link). Coupling that with this would be super.

Lego camera, lego router, Google's lego RAID, now a lego printer... no wonder that it's the best toy ever invented.

The minifigs are a great touch. No lego project is truly complete without them.

This is just too awesome. Makes me jealous as all my lego went to my cousins many years ago. :(

Anyone a good idea where you can get cheap lego stuff? (maybe china @ bulk order?)

This isn't really an answer to your question, but my co-founder's brother works as a designer at Lego HQ in Denmark, where they have a huge warehouse filled with every block/piece/component in every colour available... That's what he used to make lego versions of us, which we've used on our website ( http://wemakewebsites.info/about ). I'm sure you can get a lot of stuff on mail order.

God, a warehouse full of lego.

That's what heaven is like.

All mixed together. That is what hell is like.

I too was looking forward to a printer that built objects out of lego. Would be a great project to work on.

Nevertheless, this is great. The printed sheet turned out much better than I had imagined. Shouldn't be too hard to put in different colour pens.

I bet they still have Batman Lego as well :( sob

(Batman Lego is incredibly rare. Expect to pay a few hundred $ per set at least). Lego lost the license to sell it, but they still sell the Lego Batman video game.

From Lego. For generic blocks, you cannot really beat their "brick buckets" -- the deluxe version (http://shop.lego.com/ByCategory/Product.aspx?p=6177&cn=2...) has 650 blocks for 30€.

From the supermarket, you can hardly get a 50-brick model for those 30€.

You can get used Lego pieces on eBay for cheap. Just put them in a sack (e.g. pillow cover) and wash them in your washing machine, when you get them.

You can generally get cheap buckets of Lego at people's yard sales, eBay, etc... The good thing about Lego is that it ages well, The bricks don't become obsolete. For more specific parts you could try BrickLink - http://www.bricklink.com/

You can get some pretty good deals on ebay.

HP needs to make a see-through printer with little animated characters like that for kids.

Rad!

Now he needs to do a color version. Remember pen plotters? They had a carousel of different colored markers and it'd draw (raster or vector) with one color and then pickup a different color and output that color. Loved watching those things work.

This is pretty cool.

I tried to do something similar in high school with some friends. We tried to make a lego robot that would draw like a hand does (not like a line printer). The difference in velocity between a drawing and raised marker created too much error for our robot, but we probably could have fixed this if we had spent more time tweaking variables.

Horseattack's camera work and soundtrack was nearly as kick-arse as the printer / driver combo.

Edit: The track is a remix of a Christopher & Raphael Just's Popper by Shinichi Osawa.

The track is on Shinichi Osawa's Teppan-Yaki: A Collection Of Remixes album. Unfortunately it isn't available in the Australian iTune's store. :(

As mentioned in his notes, there was actually a lego plotter kit, although he didn't base his project on that.

http://guide.lugnet.com/set/1092

Why all that circuits? Couldn't he have used mindstorms?

Presumably for the same reason that some people cook pancakes from scratch instead of buying a mix. It's more fun for them.

You build one with Mindstorms then.

He had to write the Mac OSX driver for it too. Awesome.

I don't think Mindstorms would allow him to write a printer driver to control the motors.

As a HP printer engineer I heartily endorse this project!