You know what’s not fun? Sorting LEGO. You know what is fun? Making a machine to sort LEGO! That’s what [LegoSpencer] did, and you can watch the machine do its thing in the video below.
[Spencer] runs us through the process: first, quit your day job so you can get a job playing with LEGO; then research what previous work has been done in this area (plenty, it turns out); and then commit to making your own version both reproducible and extensible.
A sorting machine needs three main features: a feeder to dispense one piece at a time, a classifier to decide the type of piece, and a distributor to route the piece to a bin. Of course, the devil is in the details.
If you want to build your own, you might want to track the new Sorter V2 that is under development. If you are building V1, you can find what you need on GitHub.
Once you’ve got your LEGO sorted, you’re free to take on other projects such as Building A Drivable, Life-Size 3D-Printed LEGO Technic Buggy, Making Steam-Powered LEGO Machines, and Building The DVD Logo Screensaver With LEGO.
This is awesome!
Too much theory and talk about how to, but no much actual action about.
Agreed. I wanted to see the sorter in action from when the piece gets on the conveyor to the piece landing in the bin. The comment regarding inquiries about files to build it was lame. Who is he to decide if we want what he has there? I would love to build that exact thing. I don’t want to expand on it.
When you build something, you have all of he right to not help others repeat your mistakes. I have done lots of things I would refuse to teach others to do :-)
I do think one or the designs would be worth sharing. The 3d print files and software for the bins the selves.
Nice anckles shot at 7:04 ;)
Regarding the sorting, the Lego manual for each set tells you to open the bags in a certain order and to sort them by the colour.
For me (as an occasional Lego user) this is the best first category to sort the pieces as it gets a lot of options to pick from, and detecting the piece colour is very easy using limited computing power (eg Arduino).
After this, you may want to do a human quick check for other color parts in each bucket of parts that passed the first sort, then start sorting them by the shape and colour (there are some similar colours, but there are unique/rare combinations of shape and colour that could be used for sorting).
And again, the human eye must check the end result.
Three more points to consider for the future:
1. you must create a system to take care of smaller parts and parts that roll (perhaps a size sort at the beginning and guard rails to prevent parts for rolling off the conveyour)
2. you may want to use two or three conveyours (feeded alternatively) for the same bin system, so the overall speed will increase.
3. you may want to test a robotic arm that picks parts from the mixed bin and put it on the conveyour. Or use a small suction cup to be sure that you grab only one part at a time.
But sorting (or picking) a part by color is easy for humans too, so for building with legos it is much better to have all roof pieces in one box rather than having all red pieces in one box.
Sets?
Let me guess:
You make the thing on the box once, then either display it or put the whole set away?
You don’t glue it together??
The smart way buy Lego is used, by the pound, steam cleaned.
Where all the incomplete ‘sets’ given to goodwill end up.
I bet if you built a smart enough sorter to reconstruct sets from the packing lists and mixed used Lego they would sick shysters on you.
If you made any money on it anyhow.
TM their kit #s or something equally absurd.
Not to win in court, process is enough to kill your business.
Recognizing the ‘special bits’ with software would be the key bit to that.
The special bit volume should be low enough to use human backup.
IBM lawyers are known as ‘The Nazgul’.
What are Lego lawyers called?
Bet they are fearsome.
In my city, there are several resellers of Lego and Lego kits. They DO reconstruct and re-bag kits and certify them as complete. They are sold at a discount compared to new sets and often sell complete sets with boxes for discontinued kits. I’m not sure that Lego seems to care…
Disappointed that the machine to sort Lego is not built of Lego.
WI,TL:
– uses online services to classify and categorise pieces.
– slow, 2 pieces per minute.
– mechanical problems, not recommended by author
He says he did research, but seems to have missed a lot of stuff. These kinds of sorters often solve the problem of separating pieces by simply having a series of different size gates that only let one through at a time, with larger parts moving to the next gate, and so on.
For identification, it could be sped up not just running it locally, but by narrowing down by size and weight.
considering the large number of small parts in my (mostly classic) technic bin, i think you got a real problem on your hands. bricks are one thing, those are something else.
I wanted to see what a million pounds of Lego looked like…
Couldn’t really wrap my head around how much one million pounds of lego is. Max weight for a shipping container is about 55,000 lbs so a million pounds is like 15 shipping containers loaded to max weight. I don’t really know the density of Lego but it does beg the question- maybe answered in the video-
How did this person end up with 15 shipping containers loaded to max weight with lego that need sorting?!
Also Lego LEGO legos yeah yeah I know.
I think you might have thought harder about this than anyone else did. :)
It was probably just hyperbole riffing on the “two tonnes” from the prior art: https://hackaday.com/2017/05/07/sorting-two-tonnes-of-lego/
A ten pound bucket of mixed used Lego is typical.
Was a few years ago…IIRC under $50.
IIRC it was a squared off bucket, about 4 gallons.
Like you see cheap laundry detergent or cat litter sold in.
Close enough to a cubic foot.
Very rough estimate 1 million pounds of Lego = 100,000 cubic feet.
For real unit fun, how many ‘Gaylords’ is that?
Gaylords are boxes built on Pallets…
3 pallet sizes…
Height of box depends on density of material held and box material…
Assume they’re Fn huge 5’x5’x5′.
About 800 Pallets of used Lego.
Buy a forklift, don’t rent one.
My wife and I built a machine about 6 years ago now to sort Lego but so far all it does is just make a bigger mess. This video is very cool though, the 30/45 degree spring thing seemed like a weird thing to fixate on for the singulator but he seemed to have the rest of his stuff in good order so I’ll take his word for it!
I honestly am left disappointed on several levels. I will leave it at that.
You probably missed that this is a rushed together prototype.
We strive to make sure that our readers are never left disappointed. But we can’t improve if you don’t tell us what the problem is.
Here’s my attempt at something similar – but smaller, simpler and faster. https://hackaday.io/project/194170-colour-sorting-machine-for-lego