All-LEGO Centrifugal Pump

September 6, 2017 by 30 Comments

[Yoshihito Isogawa] almost never employs non-LEGO parts in his creations. He created an excellent centrifugal pump out of 100% LEGO. While mostly a curiosity, you can definitely get a sense of how the mechanics work.

A Power Functions motor turns a 6×6 round plate that appears to have 1×2 smooth plates jammed between the studs, and secured with a 4×4 round plate on the other end. He geared up the motor so the assembly is spun very quickly, with those smooth plates forcing the water through a Technic mounting hole in one of the bricks.

[Yoshihito] is known for his utterly elegant, stripped down mechanical assemblies—-check out his books if this is your bag. According to his bio he’s twice won the Japanese medal for best manual, so I guess he’s really good at explaining things! Also, that’s a thing?

For more DIY pump creation check out the air pump made out of a PVC pipe and the DIY syringe pump we published previously.

Universal Robots Vision-Based LEGO Stacker

June 11, 2017 by 2 Comments

[Thomas Kølbæk Jespersen] and his classmates at Aalborg University’s Robot Vision course used MATLAB code and URscript to program a Universal Robots UR5 to stack up Duplo bricks. The Duplo bricks are stacked into low-fi Simpsons characters — yellow for Homer’s head, white for his shirt, and blue for his pants, for example.

The bricks are scattered randomly on a nearby table, while a camera mounted above the table scans the bricks and assists in determining the location, color, and orientation of the elements. This involves blob analysis which helps the computer decide what pixel is part of a brick and what isn’t. After running a recursive grassfire algorithm with 4-connectivity, the computer gives each pixel a number and assigns it to a blob.

To determine the orientation (the bricks are all assumed to be stud-side up and not overlapping) the blob is divided into quadrants and within each quadrant, the distance between the center of the blob and its farthest pixel is measured. This technique is not likely to work as well with a brick that isn’t square. Each brick’s location in pixels is translated into Cartesian coordinates, making it a cinch for the robot to pick it up. See [Thomas]’s GitHub for MATLAB and URscript code.

Looking for more UR5 projects? Check out the Sewbo garment-making robot we published last year.

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LEGO Liquid Handler And Big Biology

April 3, 2017 by 6 Comments

A career as a lab biologist can take many forms, but the general public seems to see it as a lone, lab-coated researcher sitting at a bench, setting up a series of in vitro experiments by hand in small tubes or streaking out a little yeast on an agar plate. That’s not inaccurate at all – all of us lab rats have done time with a manual pipettor while trying to keep track of which tube in the ice bucket gets which solution. It’s tedious stuff.

But because biology experiments generally scale well, and because more data often leads to better conclusions, life science processes can quickly grow beyond what can be handled manually. I’ve seen this time and again in my 25 years in science, from my crude grad school attempts to miniaturize my assays and automate data collection to the multi-million dollar robotic systems I built in my career in the pharmaceutical industry. Biology can get pretty big in a hurry. Continue reading “LEGO Liquid Handler And Big Biology” →

LEGO Looper Makes Modular Music

September 20, 2016 by 5 Comments

This LEGO synth made by [Rare Beasts] had us grinning from ear to ear.

It combines elements from LEGO Mindstorms with regular blocks in order to make music with color. A different music sample is assigned to each of five colors: red, blue, green, yellow, and white. The blocks are attached to spokes coming off of a wheel made with NXT an EV3. As the wheel turns, the blocks pass in front of a fixed color sensor that reads the color and plays the corresponding sample. The samples are different lengths, so changing the speed of the wheel makes for some interesting musical effects.

As you’ll see in the short video after the break, [Rare Beasts] starts the wheel moving slowly to demonstrate the system. Since the whole thing is made of LEGO, the blocks are totally modular. Removing a few of them here and there inserts rests into the music, which makes the result that much more complex.

LEGO is quite versatile, and that extends beyond playtime. It can be used to automate laboratory tasks, braid rope, or even simulate a nuclear reactor. What amazing creations have you made with it? Let us know in the comments.

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Lego-Like Chemistry And Biology Erector Set

August 17, 2016 by 9 Comments

A team of researchers and students at the University of California, Riverside has created a Lego-like system of blocks that enables users to custom build chemical and biological research instruments. The system of 3D-printed blocks can create a variety of scientific tools.

The blocks, which are called Multifluidic Evolutionary Components (MECs) appeared in the journal PLOS ONE. Each block in the system performs a basic lab instrument task (pumping fluids, making measurements or interfacing with a user, for example). Since the blocks are designed to work together, users can build apparatus — like bioreactors for making alternative fuels or acid-base titration tools for high school chemistry classes — rapidly and efficiently. The blocks are especially well suited for resource-limited settings, where a library of blocks can create a variety of different research and diagnostic tools.

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Lessons From The Fablab Masters

August 18, 2015 by 8 Comments

I spent some time recently at the Fab11 conference, a gathering of the people behind the Fab Labs that are springing up all over the world, where entrepreneurs, hackers and the curious can learn about making things. So, it was no surprise that this was a great place to pick up some tips on designing, building and hacking things. Here are a few of the lessons I picked up at this fascinating gathering of the fabbers.

Build Quickly

If you can make something in an hour, you’ll make it better in a day

said [Joris Van Tubergen]. He knows something about making unusual things because he 3D printed a full-sized Elephant. To do this, he worked out how to hack the Ultimaker 2 3D printer to print to an unlimited Z height by flipping the printer upside down and moving the Z motor to lift the printer rather than the print head. With a few tweaks to the software, he could then print full-height elephant slices to speed up the process. He is absolutely right: while it is tempting to endlessly fiddle with a concept on paper, you learn more by building a prototype, even if it doesn’t work.

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Lego Exoskeleton Mimics Pacific Rim

Lego Exoskeleton Controls Pacific Rim Robot

August 9, 2015 by 11 Comments

As hilariously outrageous as Pacific Rim was, it was still an awesome concept. Giant robot battle suits, duking it out with the aliens. Well, it looks as if it wasn’t quite as far-fetched as we first imagined. Maker [Danny Benedettelli] just released a video of his very own Lego exoskeleton suit that when worn can be used to control a desktop size Cyclops robot. You might remember [Danny] as the author of The Lego Mindstorms EV3 Library,

The Cyclops robot (also his design) was originally built four years ago using Lego Mindstorms NXT system with an Android phone running a custom app. Cyclops has been upgraded a bit for this demonstration. Now it communicates over Bluetooth with an Arduino to [Danny’s] telemetry suit.

Relatively speaking, the system is pretty simple. The Lego exoskeleton has potentiometers on each joint, which map to a degree of freedom for the robot. When one potentiometer spins, the associated robot joint mimics it. Simple, right?

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