Hot answers tagged building
10
The lamp is made by LEGO artist Sean Kenney. Along with some other items, he sells the lamps on his website. They are available in a range of styles and colours, but the least expensive is $695.
Since he is selling the lamps I think it is unlikely the plans are available, although the pictures on his website are quite high resolution so you may be able to ...
8
There is a problem with the Mythbusters building technique.
One of the first things you learn about building with Lego is that, if you want a stable structure, your bricks need to interlock as much as possible.
The Unofficial Lego Builder's Guide illustrates this rather well:
Unfortunately, to make the build easier the Mythbustes team assembled a series ...
8
Classic-Castle.com has a guide for making castle walls more visually appealing. Key points:
Different colours, shades and textures of bricks add subtle imperfections.
Break up the monotony with windows, doors, arrow slits, balconies and other structural features.
Use timber (brown/tan) as well as stone (grey) bricks and try out adding different materials.
...
8
There's a brick-built spiral staircase in the Pet Shop:
That's definitely the most common way to do it. You just build up around a central point. This can be expanded to use longer or wider steps:
http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/267772
You can also use 2x2 turntables if you need more strength and/or larger stairs:
...
8
I'd particularly recommend The Unoffical LEGO Builder's Guide. It covers all of the basics and gets into many of the more complex building techniques.
If you're interested in getting right into the details, The Unofficial LEGO Advanced Building Techniques Guide by Didier Enjary covers a wide variety of building techniques and is freely available. I don't ...
7
The image posted in your question shows the Lego brick artist Nathan Sawaya.
On his website, he states:
A life-size human form sculpture typically has 15,000-25,000 bricks.
So, lets use 20,000 for our calculations.
Next, how much does a brick weigh, well of course it depends on the type of brick, but if we take the common 2 x 4 Brick , Bricklink ...
7
There are a wide variety of grabbers and pick up tools on the market, primarily aimed at the accessibility, automotive and electronics markets. Some of these would work well with LEGO.
For larger parts, I've had good success with this one:
I've got a small version of something like this. It doesn't work well for larger parts, and I'd be concerned that it ...
7
The two corners of the bonsai tray shown in this image appear to be built differently... I've chosen to do the technique shown on the left.
The best I could do was use various lengths of two-wide bricks and staggered them in a upside-down pyramid shape with 2x2 bricks in the corner.
I was trying to re-create the model from memory, and I forgot to add ...
7
LEGOLAND builders appear to be quite "rules free" in their use of parts, as long as the final model looks as though it is made of LEGO.
Not exactly a "part modification", but LEGOLAND builders have sometimes had access to parts in colors not available to regular builders.
The builders often add lights or other mechanisms to their constructions. The moving ...
7
I highly recommend the LEGO Ideas Book by DK Publishing. It shows several building techniques and ideas for projects and it is full of full color large pictures and building steps for several of the projects. Also, all the LEGO books by No Starch Press. They are more advanced, but with the speed your son is going he might enjoy them. Get one and see how he ...
6
I've found a solution that's actually pretty easy, but took some time to try out because I don't have the parts I need at hand.
The solution
Input from motor(s).
A differential to split up the input-movement to two shafts. Since I don't have a Technic Gear Differential at hand I had to built my own for the test.
One of the differential-outputs becomes ...
6
The glue is one obvious thing, and I think they recently also experimented with a new sort of transparent stuff to paint the finished models with so that they would be more resistant to direct sunlight. I don't think they'll paint bricks to change their colour, though.
However, In the same category of things any respectable AFOL would never do, I'm fairly ...
5
Take a look at SR 3D Builder. I have not used this software myself but it looks like it may do what you need. It's free (for non-commercial use) and you can import your LDraw files.
Here is a link to some videos on YouTube
See below for the features list (taken from the website)
NEW Support for Piston - Rod mechanism
NEW Support for Linear Actuators and ...
5
Don't forget the most important resource: LEGO parts.
In my opinion, there will be a point later on where you will want to consider whether offering yet another book is worth it versus spending the same amount on bricks.
In my opinion, this is a key factor when you'll want the creative design process to successfully shift from printed documentation to your ...
4
Here's what found after playing with all kinds of combinations. With this the three rovers will be at the same scale (about 1:5.8). This scale is small enough that the big rover (MSL) would not be a monster to build.
The ratio is almost spot on and the only main problem is that the MSL wheels (the big ones) will have those big cleats.
On the positive ...
4
There is another piece with an odd LDU dimension: the 1x1 bracket is 3 LDU thick. Paired with an Erling brick, which has a 4 LDU offset built in, it's a very compact way to create a 1-LDU offset, like psiaki has done here:
Then it's just a matter of translating the offset into a gap between bricks using standard bracket pieces like I have done here:
4
I'd tend to suggest to build your construction in a way that there is no inside spot you can't reach. The easiest way to achieve that would be a modular construction where you can remove parts to reach the inside; also, making it modular helps for the transport should you want to display your creation (and, considering the size of it, you should).
Another ...
4
The ideal frame rate is 24 fps due to the brain holding an image for .051... seconds
However in stop motion animation this can be quite tedious and time consuming.
So with that in mind I'd recommend a frame rate of between 15 and 18.
As for your ideas on making money out of it, I'd say go for it.
4
By considering a "somehow usual amongst fans" instead of "official" position (see my comment), I have heard some fans who simply "verbed" the acronym MOC, as in, "I MOC'ed for 3 hours straight yesterday". You could probably do the same with LEGO itself, but that would be frowned upon as LEGO is supposed to be used as an adjective and so on. (When I was a ...
3
The best solution is to create custom LEGO-compatible bricks that your servos (or other parts) fit into. This can be done by:
modding existing bricks with knives, glue and other tools
building bricks from other material (wooden LEGO, formed with Fimo/Sculpey...)
building bricks with a 3D-printer (for instance see the LEGO category on thingiverse). There ...
3
If you have access to some Duplo elements, these make good "bulking" blocks for larger terrain sections - as the 2x2 and larger bricks fit over the top of the duplo studs you can build a fairly stable base using those, and then work on the sides and top with System elements as needed.
Otherwise it comes down to sensible building techniques such as starting ...
3
My Son and I were at the Legoland Discovery Center in Grapevine, TX yesterday. We spoke with a LEGO® Certified Master Builder. We asked him and he says that LEGO® uses MEK to permanently adhere their large Lego sets together (lifesize etc). We just finished putting together the Volkswagen T1 Camper Van. It is notorious for the roof coming apart, as is ...
2
Not a pure Lego solution, as it uses helium balloons for lift, but it is (mostly) made from Lego and also uses a Mindstorms NTX for control.
Article on engaget
Direct link to YouTube vidio
2
Some family built a LEGO quad-copter. Unsurprisingly, it uses non-LEGO parts. Also, the design might seem a bit weird and worst of all, it's glued (uuurrrgh).
But it does work and appears to be very stable, enough to provide a nice remote camera view.
2
Recently had to glue ALOT of lego together for work. Acetone was too time consuming and did not offer a solid bond.
Cyanoacrylate based hobby glues with thick viscosity seemed the most effective. The only following problem was when immersed in water the clear lego windows fogged up. (no solution to that so far) Zap a Gap Hobby glue offered best result.
ABS ...
2
What I did for the Death Star minifigure set (that has no numbered bags in it at all!) was to make long chains of identical bricks regardless of colour,
(a system based on shape not size). Although I do put similar shaped pieces of different sizes together especially with LEGO Technic pieces, just overlap them slightly to make it easier to break up for use ...
2
You could use any LEGO plates with the mega bloks figures. In the blind packs they stay on the mega bloks doublebricks, that are fully compatible with LEGO doublebricks. So you could take any set pack as you want. (some time ago i have used lego collectable minifigures stand with megabloks figures, it was usable, but i think they weren't standing too tight ...
2
I know the original Microsoft Robotics Studio supported building robots using the RCX bricks - although the latest version has been upgraded to NXT and it has simulation tools too for testing your robots prior to building and deploying your code.
As the core components should be the same (gears, beams, etc.) you should be able to get a reasonable way ...
2
Mega blocks can stand on any Lego plate just as good as Lego figures. This is demonstrated in this battle scene between Lego and Mega Blocks figures:
mega bloks halo vs. lego star wars clones
Before you play this, I advice you to turn down the sound a bit...
2
Let's assume that the Heroica figures are exactly half the scale of the normal LEGO minifigure. That would be roughly 1:100. At that scale, 1 meter would be roughly 0.75 studs long or the height of a standard LEGO brick.
Now let's convert the Coliseum dimensions:
Height: 50 meters ~ 50 bricks high
Length: 189 meters ~ 142 studs
Width: 156 meters ~ 117 ...
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