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I'm looking for a non-destructive way to structurally attach a standard hobby servo with LEGO bricks. I'm interested in answers for either Large, Medium, or Small size servos.

I'm using LEGO Mindstorms/Technic bricks to prototype all kinds of robotic projects and I often use non-LEGO parts for the electronics (e.g. Arduino, Servos, LEDs, ...). I'm always trying to find better ways to integrate those non-LEGO parts without damaging the LEGO bricks.

I'm aware that there are some commercial adaptors available on the market but I'm interested in creative homemade solutions (low-cost to no-cost).

For example: here is one way to attach a medium-sized servo to a LEGO Technic beam:

Servo attached to LEGO Technic beam

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    At first I thought you were speaking of the electr(on)ic part of things, but now I think you may rather be after the physical assembly to LEGO parts - right?
    – Joubarc
    Commented Oct 7, 2012 at 14:58
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    @Joubarc Yes I'm talking about the physically attaching servos and LEGO bricks together. I'll clarify and add a image to help.
    – pcantin
    Commented Oct 7, 2012 at 15:34

2 Answers 2

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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 are online services to print your designs if you don't have a 3D printer (yet ;-)

Each strategy is worth another question here at bricks.SE.

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    To add to this answer, I would also suggest looking at The Free Universal Construction Set. While they don't provide anything for integrating legos and servos specifically, there's a lot of examples of how to integrate Legos with non Legos components (some of which might make integrating a servo easier.)
    – kaliatech
    Commented Nov 6, 2012 at 19:06
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Depending on your rigidity requirements, I've found double-sided tape to work well.

It's cheap and found in many general goods store. The servo itself can be taped and supported on all four sides and/or the bottom to many types of lego brick surfaces.

You can also use double-side tape to mount a lego surface to a servo control horn. That provides nearly infinite mounting flexibility. However, the control horn attachment will not be very rigid or support a lot of weight without an additional structures to support whatever is actually moving.

When finished, you can just peel the tape off. (...which is sometimes easier said than done.)

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