#lego

LEGO demonstrates that micron-level precision is achievable in mass production, but only if the entire system - material, mold, process, quality control - is designed around that requirement from day one. The lesson isn't that everyone should match LEGO's tolerances. It's to understand what your product actually requires, then build your manufacturing system to deliver that at the scale and cost your business model demands. Define what precision truly matters for your customers, and then build your system to deliver it, every single time.

After spending two videos building a LEGO car factory, I knew that the machine had the potential to pick up and place down most individual LEGO pieces, so I wanted to try turning it into a more general pick-and-place machine to see what kinds of things it would be able to construct.

There’s something extremely calming and pleasing about watching a screensaver that merely bounces some kind of image around, with the DVD logo screensaver of a DVD player being a good example. The logical conclusion is thus that it would be great to replicate this screensaver in Lego, because it’d be fun and easy. That’s where [Grant Davis]’s life got flipped upside-down, as this turned out to be anything but an easy task in his chosen medium.

But "loss prevention" officers at the Target on Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino had never seen anyone take an interest in bar codes quite like Thomas Langenbach, a top Silicon Valley executive with the global software giant SAP. Prosecutors charged Monday that Langenbach used the tools of his trade -- computer codes and the Internet -- to steal a Santa's workshop worth of Lego toys. They say Langenbach brought his own bar code stickers to the store, used them to cover up the real ones, and then purchased his plastic prey at enormous discounts.

"Bricksmith allows you to create virtual instructions for your Lego creations on your Mac. The magic is based on the LDraw library, a collection of 3D models of Lego building blocks created by enthusiasts from around the world. With Bricksmith, you never have to worry about running out of parts"

"I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you're telling him they taste like fucking strawberries. Thanks a lot assholes."

"Animated lego pieces putting together the Millenium Falcon."

"The Lego Company, it seems, has a policy of not producing toys that replicate 20th century weapons. "You can have swords, and you can have laser guns in space, but no actual 20th century guns," Anderson says"

"This rotating Stargate is 19 inches tall with light-up chevrons. An RCX drives a treadmill, which spins the inner ring randomly for x seconds, then reverses direction, seven times."

"A growing library of combining LEGO and video games!"

"I set out to build a working Difference Engine using LEGO parts which could compute 2nd or 3rd order polynomials to 3 or 4 digits."

Wow. Geek explosion.

Ooh, mechanical logic gates of lego