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Showing posts with the label Mechanisms

LEGO Loom Machines

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So I'm sure you've all seen Nico71's amazing loom machine here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKdUPbtE_xk but look what Tomasz Zając has just posted: a super cool version using MINDSTORMS NXT and some PF motors! Now your LEGO robot can knit a warm scarf for you this cold winter;) See more pictures of this cool (err I mean "warm") creation here http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=521691    I which I had this superb MINDSTORMS scarf with me when I filmed the Phat Track video at -30°C : . .
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Back to the Basics... in Perspective

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I wanted to link to a short YT video here, a version of Claude Shannon's Ultimate Machine . This is really an amazing mechanism here, and demonstrates in a small package some amazing mechanical techniques - techniques actually very commonly seen in a lot of "real" robots and industrial mechanisms, and rendered beautifully here in LEGO (the subject is also a rather famous robot of a sort). Note that this has no NXT in it. In fact, it doesn't even have a single PF motor in it. There's no wires, no programming, and the closest it gets to a MINSTORMS solution is that it uses gears: So why the heck am I posting about it here, in a blog dedicated to the NXT? One of the things that's easy to overlook when working with something like the NXT is that when you have your hands around a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. The NXT is a powerful microcomputer, that can read multiple sensors and run lots of motors, and so there's a tendency to think that's...
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