Lego bricks are great for making models, but sometimes you can make real tools with them. If you want to work with foam you should definitely consider building this hot wire cutter. It’s a great tool because it doesn’t leave any dust and it cuts through foam like butter. A few years back I didn’t have any scrap wood but I had plenty of Lego pieces.

One of my hobbies is taking out the Airsoft gun and picking off innocent Lego bricks from a shelf. Eventually I got tired of picking up my fallen victims and decided to turn the Lego’s into a self resetting target range. I wanted to make a cool electronic range, but I figured there must be an easy mechanical way that doesn’t cost me $12 per servo and days worth of wiring. I looked on the internet and found some $60+ dollar targets and just knew I could redesign them using Lego pieces. Once I found the right angles and proportions for the pieces the thing worked like a charm. When I shot the bottom two targets they get locked in place. When finished I shot the top target to release the bottom two. I added a stop motion video on how to construct one at the end and some different views so you can build your own.

One of the happiest moments backs as a Teaching Assistant in college was when a Professor told me to build a underwater autonomous course under $1000 and out of Lego Bricks.

There are a lot of things to over come if you are building one. But its not impossible to build a pretty intelligent Lego submersible. Especially when they are now digital with microcontrollers and sensors. One of my favorite examples was when Rhode Island University Beat MIT’s AUV with their Lego version.

Works with 35mm Film and 100% Lego

Well… there is a catch. The images are too light and it must be used and loaded in dark environments. I hope to make a better one some day.

Here is a little Candy dispenser I made for the office one day. I bought one of those massive bags of M&M peanuts and the guys around the office finished them in a day.

photos and more videos  after the break

click click boom

When our Lego bricks disobey their creators…

This was a little Lego Turret I built using 80% ABS Lego Bricks. The other 15% is an automated BB gun. I control it using the standard Lego Motor box and the BB Gun is powered using a Cell Phone Charger as a power supply 5V at 1A. The base is wide so the recoil of the gun doesn’t tip the gun over. Plus it gave me the chance to use the oversized wheel from my dissassembled Lego Starwars Hail Fire Droid and use it for lazy Susan.

Some of you can add better than I and realize I’m missing 5%. That 5% is a resin I used to attach some Lego Beams to the Gun. By doing that I Lego-ized the gun in case I ever need to rebuild it.

The toy is a manual control turret so it doesn’t need limit switches.