Lego Hello World

By Shamus Posted Saturday Jun 5, 2010

Filed under: Movies 31 comments

It prints slow, but it’s fun to watch:


Link (YouTube)

And I have to admit, a felt-tip pen is pretty cheap compared to a toner cart.

 


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31 thoughts on “Lego Hello World

  1. Avilan says:

    Wow. I am SERIOUSLY impressed.

    1. MichaelG says:

      Don’t be so sure about the cost. I bet the nib of that pen goes flat every page or so, and the quality deteriorates. And that’s printing large block letters. Do real text (where the pen would go up and down more often) and I’m sure it’s a mess pretty soon.

      We need a Lego ink-jet printer that runs on cola…

      1. wtrmute says:

        It should only go flat if the pen is pushed further forward against the block than it should. If the pen only barely touches the paper (say, pushing half a millimetre) it won’t go flat. It’s because people use felt tips as if they were ballpoints that their tips deform at all…

  2. Another Scott says:

    Sure it seems cheap now, but those lego-men are going to want raises after a while.

    Catchy beat too.

    1. Avilan says:

      Not to mention that horse. Do you have ANY idea how much a horse eats per month???

  3. Jarenth says:

    I think what suprises me the most is the fact that this doesn’t suprise me at all. I’m watching this and thinking ‘Sure, a Lego printer. That makes sense.’

    The Internet has jaded me to awesome things.

  4. maehara says:

    In a word: awesome.

    I want one, just so it can sit on my desk and look cool.

  5. Zukhramm says:

    I’m in love.

  6. Soopaman says:

    I saw this earlier this week and was going to e-mail you the link, it seemed something you would be impressed with, but I never could find your e-mail.

    1. Benny says:

      Yes, Shamus’s email is hard to find and very un-intuitive :D

      1. Soopaman says:

        Found it. Granted it was not in the TwentySided section of his website that I frequent. I don’t know that I remembered his main page until now.

  7. acronix says:

    Amazing. And with minifigures on top? Doubly amazing!

  8. RCTrucker7 says:

    That. Is. Awesome.

  9. UtopiaV1 says:

    Still quicker than a dot-matrix printer…

    Also, that was WICKED-SICK!!! :thumbs up:

  10. Gandaug says:

    Nifty.

  11. JimminyJoJo says:

    Haha cool. I used to fool around with the Lego Mindstorms robotics kit and got my creations to do some pretty neat stuff. Nothing like that, though!

  12. Mari says:

    I wonder how, precisely, one does make a Lego felt tip printer. Now I must Google it and see if anybody has instructions because I MUST create a Lego printer. See? I just wrote it on my “before I die” list. Kind of sad how geeky this list is, really.

    1. Tizzy says:

      If you read the description on Youtube, there is a fairly complete FAQ. This one is home-made, but it sounds like there are more readily useable kits out there.

  13. Meredith says:

    That’s awesome! I love that the internet can bring us this sort of thing in addition to all the nonsense.

  14. Nyaz says:

    Felt-tip pens are cheap compared to printer ink? Hell, human blood is cheap compared to printer ink.

    1. Sekundaari says:

      So is mammoth blood. Or alien ichor.

    2. FatPope says:

      Yep, I think this is the graph you’re referring to:
      http://gizmodo.com/212444/hp-ink-costs-more-than-human-blood-booze

      1. Matthew says:

        Yes! Exactly what I was thinking of :D

  15. Lance says:

    The Legos are going to take over the world. They start with “hello world” and end the the complete enslavement of the human race.

    1. Audacity says:

      I, for one, welcome our new plastic overlords. May their reign be both long and constructive.

      1. Hawkehunt says:

        /facepalm

  16. Sekundaari says:

    I’m amazed by the accuracy of this thing. I don’t think I could even get a construction like that to move the paper so precisely.

    1. FatPope says:

      I agree, it’s much more accurate in terms of paper feeding and pen usage than I thought it would be

  17. Jamie says:

    Wow. Just, wow.
    Also, I want one!

  18. Benny says:

    I’ve been studying all day for an exam tomorrow about basic embedded systems. Seeing this video should be making me think, “Wow, neat!” Instead, I’m having involuntary spouts of questions popping up in my head, like, “How would I wire the chip select port on the driving IO device? Would I be able to use DMA for that page’s data in a single data segment?”

    I was going to write another question or two, but I am slowly realizing the exam takes place in ~ten hours. You get the point. Bet I’ll have pleasant, completely un-class-related dreams tonight.

  19. Zaghadka says:

    If they were using Windows, they’d have a better selection of printers.

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