MELT or "Cook" Your Own Lego Technic Shapes?

[DLuders]

On Flickr, there was a picture of a Lego Lamp Shade made from melted Lego bricks. Here is the "recipe":

* Preheat oven (375 - 475 degrees F.) [190-246 degrees C.]

* Line pan with foil

* Arrange LEGO bricks

* Bake bake bake

* Remove pan from oven

* Remove shot glass from center

* Immediately lift hot gooey piece from pan by its foil lining and place on "mold." In this case I used an old lamp shade to mimic the shape.

* Squish down with oven mitts

* Let cool & that's it!

When folks are wanting to build Lego Technic creations with unusual angles or hole arrangements, it MAY BE POSSIBLE to use the instructions above to MELT your extra bricks into something unique. Think about TWISTING your Technic Liftarms to have holes available on BOTH SIDES for extra connection points. Or, BEND your Liftarms into angles not offered by The Lego Group. You could make a unique BODY SHELL for your Technic car, by placing it into a mold made out of wood or plaster! There are many possibilities....

[JunkstyleGio]

Nice, but this kind of torture to Lego bricks is totally "not done"!

[Buckshot]

I don't know--don't think I could do that even to Megablocks.

Ok, maybe to Megablocks. But def. not to Lego!

[Silcantar]

Absolutely not. It's the ugliest lampshade I've ever seen, too.

[Zerobricks]

That's a sin!

[freakwave]

* Immediately lift hot gooey piece from pan by its foil lining and place on "mold." In this case I used an old lamp shade to mimic the shape.

You forgot to add a disclaimer for the US here not to lift the gooey with your bare hands...

This is something I would never do to my parts (or anybody elses)

I have even issues to throw away broken parts...even those ones that come in abundance...

I would be close to gluing broken parts together, but nothing like this.

fW

[DLuders]

Somebody already did MC Escher's "Belvedere" and "Waterfall" with Lego elements (from http://taylhis.tangents.org/tag/relativity/ ). One could make smoother transitions using the melt technique:

One could make a Lego Technic MC Escher "Mobius Strip II" using the melt technique:

[DLuders]

One could also replicate some of Inanimate Reason's custom aluminum parts by softening the normal ABS Lego Technic Liftarms and shaping/twisting them:

[TechnicJuan]

I have a question. What are these?

[JunkstyleGio]

Are these new parts by TLC or are they custom parts by an outsider?

Either way: I guess these are quite usefull parts!

Edited September 14, 2010 by JunkstyleGio

[fred67]

I've seen some pretty cool lamps done with translucent pieces without having to destroy them permanently...

A lampshade like that one... well... first of all, the colors are terrible, but I think if someone created a nicer pattern it could look a lot nicer.

Secondly, I would use trans pieces... but that's the problem, trans pieces are so much more valuable (IMO), that to destroy them to make a shade that might not look too good would be a travesty.

I'd rather stick to something like these (pictures are links):

or

As far as mangling technic pieces... the problem there is if you bend a piece to a new angle, the outside edge gets stretched thin while you are likely to get a blobby inner edge.

Now, what's interesting to me is the thought of twisting one 90 degrees along the axis... a long enough piece so that the twist wasn't too severe could be an interesting piece.

[Erik Leppen]

I have a question. What are these?

If I had to guess, I think these are very high quality renders of 3D models of proposed pieces.

We have a topic about proposed pieces. Hmm, what could we do

[Marckeyh]

I'd never melt LEGO, that looks horrible. Perhaps a megablok fan would like it?

[Tropy]

I have a question. What are these?

Blackbird, are these 3D renderings? you seem to be the master around on this stuff

[Blakbird]

Blackbird, are these 3D renderings? you seem to be the master around on this stuff

The first one of the gears is almost certainly a render. The others look like photographs mostly because they are out of focus. It is possible to do focal blur on a render (and I have done it a few times), but this would be very hard to reproduce and why bother? But look really closely at the second picture. The first two parts are existing Technic parts and the third is something new. Look at the left hand edge of the first part. It looks faceted like the LDraw model, not a smooth curve. That suggests to me that these are renders that someone took a lot of time on.

[rjk1977]

when it's real, why cant we find it anywhere?????

But who cares , Lego should make these parts! ! ! !

I can use them

[Plastic Nurak]

Those proposed new parts look both cool and very usefull. Melted bricks instead cry vengeance to the sky.

[brickmack]

Ack I would never melt LEGO parts. I'm almost sick just thinking about it. In fact I probably wouldn't even melt something like megablocks if I had any... (OK I might, just to watch them be destroyed...)

[desaibricks73]

I actually checked this post out for info on Melting ABS. I agree on NEVER melting bricks and standard stuff. But I am customizing minifigures and wanted to know eary it is to melt and remold head pieces. Such as the Sponge bob or Star Wars figures have molded head pieces and not heads. I can think of other characters I could use this technique on. Any one have ideas on how easy it is to melt and remold? Thanks

[DLuders]

@ desaibricks73: Welcome to Eurobricks! It isn't that hard to melt the ABS minifig head (using the technique in the original post), but you will have to force the hot plastic "goo" into a mold by either using pliars or other tools. I have a feeling the results will be unsatisfactory, since the reformed head must still attach onto the minifig torso.

[Boxerlego]

All you need is a soldering iron and you can soften the lift arms and bend them. Even though I have never done any bending on Lego. This is how you could do it.

[jorgeopesi]

Agr... penitenciagite!!! .

[mobi]

Just wait till 3D printing becomes affordable.

[TechnicMati]

Are these new parts by TLC or are they custom parts by an outsider?

Either way: I guess these are quite usefull parts!

They might be usefull but fundamental question is if they have been made by TLG and meet Lego's quality requirements as we have seen some lego knockoffs on the market since several years ago.

[e-ronin]

Hi,

All of the new part images are 3D renders. I can tell just by how they look and adding DOF is

really easy. Just a little background info, I have been professionally creating models in

Lightwave for about 10years.

I wish they were real as I can see how useful they would be :-)

Cheers,

Ed