Shapeways Custom Lego Parts

[TasV]

Thanks, Jim. I was hoping for a more 'polished' finish from the polished material, but I guess for something as small and fiddly as this it would be hard to polish at all. I think I will try the detail plastic and see how that turns out too. It would be interesting order one of the $$$$ metal finishes that are meant to be smooth and then make a mould from it that could be used to cast pieces in ABS plastic of any colour.

[Jim]

No problem!

I think this is the main problem when using these parts. Some parts will be fine if they are not too visible.

Too bad the real metal parts are very expensive. I am very curious how a liftarm will turn out.

[TasV]

Did you read how they make the metal ones? It's really interesting! They first print the model in a special wax and then cast the wax model in a plaster mould which is baked in a furnace to melt off the wax, leaving behind the mould into which molten metal (silver, brass or (I think) stainless steel) is poured. Once set the plaster mould is broken away and the piece polished (which might help expand the holes a bit).

My brother-in-law is an industrial designer... I'll ask him if he knows of mould makers that might be able to do it.

You know what would also be interesting??? Using a CNC router to cut the pieces out of something like acrylic. I have a CNC router at work and some small 1.5mm ball nose and end-mill router bits that might work really well on it.

Edited October 1, 2013 by TasV

[TasV]

I was a little confused about the tight fitting holes in the liftarms so I did a double check on the size of the holes. The size of the holes in the schematic I found showed the holes to be 4.8mm in diameter. That's how large I made the holes in the plans. I grabbed a 1x15 liftarm and measured the actual diameter of the hole and found this:

The actual size is smaller than what I made it.

Jim, do you have any Vernier Callipers? If so, would you be able to run them over the liftarms to measure the diameter of the holes. The other dimensions were 7.76mm wide and 7.38mm high (hole sides facing out). I'd be interested to hear how accurate the printing is. It states it somewhere on their website but I can't find it atm.

EDIT: I found it... they state is it ± 0.15mm

Edited October 2, 2013 by TasV

[Front]

I do a lot of LEGO prototypes in Objet and SLS, and always make holes bigger and shafts a bit smaller. Else there will be problems during assembly. Especially if you do cross axles, you really need a loser fit.

Erland

Part Design

[allanp]

Well, using my guessometers, erm, I mean digital calipers I got an inner hole measurement of 4.84mm with an outer hole measurement of 6.09mm with a depth of 0.80mm. The overall beam width was 7.80mm and the height was 7.45mm.

[TasV]

I was actually meaning of the newly made parts :)

[sanjy009]

Hello,

I found this forum after my blog post about making my own holonomic wheels was featured here:

http://www.eurobrick...e +came +across

I’ve done lots of 3D printing of my own custom LEGO, and Shapeways is the best I’ve found. 3D printers like Makerbot and Up! with ABS and PLA are good, but don’t quite have the resolution or tolerance yet to match with real LEGO. Shapeways “White Strong and Flexible” is sintered nylon dust, so the resolution is much better but it isn’t as strong as ABS, especially considering any 3D printed part is only about 30-40% as strong as an injection moulded part. It’s fairly expensive too at the moment.

3D printing is best suited for prototyping, and really good for casting. Anyway, you can see all my experiments and iterations with 3D printed LEGO here. I’d like to hear what you think: http://idintern.word...olonomic-wheel/

Last week I bought the Mindstorms EV3 and I’ve ordered some more motors from Bricklink, so soon I’ll get the robot updated, but for now it’s a RCX 2.0:

I've updated the robot with an EV3 and a stiffer frame around the wheels. This greatly helps stopping sideways loads pulling the wheels off the rims:

Here's a video of it in action (contains soundtrack):

And I've started casting an improved wheel design that fits nicely onto a LEGO rim, plus dyed black:

see more here: http://idintern.word...olonomic-wheel/

Edited October 16, 2013 by sanjy009

[Doc_Brown]

That is so cool! All that movement from 3 motors?

I have no idea how these wheels work, but it is mesmerizing!

[TasV]

As the Doc said above, this is very cool! I'm assuming you used the Elasto Plastic material (I haven't checked out your website for a while so please forgive my lack of memory if it's stated there)? How does the feel of this material compare to the rubber compound regular Lego tires are made of?

EDIT: I see you got Shapeways to make the moulds and you cast them from silicone... that's awesome!

Jim, no sign of the parts yet. I'll be sure to let you know when they arrive.

Simon

Edited October 16, 2013 by TasV

[Philo]

This is indeed the coolest 3D printing for LEGO I've seen so far! The black one is nice, but I kind of liked the raspberry look of the first one ;)

Your blog is extremely informative, thanks for putting this up!