Seriously long Lego system.

[billbo911]

This might just cause you to stare at your screen in amazement for a while.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rWd3vgLaA_M

[kornjones]

im simply speechless :yikes:

[davepowers]

:yikes:Someone either has wayyyy to much time on their hands, or an obsession with Legos. This is honestly incredible, I love it!

[Andrew141WOBOT]

wow. thats all i can say! i was glued to the screen for all 8 minutes!
is this your creation, or something you found online?

[Grim Tuesday]

Dear god, that is awesome.

[Travis Hoffman]

This person should be arrested for denying LEGO parts to children in Asia.

Besides, wouldn't he be better served by ditching all the automation and paying 500 LEGO people to do the same job for pennies on the dollar? :rolleyes:

[jmiller48167]

This had to take longer then the 6 week build season.:yikes:

[CalTran]

I can't remember what it was, but quite a few years back there used to be an actual production line toy that did this. I came with a playset, a "robot", a control station, and a few more plug-ins for more robots to play. I think they sold it at ZOOM?

[1986titans]

This is definitely one of the coolest things I've seen online.

[andreboos]

I can't remember what it was, but quite a few years back there used to be an actual production line toy that did this. I came with a playset, a "robot", a control station, and a few more plug-ins for more robots to play. I think they sold it at ZOOM?

You may be thinking of ROKENBOK.

The funniest part about this is that balls are occasionally sorted, only to be mixed in the next step of the process.

[CalTran]

You may be thinking of ROKENBOK.

Haha yes, that's it! I loved it :)

[DonRotolo]

Really, who has time for that kind of thing?

Anyway, this is a good lesson in process capacity control: Notice that no part of the system is faster than any other part of the system, so you don't get a bottleneck anywhere. In fact, watch the mechanism at 4:22 - any overflow for the "slow" lower process is diverted to a simple rail up higher.

Now imagine having a job doing just that?

Not with Legos, of course, but for a production line for, say, a car. Everything has to line up just right, time-wise.

Plus a fascinating look at many different materials handling techniques.

[biancs15]

Haha yes, that's it! I loved it :)

Me too!!!!!
I used to play with those for hours and hours on end :)

[Bill_B]

More viewing of GBCs can be found at this Gizmodo page. (http://gizmodo.com/#!5783409/amazing-lego-great-ball-contraption-breaks-world-record) There is serious mech.eng. education to be found in these machines. The rest of it is just fun.

[Travis Hoffman]

Really, who has time for that kind of thing?

And money?



Anyway, this is a good lesson in process capacity control: Notice that no part of the system is faster than any other part of the system, so you don't get a bottleneck anywhere. In fact, watch the mechanism at 4:22 - any overflow for the "slow" lower process is diverted to a simple rail up higher.

Now imagine having a job doing just that?

Not with Legos, of course, but for a production line for, say, a car. Everything has to line up just right, time-wise.

Plus a fascinating look at many different materials handling techniques.

There are some areas of waste where the materials are spilled - all you industrial engineers out there should run some time studies and help the dude improve the process.

[Garret]

This is amazing. I love LEGOS :D . I need to make one of these.

[MagiChau]

Looks like a cool, micro-sized way to test out some physics.

[billbo911]

wow. thats all i can say! i was glued to the screen for all 8 minutes!
is this your creation, or something you found online?

No, I can not take any credit for this. My son posted a link to it on Facebook. I just knew the folks here on CD would appreciate it.

Really, who has time for that kind of thing?......

Plus a fascinating look at many different materials handling techniques.

Exactly what I thought as well.

Looks like a cool, micro-sized way to test out some physics.

What a wonderful prototyping system. :)

[plnyyanks]

This is so cool. I wish I had one of these.

[JesseK]

There are so many interesting concepts in that video. We now have no excuse to have a poor implementation the next time the GDC makes a ball-shooting game.

This guy (or girl...) must have timed the battery lives quite well too. Then again, nothing in the video looks like it'd overly stress a battery anyways.


All my boyhood dreams realized in thirteen minutes.

My fiancee will be happy that I may no longer want a "LEGO room" in our metaphorical mansion of the future...

[akoscielski3]

You may be thinking of ROKENBOK.

The funniest part about this is that balls are occasionally sorted, only to be mixed in the next step of the process.

I think i still have mine in my basement. I used to play with them for hours and hours!

[Chris_Ely]

Simply Amazing!
I wonder how many Legos it took to build that?

[Bill_B]

My fiancee will be happy that I may no longer want a "LEGO room" in our metaphorical mansion of the future...

This August we'll be staging a GBC at Brickfair in the Dulles convention center. Stop by. Plunk down a few bucks and be amazed at Lego construction in person. You'll need to add an entire metaphorical floor to your mansion afterwards.

[nitneylion452]

Hard to believe that he did all of that on no more than one NXT controller;)

[nighterfighter]

Hard to believe that he did all of that on no more than one NXT controller;)

I count at least 3, (from a quick glance)

The line following truck, the claw at the beginning, and the ball-sorter.

[nitneylion452]

I count at least 3, (from a quick glance)

The line following truck, the claw at the beginning, and the ball-sorter.

I was trying to be sarcastic and make a little joke about the minibot rules for this year. Hence the wink emote.

[nighterfighter]

I was trying to be sarcastic and make a little joke about the minibot rules for this year. Hence the wink emote.

Ah, sorry. It was a long day...

[nitneylion452]

Ah, sorry. It was a long day...

We're all entitled to a brain lapse here and there. I get a few more than most.

[bbonahoom]

Thanks for the great remarks. The Great Ball Contraption was conceived in Indiana back in early 2005 as a collaborative project because several of us Mindstorms geeks were tired of simply competing with each other and we wanted to work together. We debuted the first GBC at Brickfest (Washington DC) in August 2005 with about 40 working modules.

Why do all the modules seem to work well with a process flow? We actually wrote a specification for the collaborative project. You can find the requirements at http://www.teamhassenplug.org/GBC/ if you want to try your hand at it.

GBC collaborations still happen at Brickworld (Chicago - June) and BrickFair (DC - August). They are mesmerizing to little kids.

Of course, those of us that started GBC have moved on to other challenges like Monster Chess http://www.teamhassenplug.org/monsterchess/ that debuted at Brickworld in 2010. We will have Monster Chess on display at the event in Saint Louis next week. Stop in in your "spare" time and see it run.

GBC was a lot of fun and you learned quite a bit about the durability of plastic along the way :)

[IKE]

GBC collaborations still happen at Brickworld (Chicago - June) and BrickFair (DC - August). They are mesmerizing to little kids.
:)

And apparently those that are little kids at heart. Watching this reminded me a lot of watching videos of egg collecting and sorting factories. Very neat. After the ball sorter of 2006, and the issues of 2009, I have a feeling we may need to review this video after kick-off 2012...

[Dancin103]

This is absolutely awesome! Thanks for sharing. :D

[Mark Sheridan]

whoa! that is cool. I just had flashbacks of the 2006 and 2009 brainstorming sessions.