Apple engineer builds 'printer' made from LEGO
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You may have been proud of building an elaborate castle or even a city made from hundreds of Lego bricks as a child, but it takes years of practice to match this engineer's talent.
Andrew Carol crafts 'steampunk' mechanical machines from the popular plastic blocks.
He was inspired by great machines of the past such as Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and created an automaton, or writing machine, after seeing the film Hugo.
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'Machines have long been used to ease repetitive labour. The machines I found most interesting eased the labour of calculation; watches, calculators, difference engines and so on.'
'Having always loved complex mechanical devices, and never having fully outgrown Lego, I decided to explore where computational mechanics and Lego meet,' he said.
'This is not Lego as a toy or art. This is almost where steampunk and Lego meet - hand cranked devices that perform complex mechanical tasks.'
Write on: Just like automatons - writing machines - from the 18th century, when they were popular, Mr Carol's machine (pictuerd) uses a complex set up of rods and cams - bumps on rotating parts of machinery
In the 2011 film, Hugo, a boy repairs a mechanical machine that can hand write a message, called an automaton.
While the machine in the film looks like a boy, Mr Carol, who was inspired by the film, decided against fashioning a human-shaped automaton and instead, made his from bright plastic.
'The Lego mechanism does not look like a boy, but it is a purely mechanical hand-cranked machine that will move a pen to write short messages of up to 150 pen strokes,' he said.
Just like the automatons that were popular in the 18th century, Mr Carol's machine uses a complex set up of rods and cams - bumps on rotating parts of machinery to move gears
Mr Carol told MailOnline that the machine took him a couple of months to make.
'I tinker with pieces and parts of mechanisms to start with. Sometimes I doodle diagrams of how the parts will interact on paper,' he said, explaining how he gets started working on a new machine.
To pen a word, he draws out what he wants to write on graph paper.
'I convert that to pen strokes in one of eight directions - left, right, up, down, left and up, etc.
'I then enter that into a computer program I wrote, which simulates the machine. This enables me to see if the pen-strokes I've chosen will work as expected.
'There are usually a few mistakes I've made so this is where I edit the pen-strokes to do what I want.'
The computer prints out a template that Mr Carol uses to assemble link pieces, which form the basis of the five chains inside the automaton.
'A message is encoded in the form of long chains of Lego pieces in a sort of binary code,' which represents text or computer processor instructions using two binary digits, 0 and 1.
The finished result: An up-stroke of a gear turns and moves a pen. Each down/up stroke causes one of the chains to advance to the next link, and in this way, a word (pictured) can be drawn out point-by-point
A "wide" link, like a tank track is used to represent 'do nothing'. A "narrow" link, like a bicycle chain is used to represent "move the pen"', he explained.
'There is a reader that moves a probe up and down like a sewing needle. If the probe hits a wide link, nothing happens, but if it encounters a narrow link it can slide past and engage a ratchet.
'On the up-stroke, a gear turns moving the pen. Each down/up stroke of the probe also causes the chain to advance to the next link.
Stranger than fiction? In the 2011 film, Hugo (screenshot pictured), a boy repairs a mechanical machine that can hand write a message, called an automaton. While the machine looks like a boy, Mr Carol's creation is made from bright plastic
Chain gang: 'A pair of chains cooperate to move the pen left/right. Another pair of chains work together to move the paper forward/backwards
'A pair of chains cooperate to move the pen left and right. Another pair of chains work together to move the paper forward and backwards. The fifth chain lifts and lowers the pen.'
Mr Carol is currently working on a machine that can play tic tac toe, or noughts and crosses.
He's been thinking about how it might work for five or six years and has spent several months working on the design in his evenings and weekends when he is not working as a software engineer for Apple.
He hopes to complete the machine by the end of this year, but until then, it is under wraps.
'The first challenge is coming up with a mechanism that solves the problem I want solved,' he said.
'The harder problem is designing it [a machine] to be reliable and easy to build. A mechanism that works 90 per cent of the time is not good enough.
'It really takes many iterations and adjustments to get the design to a place where it works smoothly and reliably,' he said.
He was inspired to make a Lego version of the Babbage Difference Engine – a revolutionary mechanical calculator and forerunner to the modern computer - after he read that the Science Museum in London was working on building one.
You can count on Lego: Mr Caroll was inspired to make a Lego version of the Babbage Difference Engine (pictured) – a revolutionary mechanical calculator and forerunner to the modern computer - after he read that the Science Museum in London were working on building one
'I thought about it for almost a decade before I finally figured out how to make one,' he said, but when he focused on the task, it took him six months.
'The first machine worked but was very, very, hard to build. That taught me a lot about how to improve the building process. I then made a second and third generation machine – the one you see,' Mr Carol said.
'They were much easier to build, ran several times faster and they were much more reliable.'
Like the real deal, his Lego Difference Engine uses Newton's method of differences to variable for successive numbers.
His second complex 'steam punk' Lego machine was a version of an eclipse predictor – an ancient Greek mechanical computer first built in around 150BC.
His second complex 'steam punk' Lego machine was a version of an eclipse predictor (pictured) – an ancient Greek mechanical computer first built in around 150BC
The original eclipse predictor was designed to calculate the position of the sun and the moon as well as to calculate the dates of the solar and lunar eclipses. A section of the Lego creation is pictured
It was designed to calculate the position of the sun and the moon as well as to calculate the dates of the solar and lunar eclipses.
Explaining why he chose a plastic toy to reimagine the ancient machine, Mr Carol said: 'I've loved Lego since I was young and rediscovered it as an adult in my 30's.
'I do the hand cranked machines because people are jaded by computers. People know you can do almost anything by computer, so nothing really impresses anymore.
'But seeing something so complex happen because of gears being cranked seems so much more impressive. People understand Lego, they grew up with it. Seeing it do really complex things makes them think.
'There is also a "steam punk" element that I like. The feeling that any of my machines could have been made in 1850 is appealing.'
Mr Carol thinks the toy is 'hugely important'. 'It is readily available and encourages free-play and problem solving. I don't think there is a toy that is better to stimulate the imagination,' he said.
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