Awesome Machines

This magical machine from China takes on the duties of a playing card dealer. Set it in the center of your table, tell it how many players you have and how many cards they should each get, and it does the rest. It can also deal community cards. Holds two decks and deals to up to eight players.

JBV Creative has engineered all kinds of neat mechanical devices, including an overcomplicated candy dispenser and a robot that types. This time, he built a pair of machines that endlessly toss tiny basketballs into each other’s hoops. You can purchase a 3D printable model of the Roboballer on JBV’s website.

Brick Technology showed off some LEGO engines that run on compressed air. This time, they tested some different configurations to see which ones could achieve the highest RPM, how to minimize vibrations, and even connected one to a miniature transmission with a working gear shifter.

The Brick Wall has built some of the coolest and most functional LEGO machines ever. Their latest build continues to uphold that promise by giving us a fully operational LEGO sewing machine. It’s not as complicated as their other machines, but it took four months of experimentation to get it to work just right.

If you’ve ever looked through the case back of a mechanical watch, you know they can be incredibly complicated inside. Jake from Animagraffs created this detailed 3D animation which shows how all of those intricate gears, axles, springs, and dials work together to accurately tell time without batteries or electronics.

This factory in Korea uses specialized machines to produce cosmetic contact lenses in mass quantities. All Process of World posted this footage from the DK Medivision factory to see how machines precisely apply designs to silicone hydrogel lenses, float them in hygienic solution, then deposit them into packages.

Locking up your bicycle to a rack or pulling your car into a marked space seem like nice, low-tech approaches to parking. Tom Scott explains why some locations in Japan have adopted a much more complicated system, using underground garages and massive, robotically-controlled systems for parking bikes and cars.

Mayku’s FormBox brings the power of vacu-forming to your desktop. It connects to an ordinary vacuum cleaner and heats thermoplastic sheets to create objects and molds. Its can mold objects up to 150mm x 150mm (~5.9″ x 5.9″) and can mold objects up to 130mm tall (~5.11″). It works with a various plastics in from 0.25 – 1.5mm thick.

Brick Technology loves to build machines out of LEGO. In this video, they show how the building blocks can be used to create seven kinds of water pumps. It’s fascinating to see how the engineering of each affects the amount of fluid they can move. The best part is watching them all linked together at the end.

If there’s one thing humans use a lot of, it’s toilet paper. This video from Process X takes us inside Japan’s Marutomi Paper Co., a factory that cranks out millions of rolls of the stuff every month. They start with stacks of paper pulp that they wet and press into massive rolls, which they then print, wrap around cores, and slice.

If you need to move a building or another large structure, you need specialized industrial equipment. Mammoet’s Self-Propelled Modular Transporters can be used individually or in combination to transport enormous and heavy structures. Recently, they combined 604 SPMT axle lines to move a 16,258-ton support frame.

DanCreator has made some pretty amazing cardboard objects over the years. Now he’s gone and built not one, but three full-size vending machines out of the corrugated brown paper. Not only do they look like the real thing, but the soda fountain, can dispenser, and instant ramen machine are fully functional.

When you want to make fried rice, it’s best to stir-fry it in a wok. But if you can’t be bothered with the stirring part, then you need one of these automated stir-fry machines that spins the wok over a flame while combining the ingredients. There’s also a simpler stir-fry machine that just shakes the wok.

When it comes to 3D printers, bigger is usually better, so you can print large or multiple objects. But My N Mi went the opposite direction and engineered a 3D printer you might find in a dollhouse. Despite measuring just 18 x 31 x 41 mm, the palm-sized resin printer makes surprisingly good prints. Here’s another tiny print sample.

We’ve seen a LEGO machine that keeps knocking down and standing up a row of dominoes, but this version by JK Brickworks is even more satisfying. After its 64 dominoes start falling, a motorized train runs around its circular track and stands them back up. If it weren’t for its power needs, it could run forever.

A little while back, engineer James Bruton created a robot that moved along the ground using a spiral drive mechanism that rippled its tracks along the ground. In this video, he revisits the concept with a new design that uses a camshaft to create the ripple and propel the tank forward and backward. It walks a bit like a millipede.

A useless machine is a contraption that’s designed to automatically flip its own switch off as soon as you flip it on. Fornax built a pair of 8-switch useless machines, then linked them up to flip each other’s switches, resulting in a perpetual battle for switch-flipping supremacy.

We found ourselves hypnotized by the back-and-forth motion of this conveyor belt sorting system. Apparently, cameras or barcode scanners identify what objects are entering the conveyor, and the system rapidly changes the direction of each belt to ensure the item goes into the appropriate box.

In this video from The Q, he shows us how he made a hand-cranked machine for displaying animations using cardboard, rubber bands, and a few pieces of hardware. The zoetrope-like device has a series of 25 animation frames on each of its tiers, creating the illusion of movement when it spins.

When automakers want to test cars for longevity, they put them on rollers and shakers to simulate long-term driving. But how do you test how long roads last? Tom Scott takes us to a pavement testing facility in France that uses a rapidly spinning machine called a fatigue carousel to rapidly imitate decades of road use.

Compressed air can pack an impressive amount of energy in a small space. Brick Technology shows off how it can power LEGO Technic engines, then moves on to a brick-built, remote-controlled semi that’s powered by compressed air in the tanks that it’s towing. The custom pneumatic parts came from Green Gecko Workshop.

The latest LaserPecker is a tabletop laser engraver that can place designs on all kinds of materials, including wood, acrylic, stone, metal, ceramics, dark glass, and even food. It has both a diode laser and a pulsed fiber laser for working with different materials. With its slide module, it can engrave items up to 6.29″ x 11.81″

Yeah, we know a spider has eight legs and not six, but Hacksmith’s rideable hexapod robot looks like a giant spider to us. It took a crazy amount of time and effort to create the massive mech, which they built from six excavators provided by Princess Auto. The year-long project served up a serious schooling in mechanical engineering.