Awesome Machines

It’s amazing how water can be pressurized so much that it can cut through things. In this clip we spotted on the Tool Gifs subreddit, we get an up-close look at how a tightly-focused stream of water can cut incredibly precise shapes in stone. The footage does appear to have been sped up, though.

Because tossing a few things into a picnic basket is just too ordinary, Sprice Machines decided it was time for some innovation in the area of outdoor dining. So Steve and his team got to work building a remarkably complicated Rube Goldberg machine that takes care of carrying the basket and taking care of everything except the ants.

Why make your own pancakes when you can let machines do it for you? The Brick Wall shows off another impressive LEGO factory they built that cracks eggs, mixes them with flour, pours the batter on a hot griddle, and flips pancakes. Now they just need a LEGO syrup and butter robot.

Guédelon is an attraction in France that’s in the process of building a castle and its technologies based on authentic 13th-century drawings and artifacts. Among its features are these giant hamster wheels that use human power to lift stones. Tom Scott got a chance to give one of these treadwheel cranes a spin.

At Brickworld Chicago 2022, LEGO builder Jarren Harkema turned up with an amazing display – a castle with a blue-green water fountain that flows up and over its structure – except the water is LEGO diamonds moving on conveyor belts. Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick’s gets us up close with this impressive creation.

If you’ve ever had to strip a piece of coaxial cable or other multi-layered wire, you know how difficult it can be to get things just right. The Nitronic ST730T is way more precise than hand tools. Simply key in the wire thickness and the exact lengths you want each layer stripped to, insert a cable, and it works its magic.

This fascinating machine uses gravity to draw smooth spiral images known as Lissajous curves. It’s modeled on a 19th-century device called a harmonograph, updated with self-aligning gimbals and a spring-loaded pen holder that can accept various writing instruments. It attaches to any tabletop using a single clamp.

If you’ve ever wondered how they make the wire mesh material used in screens for doors and windows, wonder no longer. This video from Hebei Kaiye Machinery Equipment Co. shows us how a computer-controlled machine takes thousands of strands of stainless steel wire and weaves them into a screen pattern.

What is my purpose? You flip the cheese. The JNJ RF6 robot has one job to do. It rolls down the aisle of a cheese cave, grabs wheels of cheese, brushes off their outsides, flips them over, and puts them back on their shelves. It performs this task 96 times per hour, maintaining up to 5000 wheels of cheddar per week.

Artist Ross McSweeney specializes in mechanical sculptures called automata. Among his creations is this kinetic plaything that uses gears and crankshafts to make concentric circles of wood look like pond ripples. If you have access to a laser cutter, you can purchase the template files to make your own on Etsy.

If you spin a fluid-filled vessel fast enough, you can get the liquid to form a vortex. Brick Technology wanted to see if they could produce such an effect using LEGO mechanisms, so they created a series of machines to experiment with fluid dynamics. The one at the end is impressively stable for how fast it spins.

Another day, another fascinating piece of factory equipment. This time, we’re looking at a device that ingests thousands of fireworks and arranges them into a satisfying hexagonal shape for packaging. It uses vibration to shake the empty shell casings into place before a worker ties them together.

There are still places on earth where they make bricks by hand. Conversely, this factory in Korea cranks them out by the thousands. In fact, they make more than 100,000 bricks a day using machines that sift crushed stone, turn it into a slurry, extrude brick logs, slice them into individual blocks, then fire them in kilns.

The sound of popping bubble wrap might be music to your ears, but Simone Giertz and her friends came up with a way to turn those pops into actual music. The machine she built uses a spinning drum and rubber feet to squish the bubbles and harnesses the air they release to play a pan flute. Zamfir, eat your heart out!

It’s possible to make saw blades out of materials other than metal. GazR’s Extreme Brick Machines not only built a saw blade out of LEGO Technic parts, but an entire working table saw. It uses 14 motors to cut through objects and is definitely not something you’d want to stick your finger into. Here it is using a skinnier blade.

Musician Demin Vladimir created this electromechanical rig plays an acoustic guitar. It has one set of actuators that hold the frets while others strum the strings. It’s not the most expressive instrument, but neither were vintage player pianos, and we still love those. He’s also built an accordion that plays the notes itself.

LEGO enthusiast Dr. Engine shows off a Technic machine that demonstrates how magnets can transmit energy through walls. Each of its spinning blades can turn without connecting to a central drivetrain thanks to magnetic fields. A gear-drive mechanism places each section in its precise sweet spot.

We’re fascinated by the variety of machines you find in factories. This particular device is fairly simple – a couple of rollers and a spinning blade. But it’s the stroboscopic optical illusion that occurs when it spins up to speed that makes it so satisfying to watch. Somebody needs to turn this into an endless loop.

If you’ve ever wondered how they get all those little ink dots into dice, this video shows one of the more modern methods. This special printer uses a camera to detect which side of each die is beneath it, then deposits tiny droplets of ink into each pip. Here’s another machine that doesn’t care what angle the dice are at.

Shane from Stuff Made Here has made machines that reduce the difficulty of basketball, pool, and golf. Now he’s built a robot which can look at jigsaw puzzle pieces, pick them up, spin them, and place them in the right location. It was a complex engineering challenge to make it solve even the simplest of puzzles.

A drill press is a large piece of workshop equipment mounted to a heavy base to provide a steady work surface for drilling through objects. Hands on Table thought it might be fun to make a miniature replica of a drill press and did an outstanding job building the tiny, working tool from scrap metal and some old motorcycle parts.

As long as you can deal with the tears, peeling an onion at home isn’t a big deal. But if you need to peel thousands of onions a day, you need some serious industrial machinery. This food processing machine from Finis takes onions straight from the farm, orients them properly, removes their ends, and peels their paper-like skins.

Just like a real car, the tires on LEGO vehicle can make a huge impact on grip. LEGO expert Sariel built a motorized and weighted test rig to see how different official LEGO and third-party tires perform on different surfaces to figure out which ones are the best for traction. Place your bets now.