Awesome Machines

Martin Molin is known for his amazing music-making marble machine. He’s been working on an even more complicated machine for years, and has been documenting the build. This conveyor belt assembly is one of the more enthralling parts he’s completed so far.

LEGO Technic expert Yoshihito ISOGAWA created a couple of neat little drawing machines, which spin around while holding an Apple Pencil, resulting in Spirograph-style drawings on an iPad screen. He also made a rig that does pointilist drawings.

Hypnotic video footage of a rocket propellant tank being made by wrapping and weaving layers of carbon composite filament around an aluminum form. The custom-built machine and software were engineered by the literal rocket scientists at Interorbital Systems.

One of the more impressive LEGO Great Ball Contraptions we’ve seen turned up at Japan Brickfest 2018. Among its contributors was Akiyuky, whose modules wowed the crowd with all manner of hypnotically moving parts, while his LEGO Technic railway shuttled balls alongside.

Builder munimuni Bekkan first plays around with a spring-loaded LEGO machine that can climb a tower, then proceeds to evolve his design into a motorized contraption that carries, then stacks its own Duplo brick tower to climb.

German CNC machine maker Hermle shares footage of its C 42 U 5-axis milling machine cranking out an intricate model of the Eiffel Tower, carved from a single block of solid aluminum. Why can’t we have a machine like this in The Awesomer office?

Tearing down LEGO buildings usually requires plucking bricks off by hand. But Shadow Elenter’s approach is way cooler. He built a crane to do his demolition, using LEGO Technic parts and 18 motors. It can lift items, knock them down, and claw or break them apart.

Heads or Tales Coins & Collectibles presents a wonderfully satisfying video showing a laser etching machine making a cold storage coin – a physical manifestation of cryptocurrency. These coins feature a unique private key which can be used to unlock its bearer’s Bitcoins.

So you need to get salt from one end of the table to the other. You could just stand up and walk it down, or you could do what Joseph’s Machines did, and build a ridiculously complicated Rube Goldberg machine to perform the task for you.

After making a machine that can automatically pet his dog, woodworker Matt Thompson decided to make something nice for himself – an Adirondack chair that can scratch his back and massage his scalp automatically

LEGO builder D FB shows off an amazing contraption which uses LEGO bricks to flip pixels on a display. There’s a motorized scroller version, and a hand-cranked one. Learn about how it works on the Eurobricks forum.

While the traditional method of harvesting olives uses rakes to knock them off trees, we prefer this method from Afron Machinery, which involves surrounding the tree with tarps, then shaking the hell out of its trunk to release the fruit onto a sorting machine.

A look inside the P. van der Wegen Gear factory, where they make enormous gears for mining applications. While the process of milling these massive parts is truly fascinating, we can only imagine what they look like when in use in the machinery they’re destined for.

Mechanical LEGO master Akiyuky shows off a fun Great Ball Contraption module. This one features two tiny robots who clap their hands awaiting a ball delivery, then spin around and drop them into the next stage when they detect one in their grabby mitts.

Take a trip on latest LEGO thrill ride from builder Shadow Elenter. Comprised of close calls with spinning saw blades, collapsing walls, and swinging swords, the ride plays out more like a level from God of War than an amusement park ride.

Inventor and maker of crazy stuff Colin Furze decided to build himself one of the most torturous pieces of home fitness equipment ever – a treadmill that runs up the staircase. Our knees hurt just watching this one. Coming downstairs looks like fun though.

A wonderfully satisfying bit of engineering wizardry. What you’re looking at is a specialized industrial machine which spins a roll of plastic wrap around a freshly-milled steel coil until it’s fully protected for shipment. Here’s a slightly more sleepy look at a similar machine.

A brief demonstration of a rare piece of office equipment c. 1953. The Keaton Music Typewriter made it relatively easy to create sheet music much in the same way you’d type a letter. If you made a mistake, however, you’d have to wait until 1956 for correction fluid to be invented.

LEGO master Shadow Elenter shows off another impressive Technic build. His latest creation is a Howitzer style tank that weighs in at 12 pounds. It has working treads, and some amazing weaponry, including a massive gun that plants itself to handle its recoil.

We have a hard enough time keeping two balls in the air at the same time, but this robotic contraption is able to deftly juggle five balls at once. It’s even smart enough to detect when a ball is intentionally dropped and resumes without skipping a beat.

ft Robotics shows off a nifty Arduino Mega and Fischertechnik based plotter. Unlike other drawing machines which are driven by cartesian coordinates, this one uses polar coordinates. It draws by moving a pen along one axis, while a turntable rotates beneath its retractable pen.

French artist Parse/Error created a machine to produce his rhythmic and undulating line drawings. The designer conceives each image on a computer, while the machine acts as his hands and outputs his work. You can purchase original drawings in the Parse/Error shop.

Jelle’s Marble Runs shares a hypnotic look at a lengthy marble machine that sends 11,000 marbles cascading through ramps, tracks, teeter-totters, courses dotted with nails, and culminating with a tray that releases a flood of 10,000 marbles at once.