Martello

A group of LEGO enthusiasts from Hong Kong have constructed their own version of the Olympic venues from Beijing 2008.

By the looks of it, they’re made mostly from fairly common LEGO pieces and as a result, they’re both highly impressive (as it anything made from LEGO in my opinion) but also refreshingly simple. Far too many modern LEGO kits have pieces in them that are all to realistic, taking the fun out of it for me.

Source: SlashDot

Gizmodo is back with another amazing LEGO exclusive and this time he has been afforded the opportunity to explore (and film) inside the LEGO factory itself. His report includes several short videos showing the LEGO manufacturing process as well as some astonishing footage of how the bricks are stored in massive silos where no humans are allowed.

Some interesting facts and statistics I took from this are:

• The plastic granules from which LEGO is made are a by-product of Diesel.
• The LEGO machines produce 600 pieces per second (36,000 per minute, 2.1 million per hour or 19 billion per year).
• The LEGO factory processes 60 tons of plastic  granules every 24 hours.
• The plastic granules come in 70 basic colours, from which all other colours are derived.
• The moulds that produce the LEGO pieces are retooled after 5 million uses.
• Decorating the pieces is the most expensive part of the process.

Having spent a number of summer months working at an Injection Moulding company in a past life, I recognised much of the machinery and processes used but it is clearly off the radar in terms of scale, with pretty much everything controlled by a mainframe computer system.

Source: SlashDot

Triskit is a fascinating project that takes the form of a self-generating toy system. If you own (or have access to) a mini laser cutter or acrylic sheet stock then you can use the Triskit software to design pieces for your very own toy system (called a Triskit). You can use the data that is produced by the software as input data for your laser cutter and the result is your very own, custom-made toy part.

One of the benefits of this is that, if you are trying to build a toy and find that you don’t have a particular part that does what you need, you can just make one to suit your needs. With the likes of LEGO and K’nex, you are limited to what pieces came in the original box.

Here is real treat for LEGO fans everywhere. I learned today that there is a special vault at LEGO Headquarters in Denmark where they store one of every LEGO set ever created from 1953 to 2008, that’s 4720 sets, still in their original boxes!

Apparently one of the primary reasons for retaining such a collection is that LEGO can use it as a safeguard in copyright and patent cases.

To a long time LEGO fanatic like myself, this is an unimaginable concept and represents possibly the finest toy collection in existence bar none. Special thanks goes to Gizmodo for sharing the experience and emotion of his recent visit to this labrynth of true wonderment. His article and accompanying video are well worth checking out.

Source: SlashDot

With the long awaited release of the fourth movie in the Indiana Jones series, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, hitting Irish big screens next week, the creators of LEGO have pulled off another master stroke in the form of a new series of video games called Indian Jones: The Original Adventures. Here’s one of the trailers for the new game (and the new movie) that’s currently doing the rounds. If like me, you grew up on a diet of LEGO and Indie, you will love it!

What’s amazing to me about this is that it’s basically computer-generated animation that’s been made to look like LEGO. It’s normally the other way around. In any case, it is quite brilliant and an extremely clever move from a commercial sense.

Dan Haspert also has a short review of this same topic and you can see more trailers of LEGO computer games here.