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Comment by hugs | Hacker News Reader

Arduino and 3D printers to make Lego Mindstorms/Technic-compatible parts is what I do. (I call my parts "Bitbeam".)

I used to use Lego to prototype the robots and machines I make. Now I design my own "Lego" with OpenSCAD and program the bots with AVR microcontrollers. Have been doing this for 7-ish years. However, Lego Mindstorms is still a great (although expensive) system for learning.

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Can consumer 3D printers pull off decent lego compatible parts? I'm fascinated by the idea of 3D printers, but I don't really have a good use-case to justify getting one. (And I've been waiting for them to come down in price.)

I ended up getting my five year old the Lego "Boost" set - I wanted some motors &c that were accessible to him. He's had fun putting together the projects, and playing with the scratch programming.

It is tied to their app, but I see that someone has python libraries to talk to it, so I have options if the app goes away.

Nothing can truly match Lego's perfectly tuned injection molding process, however 3D printing can be good enough for many things.

Sounds great! Have you got any related blog posts and/or open-source code? I'd love to have a look :)

I set up a blog just about the Lego-parts years ago (bitbeam.org), and it looks dead-ish, even though I still make the parts for new robot orders all the time.

The most up-to-date location for the actual 3D printable files is in the Tapster project GitHub repo: https://github.com/tapsterbot/tapsterbot/blob/master/hardwar...

Thanks!

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