Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JStanton617 2854 days ago
Harder by orders of magnitude: https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/
2 comments

Wow! 38,000 shapes in 100+ colors (according to that post). Yeah, that's definitely a much bigger challenge. "The final result classifies a part in approximately 30 ms on a GTX1080ti Nvidia GPU." Very nice.

I've seen way too many "How It's Made" episodes... He needs some sort of vibrating table, and a high speed belt with a "jump" of some sort to combine with those air cannons.

Why I've been meaning to build a "Lego Refractory" instead: a leaf blower at the bottom of a 10ft tall acrylic tube, with exit doors at various heights. It would sort Legos by their terminal velocity in free-fall.
I've tried just that but could not get it to work. If you manage to get it to work reliably this is likely the fastest mechanism you could make.

Some problems that you will run in to:

- the timing will need to be very precise

- you will likely need sensors before the stations

- Lego bricks come in all shapes and sizes and will respond unpredictably to air currents

- you will need a way to arrest momentum or they'll shoot right back out

Still, this is orders of magnitude faster than my contraption if you can get it work.

Do it!!!

And film every single test run and failure. I would subscribe to this Patreon!!!