When I was a kid I made spaceships and little robots that fell apart when I played with them out of my Lego sets. Now in an ever continuing trend of cool yet useful things people are making with Legos, designer “Mexican Viking” has made a Lego Robot that can make pancakes.
“Ninety-nine percent Lego, 1 percent ketchup bottle.” Pancake Bot is made entirely of Legos with the exception of the Pancake Batter Dispenser Unit that includes a pair of ketchup bottles glued together, an air compressor and, of course, the pancake batter. Pancake Bot is a 3 axis CNC with a moveable bridge driven by a Lego Mindstorms NXT brick. Another brick controls the air compressor. If the two-axis movements of the dispenser makes Pancake Bot seem like a kind of dripping Etch-a-Sketch, that’s because the program used is a variant of Etch-A-NXT. Part of Michael Gasperi’s Extreme NXT, Etch-A-NXT controls two motors to create Etch-A-Sketch-like bi-directional movements.
Link
He desribes on the website how he did that.
The 3D is impressive, but building an air compressor with Lego is the work of a genius