LEGO Sorting Machines - an Overview
Probably the best-known LEGO sorter is Daniel West's " WORLD'S FIRST Universal LEGO Sorting Machine " (Dec, 2019). According to Daniel, his work is inspired by Akiyuki's " LEGO Mindstorms NXT Vision Guided Brick Sorter " (March, 2011) and Jacques Mattheij's Sorting two metric tons of lego (April, 2017). Focusing on hardware, all three machines show a similar four stage design: Bulk storage → Part separation → Scanner → Sorter The following overview, will look at a larger field of machines and show the creative variety in designing each stage. Stage 1 - Bulk Storage In bulk storage you have a large amount of unsorted, entangled bricks and the goal is to feed it to the machine progressively. There are two typical designs used for bulk brick storage. Nr. 1 is what I call the "belt slowly moving under pile of bricks" type. Two nice examples can be seen with Daniel's and Jacques Mattheij's machines. From Daniel West's The WORLD