The LEGO Desk

It's a prety amazing sight to see. Check out how a full size desk is made of LEGOs - complete with drawers, and holes for wires. 35,000+ blocks of joy, and a lot of glue. Yum.

Mirror

Seems the site is *really* bad right now, Might have something to do with the fact that they are serving all of their pictures through a cgi script ?. Oh well.

Mirrored HERE [dhs.org]

Re:Is LEGO a proprietary standard?

The main reason Lego bricks are more expensive than their imitation counterparts is the molding process. Lego spent a great deal of time and money perfecting their molding process. The plastic used is much stronger and holds color better than those plastics used by the imitators. In addition, Lego molds their product to a seemingly absurd tolerance (.0005 cm, I believe). It isn't as crazy as it sounds. If you start building a complex model, you'll be thankful for the accuracy and strength of Lego bricks. The other companies do attempt to make their bricks the same size. However, they cut back on costs in the molding process. As a result, the pieces don't fit as well. They are cheaper; they just aren't nearly as good.

From its earliest days making wooden toys, the Lego company prided itself on quality. Every toy got three coats of paint. One line of ducks was actually recalled in order to have the third coat applied. Lego might cost more, but you get a much better product. And of course, Lego offers a much larger variety of pieces than any of its competitors (especially Technic pieces).

LEGO: Not Open Source...

LEGO have a fairly blunt attitude to the protection of their trademarks and brand ... their legal rubric [lego.com] talks in terms of protection of "characteristic product features".

They are also dogamtic about the use of the LEGO trademark on websites- Hemos, take note, assuming you ever bother to read posts... I know this was covered well last time Lego was mentioned but, one more time, from the above linked page:

Proper Use of the LEGO Trademark on a Web Site

If the LEGO trademark is used at all, it should always be used as an adjective, not as a noun. For example, say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGO BRICKS". Never say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGOs".

I suppose it is too much to ask that this is the last time we'll ever see the LEGOs word on /.

Re:The joy of a tight labor market.

.. yeah, and that the case itself could interlock onto the desk surface.

Having lego drinking glasses and other such things would do wonders for desk neatness.. nothing could tip over!

The guy who built this stuff is my new hero.

-Jeff

Re:Why the glue?

How the hell does this guy write on anything?

With the stylus that clips onto the side of the screen of course.

Carbon Fiber LEGOs please,

Yes, if there are any LEGO Group employees listening, I would like to see your blocks made out of carbon fiber or space-age ceramics or something. Then we could build actual tools and machines from them, as they'd be quite strong.

There are added benefits:

whatever material you choose will revolutionize that material's place in the world. The volume of LEGO production is so immense (are you up to billions per year yet? per week, maybe?) that the infrastructure needed to supply this material will get a big boost and drive prices down in all industries using this material (palm and laptop cases, auto components, etc) This will be good for everyone.

With cheap and simple gluing techniques and immensly sturdy brick materials, people could build actual structures and drive the building supplies home in a compact car. This is good for Europe in particular, but maybe also in places like Siberia, Africa and Bangaladesh for all sorts of natural disaster/infrastructure reasons.

Let me add that I am assuming another LEGO form factor would be developed, with full sized structures in mind. I'm thinking in the 40-60cm range.

:)Fudboy

Ouch...

wouldn't that hurt the bare bum?

it would leave an interesting pattern, but still...

i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...

He was actually PAID to do this?

One heck of a profession!

Maybe LEGO should come up with certification or something:

LCBB - LEGO Certified Block Builder

Why the glue?

I would have thought one of the "cool" things about a lego desk would be the ability to reconfigure it. Gluing them all together makes that kind of hard.

I would have thought that you could design it such that the normal locking action of the pieces was strong enough to keep it together.

Woah! Cool!

The guy who requested this desk must have some real serious value because A) He had the balls to ask for this, and B) The company *agreed*!

Anyway, you don't get the full scope of the desk until you check out the pictu res [ericharshbarger.org].

He doesn't say how much he was paid, but he says that it was "worth [his] time."

Two Words:

Very Impressive.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:Disgusted

Next time someone asks for such a stupid thing, why not try to talk them into donating to charity? Wasting thousands of dollars on a glued together lego desk is so far beyond reasonable that it can't even be expressed in words.

So you're saying that anything that costs a lot of money and isn't entirely necessary is unreasonable? By this logic, if I get a raise and decide to buy a new sports car, in spite of the fact that my current car is in perfect working order, it is unreasonable for me to by the sports car. I should, instead, donate my extra money to charity. Is that what you're saying?

I say: If you've got extra money, spend it on whatever the hell you want.

--

Re:Lego toilet

Imagine the difficulty of cleaning the bowl.

What would have been TRULY fantastic...

Seeing what the guy did with the desk border (a repeating pattern of 1x1 bricks in red, blue, yellow, and white) something occured to me...

With such a large surface and so many 1x1 bricks the guy could have actually made an image. All someone would have to do is open a nice desktop image (like some wallpaper of a nature scene or a space scene or hell, render something cool) and then convert it to a 2-bit (4 color) image. Scale to the size of your LEGO desktop.

For example, if the total desktop is 640 x 480 LEGO units in size, that's more than enough resolution for a very impressive image.

Damn, if I ever built my own lego desk, I definitely think that's the way to go. Maybe this is the next step in LEGO? Lego dithered art?

Why are you so critical?

I'd be laughing my ass off now if I were him. Come on man, have some fun!

Re:Woah! Cool!

Woop!

Seems this dude does lots of other cool models [ericharshbarger.org] as well. This guy sure knows his Lego.

Also quite impressive, is his Model of Tux [ericharshbarger.org]!

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Absurd Design?

I am curious why the designer of the desk didn't desing it so large sections were glued together and then interlocked. Let the entire top of the desk be three sections so other sections can be snapped on. Need to do some writing, snap on the flat surface and the pen holder. Going to be doing some heavy duty computing, snap in the ergonomic sections.

Also if the entire desk is actually several components, then shipping becomes easier.

A more impressive design would combine the computer and the desk, but until I get the money, time, and skill to do it, I guess I should just sit back and be impressed.

Is LEGO a proprietary standard?

Given how expensive LEGO is and how simple the APIs are (pretty much raised dots spaced X on blocks shaped Y) you'd think there'd be a host of generic clone/competitors. But there aren't. MegaBlox come close, but if you've tried to mix and match LEGO and any of the look-alikes, you'll find that the substitutes don't fit well and are made from a different plastic with different surface finish and color. Kids reject these imposters every time.

Why is this? Does LEGO sue anyone who makes an exact clone? Surely any patent expired long ago (plenty of other people make raised-dot-and-hole building blocks). Can you copyright *dimensions*?

I know the brand is the big thing, but as a parent with LEGO-hungry kids (actually they're into Duplo, the toddler-size blocks, which are obscenely expensive) I'd happily buy a no-name if it worked. But there's nothing out there that does. Is this market failure or something more sinister from LEGO HQ?

Offtopic but interesting...

Some physicists are in the habit of using Legos for making small adjustments in optics. This is because the studs have high enough friction that you can tweak two blocks relative to one another and they'll stay in the position you set them at. it stays bent. My freshman physics prof gave a demonstration on interferometry this way; he had a mirror mounted on a stack of legos (IIRC), which he could tweak by hand until it was at the right position.

Re:About the desk-Drawers

Actually. Lego does sell in bulk. It was on /. a while back.
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/06/14/1242242.sh tml

The link to the site is....
http://www.lego.com/bulk