Having lost a just-out-of-the-oven Quiche and a meal of freshly delivered Chinese food to an otherwise very well behaved dog, one of the guys that works here used a salvaged industrial emitter / detector pair, relay and car horn to provide a bit of doggy defense for his kitchen counter. The industrial emitter is a tad expensive, but you could probably use a laser pointer and photo transistor just as well.
New Product: Tapping Block
We’re proud to release our first home-grown product: a tapping block. If you’re not familiar with tapping (cutting screw threads), the hardest and most tedious part is starting–an off-angle start can ruin parts and break taps. However, by guiding a tap through the close-fitting holes, it’s easy to keep the tap straight. You can always make your own, or if you want something that will survive a nuclear war, get this one.
How Legos are Made
If you haven’t checked out Gizmodo’s videos from inside the lego factory, here’s another encouraging link. They also have video of the shelving system robots that automatically store and retrieve legos from over 65 square miles of equivalent storage space. A couple more Lego fun facts:
- The tolerance on the bricks is less than .00008 in. Human hair varies between .001 and .01 in.
- Only 18 / 1 million pieces fail inspection, according to this HowStuffWorks article.
- Lego now makes some 19 billion bricks a year.
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