Here are the top 10 most popular stories On 3D Printing brought you in July 2013.

10. Poppy Kickstarter Closes in on $150,000 to Turn Your iPhone into a 3D Camera

9. NASA Tests 3D Printed Rocket Engine Injector

8. Shapeways Introduces Gold Plated Brass to 3D Printing

7. Inside 3D Printing Chicago Conference – A Full Retrospective

6. Study Shows 3D Printing Emits Ultrafine Particles; What This Actually Means

5. Student Creates LEGObot 3D Printer Made Entirely of LEGOs

4. MIT’s OpenFab Could Revolutionize 3D Printing Design Process

3. 3D Printing Iron: ExOne Announces New Metals for 3D Printing

2. IndieGoGo Campaign The Touch-Up Promises to Smooth 3D Printing

1. Arcology Now! Launches Competition for Large-Scale 3D Printed Habitats

Thanks for reading in July!

LEGObot 3D Printer

Engineering student Matt Kreuger loves LEGOs and 3D printing, so why not combine those passions? Kreuger is the creator of the LEGObot, a 3D printer built almost entirely out of LEGO blocks.

Unlike other desktop 3D printers, the LEGObot is limited to hot glue which makes it more of a novelty than utility, but not bad for a first version!

Kreuger posted his design on Instructables along with this story and video.

Ever since I saw the first makerbot, I have been obsessed with 3D printing, but I am an engineering student so I don’t have an extra $800-$2500, and have been doing my best to create one out of what I have on hand. I tried arduino with easy drivers, and parallel port, but neither one gave results, I always needed a tool or part that I couldn’t get.  So I pulled out my old box of legos and started building.

This is a project I have been working on for the past year, it prints in hot glue and made almost completely out of legos.  Based roughly on the first version of the makerbot, while it does print, I would call this more of a prototype than a finished project.  I am using 4 power supplies (3v extruder, 7.2v for nxt, 12v fan, and 115 for hot glue gun) and having to manually turn the extruder on and off, (although i am working on that one) . Unfortunately,  due to my lack of computer programming skills, every move has to be manually programmed from the NXT programming software, I have yet to find a g-code interpreter for the NXT.

Hopefully in the next version I will be able to shorten the height of the platform, reduce wobble, and use g-code files.
but in the mean time, I have included a Lego Digital Designer file with the full printer in it, just about all the technic parts are exactly the same as in my printer, but for the structure I used different parts to speed the digital building process, the structure and dimensions are still the same. under each X and Y axis there are 2 suspended blocks that I placed coins in to balance the weight of the motor on each side, for the extruder motor I used a lens adjustment motor out of an old VHS camera because it was low speed/high torque. In the .ldd file, the green box on the right side of the extruder gears is the case I made for it, it works perfectly.

While hot-glue works, its very rubbery and doesn’t have many practical uses, if only one or 2 layers are printed then it will stick to glass to make window stickers, but its not sturdy or rigid, I will be experimenting with printing using wax and heat-melting resins in the future. I am currently limited to what I can make with what I have at hand, some more printed parts could really improve accuracy on this.  I initially did not have enough gear racks so I asked someone who had a 3D printer at work if he could help me out, I was able to get around 30 of them printed, and while they work, they do not connect perfectly to the legos, which is what causes most of the wobble in the platform.