Lego Instructables Robot - With Instructions

Last year I rediscovered lego and by now I'm proud to call myself an AFOL (Adult Fan Of Lego). I bought too much of the good stuff last year and this year I decided to not buy lego for a while. That decision didn't go as planned since I found out there was no proper lego Instructables robot and so I had to design one.

I designed the robot using special lego software. After I was happy with the design I ordered the parts, created Instructions and then I could finally build it for real. In this Instructable you can find how I designed and ordered the parts. Also the Instructions and parts list is included so you can build it for yourself.

Supplies

Lego design software:

• Stud.io by BrickLink.

Lego part stores (marketplace):

• BrickLink: Biggest marketplace to buy lego sets and parts, both new and used, single parts and bulk. Most sellers are (small) companies specialized in selling lego parts.
• BrickOwl: Alternative marketplace, never used it myself.

Lego MOC's (My Own Creation):

• Rebrickable: A website where you can download tons of lego designs made by Lego fans like myself. Some for free, some paid. Check out this page for more designs by me.

Step 1: Stud.io

Before there were 2 software programs you could use to design Lego on the computer. Last year however, Lego decided to stop their software and only 1 software program remains. This is Stud.io by BrickLink and was considered best of the 2 by most Lego fans. BrickLink is owned by Lego and they also announced that they will continue the development of Stud.io.

Controls:

To start with Stud.io I advice to check this page which explains the basic functionality of the program. After that try to build a model from Instructions. This provides you some practice with the software before you actually start with your own designs. You can use the Instructions for the Instructables robot I included in the third step or download instructions from real Lego sets from the Lego website.

Design MOC:

Once you build several things you can start your own design. The Lego community calls these designs MOC's, which stand for 'My Own Creation'. Go ahead and build your wildest ideas. You can also share them with the Lego community on Rebrickable, the largest online platform (I know) where people upload MOC's you can download. If you are particularly proud on a design and you think it is worth anything, you can even decide to sell the design using that website. (I'm more of an open source type of guy, so the robot is for free :D)

Rendering:

Stud.io is quite a nice program and even provides the option to create photorealistic renders of your design. Everywhere in this Instructable I added renders I made using stud.io so you can see the potential. Even animations of the building sequence or model rotations can be created.

Create Instructions:

And finally the instructions. If you want to make the design available for other people to build it might be a good idea to provide instructions. With stud.io you can make these. First you divide you design in building steps and sub-steps. Once you have done that you can do the actual page design as well. The created instructions are quite good already. However, to get a real professional design I suggest you do some additional postprocessing using for example photoshop.

Step 2: BrickLink

BrickLink is a website where a lot of sellers sell parts, minifigure and (retired) Lego sets. Stud.io is owned by BrickLink, so it is possible to load the design-files to the website to create a 'wanted' list. After you created a wanted-list you can go shopping. The website can automatically optimize your order with multiple sellers to get an 'optimal' price. Please be aware this is not fool-proof and it can safe you money if you check the optimized shopping cards by hand and switch between sellers or even variations of the same parts.

Step 3: Instructable Robot

Finally, the time you've been waiting for: Building the Instructable Robot in Lego. I designed the robot in the style of the Lego Brickheadz theme. It took me a couple iterations before I was happy with it and before I got a stable design which didn't want to fall apart after I build it. Some of the features I added:

• 'Small' rotating head: normal Brickheadz have a 4x4x4 stud head, small Brickheadz have the 3x3x3 stud head.
• Movable arms: normal Brickheadz have really small arms I didn't find fitting, so I decided to make the arms a special feature.
• 'Wheel' feet: not actual wheels, but it looks like it belongs.
• Minifigures utensils: I put 4 minifigure accessories inside the robot body and one in its hand. These 5 items correspond to the common themes here on Instructables.

It cost me around €15,- to get all parts from BrickLink including shipping cost which I believe is a reasonable price for what you get.

A pdf with building instructions is added to the step

Step 4: Extra Lego Designs

I couldn't help myself and created two additional designs. A robot 'minifigure', or at least a robot in the same scale as minifigures and a bricksketch (another Lego theme). I'm happy with the minifigure robot, but not so much with the bricksketch. Still I decided to upload the bricksketch design-files to Rebrickable (find it here)so anyone of you who wants can download the file and upgrade my design to something better.