Challenge:

Reader challenge:

Useful things readers have built with LEGO.

THE MISSIVE TO POP MECH US READERS, via Instagram, was this: Make something with LEGO that will make your (or someone else’s) life easier, and show us the results. We weren’t looking for the complexity or aesthetics you see in expert LEGO builds – even though those are awesome. We were looking for utility. Plastic bricks, Technic gears, and mini figures from existing kits were allowed, but we asked that builders steer clear of any instruction manuals. The job was to engineer your own solution. As one builder put it, ‘I just see any box of LEGO as a box of parts.’ Another worked from the same philosophy: ‘I love the concept of hacking items to get more uses out of something you already own.’

Of all the projects tagged for the #PopMech ProChallenge, here are a few of our favourites, and the story from their creators.

AUTOMATIC TOILET PAPER DISPENSER

The Builder: Steve Guinness @thebrickconsultant

Guinness builds commissioned LEGO models for customers, and is the British LEGO Masters champ. ‘I dream in LEGO, wake up with new ideas, and head straight to my studio and get building,’ he says. But he saves his best ideas for family.

For this build, Guinness wanted to help his 11-year-old son Obby who had just broken his arm. When Guinness came across a LEGO Star Wars BOOST Droid Commander set, he found what he needed for an automatic toilet paper dispenser, including motors and motion sensors that you can control remotely with a programmable

app. Once he designed the machine, the programming was easy: Instead of an on/off switch, he and his son set a distance for the motion sensor, so when they waved their hands in front of it, the motor automatically started up.

They’ve since dismantled their TP device to concoct the next thing: a contraption that automatically winds spaghetti and feeds it straight into your mouth.

KICK DRUM PEDAL

The Builder: Aygul and Charlie Stevens @myn_syn

Aygul Stevens never learned how to build with instructions. Credit her inventor dad, who fashioned makeshift devices out of household items, such as a toe shield built from toy metal construction pieces. Now, Stevens has passed on that DIY ethos to her five-year-old son, Charlie.

When Charlie’s teacher tasked him with building a musical instrument, he decided to make drums. For the pedal that powers the kick drum, he and his mom fetched a few gizmos from Charlie’s Klutz LEGO kit – his edition was filled with tools that help kids learn about physics. With those parts, they built a system that pulls the pedal down, and moves the rubber ball head forwards.

Naturally, Charlie enjoys making plenty of noise with his new gear – ‘but he loves the building stage [of a project] more than the playing one,’ Aygul says.

For years, Lauder, a Hong Kong-based educator, has made LEGO part of her classroom curriculum. ‘LEGO levels the playing field in play and conversations between kids and adults,’ she says. However, ‘many adult fans of LEGO make amazing models with skills, time, and money that I don’t have – yet.’

That’s why Lauder, also an amateur seamstress, picked a deceptively simple project for this challenge: sewing round LEGO plates on to a collared shirt, and using them as buttons.

Lauder attached the light-gray plates – a colour that’s ‘not obviously LEGO until you get close up’ – with four main stitches branching out from the centre axle holes, and wrapped the thread around itself between the plates and fabric to form small shanks. The clever hack took one hour, tops.

‘I love builds that do something as well as look awesome,’ she says.