LEGO MiniFig

“These experiences and lessons construct who I am today. Brick by brick, class by class, experience by experience, I’d like to build on what I know and continue to lay the foundation to create something uniquely wonderful. I am ready for the challenge.”

This was the last paragraph of my grad school personal statement which I nerd-ily wrote about LEGO back in 2018. Glad to report these words still ring true 7 years later.

This year I’ve been pushing myself to become a better machinist focusing on a bunch of small projects each implementing something I haven’t encountered before. I’ve done a lot of simple 2D pockets, hole drilling operations, and the general items you need 80% of the time machining when it comes to a simple part. Though, I haven’t really explored the realm of 3D profile shapes.

Initially I had started this project prior to the 3D ripple plate project but ran into a lot of complications with fine details which caused me to push this off.

The LEGO figure was originally modeled at some point during undergrad as a project to practice SolidWorks. Knowing I still had the file somewhere I dug it up and proceeded to modify it to trap the figure in a block of Aluminum – similar to Hans Solo stuck in carbonite so that I could more easily hold and machine the piece.

After this point came all the challenges. I don’t think I realized the level of fine details, and how small and long of an endmill I was going to need to work on some of the pockets.

After slightly changing the scope by enlarging the figure and removing some detail in the hands/arms I was ready to try again.

The roughing passes were done using a 3/8 and 1/4″ flat endmill, and then switched over to a 1/8 ball endmill for most of the fine surface detail work. The tiny details are completed by a 1/32″ ball endmill which to this point has been the smallest bit I’ve used so far. It ended up breaking on the final toolpath near the legs, but by that point I figured it was fine as is and called it good enough.

Finally, I gave it a sandblasted finish to remove the reflective tooling marks and give it a more matte look. Using plenty of the spare LEGOs I have laying around I constructed a little display frame.