Magician Automaton

Hi everybody!

I am Daniele Benedettelli, LEGO MINDSTORMS expert, and freelance LEGO designer. I mainly work with programmable LEGO devices, but when I want to relax, I shut the computer down, and enjoy designing and building automata and kinetic sculptures with plain LEGO elements.

This Magician automaton can perform magic tricks at the turn of a crank! It can make the objects on the table appear and disappear. You can replace the objects on the table! Check out the video, it's worth a thousands words.

The mechanism of this automaton is very smooth, never jams, and it's completely hidden from sight, even though the table is hollow. This model has been inspired by an 18th automaton I could see in the workshop of the Speelklok Museum in Utrecht. Reproducing the original mechanism with LEGO parts was a really fun challenge! The model is embellished by a SNOT text placed in the front of the base (check the pictures).

Planned updates:

• After reaching 1k supporters, I will post a video update showing the mechanism of the automaton.
• After reaching 5k supporters, I will post the instructions for the automaton.

I really hope you will support my creation.

Keep on building!