Brick Machines – 100% WORKING LEGO® Crafting Table [Minecraft]

This is a crafting table in Minecraft, and THIS is one I just made out of LEGO® parts, and it actually dispenses real items in exchange for tokens! It reads the 3×3 grid of items and automatically knows the recipe!

It’ll take the recipe tokens and then dispense huge items from a hidden drawer and other tokens from a secret door that can be used to craft even more! It has a hidden drawer to dispense items, and a secret door to dispense more tokens!

You’ll be amazed how this LEGO® creation looks and functions, and I’ll show you how I made all of it! I started by making a bunch of items to go inside the crafting table. There are all kinds of fun items here, including many iconic Minecraft items like a diamond

Pickaxe, an eye of ender, a bed, and an iron sword! At first I thought I would just dispense these large items, but it’s way more fun to have tokens too because a lot of recipes build on each other! Once that was done I came up with a way to read tokens.

I put special RFID stickers on 3×3 tiles, and then I printed out Minecraft icons on round sticker labels to put over that. Each RFID sticker has a unique ID, so this sensor can read them and know what item it is.

The sensor can read from about an inch away, so it’ll be able to read the tokens through the top of the crafting table. I got to work on the actual crafting table now, starting with the robotic arm, which will actually be kinda like a robotic forklift piston for this project.

There’s a ton I had to put in a small space, so I tried to build as tightly as possible. For example, instead of connecting three big motors to the robot arm, I used long axles and chain links to keep the motors stationary.

The key to this technique is using sliding pieces, like this dark gray reel, so I built two of them into this forklift carriage. When one reel rotates, the main portion raises or lowers. And when the other reel rotates, a liftarm goes in or out like a piston.

Items and tokens will be able to be dispensed using this. If you want to see more about the super cool yet challenging synchronized reels technique, check out my LEGO® Minecraft Phantom video after this one. Lastly I added chain links to get horizontal motion and connected the whole thing on sliders.

The motors are stationary, yet they rotate the reels no matter where the forklift carriage is. This motor will power the horizontal movement. Without this U-joint and set of bevel gears, the gear for the chain links would have had to be connected higher, so I added them for compactness.

Now it was time for shelves for all these items. These modular shelves work for tons of item types just by changing this one piece. That one works for a bed, this one works for a shovel. Cool! I even added blue axle with pin pieces so any shelf could be swapped out easily.

I added several shelves, but I had to leave room at the top for the RFID sensor and a way to dump the tokens off the table, so I just picked some of the items. With that looking great, I started on some walls for the crafting table.

The idea is that the crafting table will separate into two sections easily, which would allow for our secret door, sliding drawer, and more. Speaking of the secret door, I put that in right here. I used slopes and jumpers to decrease the height just barely enough to be operational yet practically invisible.

You’ll see what I mean when the rest of the walls are on. I’ll leave this section open for the sliding drawer. Now for the tokens. I tried out these shelves but they couldn’t fit very many tokens, and then I tried these

Shelves, but not every token could be reached by the forklift carriage, so I eventually decided to use this concept of alternating thin liftarms. Originally I had two middle supports, but the tokens would catch sometimes, so I threw that out.

Adding the second shelving unit went quickly, and while I was at it, I added a short pin to stop the secret door at a specific angle. Now, how to get the tokens to fall from here down through the secret door?

I figured a ramp ought to work, so I added transparent liftarms and tested it out. Yes, yes! And whoops, I would need to add more walls so that doesn’t happen again. On to the sliding drawer!

This will blend in perfectly with the outside of the walls, so I tiled it off with the right colors and added this plate as a stopper for the drawer. Then I threw together this drawer concept using plates with door rails and bricks with grooves. That drawer slides nicely!

With some gear racks it’ll be able to be motorized. Some items needed a ramp to reach the drawer, but I didn’t have much space. So I used this foldable ramp to meet the requirements. Looking good, especially when motorized! The EV3 controllers were added next, being as tight as possible to conserve space.

Then I added a motor to move the RFID sensor around under the top of the table, plus a second motor driving a worm gear to dump the table’s tokens into a container. While building the top frame, I used this angled liftarm to support the left side since

The space above the drawer had to be left open for large items to fall. This special slider technique will allow this motor’s chain links and the forklift carriage to change the position of the RFID sensor. Building the top of the table went kinda like this, but I ended up needing to change it

Slightly to include more of the outer edge. Now that the top of the crafting table was attached, everything was beginning to take shape. I got the table top attached to the motor with a linkage and tested it out. That works so well!

But I still needed a container for the tokens, so I built these two halves and attached them together. It’s easy for the owner of the table to get the container out to enjoy all the spoils from everyone’s crafting!

It’s finally time to finish the walls and make it actually LOOK like a crafting table instead of just functioning like one. These walls have the right details, including the items on the sides which I believe are

A hammer, a saw, and shears, but feel free to correct me in the comments if I’m wrong! Here’s the moment of truth…will it all fit? Yes, perfect! Wow, that’s oddly satisfying! It looks so good, and nobody would suspect that this thing would actually WORK!

Now, I’ll load up the items I’ve chosen to include for now, and also tokens too. A little code will get these EV3s talking. Okay, it’s ready! Now that we’re ready to see this work, you probably don’t know that I revealed behind-the-scenes

Progress of this build in pictures like these to members on my channel. There are 3 membership tiers that I’ve worked to make very affordable for the value. For example, tier 2 gets you behind-the-scenes access and the ability to help guide the direction

Of the channel with members-only polls, and tier 3 gets you access to a Discord channel where you can get code access and ask in-depth questions about my builds or projects you’re working on. Click the Join button or the link in the description to become a member! Back to the crafting table!

Here’s my starting inventory. My nine main items are one oak log, 3 gold ingots, 3 sugarcane, 1 white wool, 1 blaze rod, 3 gunpowder, 1 beetroot, 1 ender pearl, 3 diamonds, and 2 red wool and 1 oak plank in my overflow. I’ll start with using the blaze rod…here we go!

I used the upper-left corner for many recipes since the RFID sensor starts there. When it detects a token it’ll read the recipe. Now the table gets dumped! Here come some tokens…you all know what I get from a blaze rod! Two blaze powder for the inventory. Now what’s next?!

Here comes the first large item, an eye of ender! I’ll use 3 gunpowder so I get flight duration 3 on these rockets! Of course, we all know rockets come in groups of 3, so I decided to drop one large rocket,

And two rocket tokens for using when I’m gliding with my elytra of course! It looks really cool with the cover on, but there are so many moving parts that it’s even more fun to watch when the cover is off! Ha, I don’t know why I keep hitting the table!

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