Phun Printing Press

(High Quality: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=cFH-UrIQRKI&fmt=18 ) PHUN PRINTING PRESS By LordCadbury Soundtrack: Sim City 4 By Maxis/EA Recently discovered the physics sandbox Phun (get it from http://www.phunland.com ) and had a lot of fun! My first video is about a printing press machine I tried to make. To start off, you arrange a set of letters/blocks to be sent to the machine. In this case it is "HELLO" :) The first lever sends these letter off for processing. The machine then orders bigger blocks of the corresponding letters to be arranged at the printing area. Once that's all complete, you pull the second lever to commence the "printing" mechanism. This sends off the final block containing a small crawler/printer off to connect with the rest. The crawler can move along the track/grooves of the letters and (with the help of a pen brush) prints out your message :) Comments and suggestions for the machine are welcome. DESIGN NOTES Some notes about the design: The machine was originally planned to be a bit larger, with at least 7 letters, more spare blocks and a full reusable system (so after printing, parts can return for more work). Unfortunately, my computer's simply not up to the task rendering all these stuff. It got a bit slow, so things have to be scaled back :| The smaller blocks, for example, already have a scoop to recycle used letters. Also, more spare printing blocks would have been nice.. Some inspirations for the machine: Scrabble letters, if you're familiar with that board game :) Also, the design for the printing blocks is somewhat reminiscent of neon lights. - LordCadbury