**The Making of a Bricks Sifter**

As I sat down to film this video, I couldn't help but notice the bit around the outside of my workspace that let's face it, was not ideal. It's always important to take a moment to assess your surroundings before getting started on a project. In this case, my skin is pretty much stretched out from shooting videos for hours on end with minimal breaks. I mean, do get a lot better than that, right? Alright, so I'm still shooting this video which means we haven't edited it yet, so I have no idea how long you've been watching but I would imagine it's probably 3-4 minutes something like that.

Well, I've been working on this project solid for like 6 days now. The first couple of days were just design lots of time in Fusion trying to figure stuff out and then I would change it and then modify it and then I finally got to laser cutting and more laser cutting. Then I started doing tolerance testing and then a whole bunch of 3D printing. After that, I had some more laser cutting which was actually kind of a pain but necessary at this point. But I think I finally got enough pieces that we can assemble the box to see if this idea is even going to work. The fit on those pieces turned out great, I'll probably put some acrylic cement to bind these two edges together so that they don't flex.

For now, I just need to test it. The fit on these pieces is fantastic. It was absolutely worth the effort. This thing is held together really tightly and the inserts come in and out really easily so it's pretty nice except that I realized choosing orange for the end kind of clashes with different colors. So if I were going to print these again which I'm not, I would make the ends white or black or something so that this color could really stand out.

Now we have the container, we have the sifter, but it needs to be held on a table so that we can actually test it out. Next up, we need to make some stands that go on the ends and finally, I get to use some woodworking tools. This video is sponsored by Kiwi Co. You've probably heard of this name before because over the years, I've told you about how my kids got Kiwi crates several times in fact they got Kiwi crates Doodle crates Tinker crates and those are all for younger kids with different interests.

But my kids are not young anymore so we've had to move up to Eureka crates and in the most recent one, we got to make a complete working set of headphones. Like this is a legitimate Electronics project and these crates are aimed at ages 14 up to 104 so that includes a lot of different age groups. Again everything we needed to make these headphones was in this box and it just showed up at the house. It's very, very cool whether you've got a kid in your life or you just like to have projects show up at your door.

The crates from Kiwi Co are a fantastic way to have projects delivered right to you with a yearly subscription. Each one of these crates is around $20 but that can get even cheaper if you go down in the description, click the link and then use our code Makstuff which will give you 50% off the first crate. Big thanks to Kiwi for sponsoring this video so now you can probably see how this thing is going to work.

You dump in the bricks into this part, put in the filter flip it over and then you shake it but right now all those bricks would just fall down onto this board so I need to go model a tray that will fit in here to catch the bricks as they're being sifted out. I think it's done and now we just got to try it. I'm very happy that I spent the time coming up with a new design for this thing because honestly, it just works way better than my original one.

It's easier to use it's nice to have it on the table plus it holds a lot more bricks which is really handy and there's tons of room for improvement. I've already thought of ways to make it stronger and easier to build and maybe better looking that got me thinking, would you be interested in one of these like a completed thing or maybe a kit or maybe plans to build your own if any of those are interesting let me know down in the comments because we might be able to make something like that happen.

**Bloopers**

That's it for this one. Thanks for watching now it's time for bloopers, can hold a whole bunch of bricks and is way better than when you're done. Oh boy, the whole thing came apart cuz it's not glued that's not going to work oh no and these pieces slide in out no doy Bob

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is a problem if I ever want to build a project with Lego bricks I have to go through about 30 of these containers just like this to find the piece that I need and it doesn't work and actually I've made a Lego sorder before it works really well but it's way too small and it's made to mount to the side of the table so today we're going to make a new Lego sorder that can hold a whole lot of bricks and is way better so the way that most Lego sords work and this is how my other one worked as well is that you have a series of filters you've got these plates with holes in them biggest holes at the top smallest holes at the bottom so when you pour bricks in all the tiny pieces fall through all the holes till they get to the bottom surface and then the next biggest pieces and the next biggest pieces and then you've got all the big plates and stuff at the top and usually this is so that they are sifted out into individual trays for each kind of size of piece I first saw this whole process from Pete Square 23 on Instagram he's awesome you should definitely go check him out because he makes some really cool stuff but one of the things he makes is a big Lego sorter it's basically like a really big box with a bunch of trays in it and you can roll it around and sift it and then you take each tray off and it's got pieces in it and while it works great and looks really nice too I've got some different requirements for mine so I've decided to come up with my own design that doesn't have to sit on the floor so my plan is to make something that's small enough to sit on a table but big enough to be able to handle a pretty good amount of bricks and also dump them into containers that I already have plus I think be a bonus if I could make it repeatable so I could either maybe sell plans or sell a kit to you if you want to make one of these for yourself if you want to let me know down in the comments we'll see so I went to the Whiteboard came up with a bunch of ideas and most of them are not great but one was kind of cool what if it was a tumbler and each one of these sides had differ size holes in it I think that would be kind of cool although it would do it in the wrong order so I abandoned that one then I thought about what if it's a container that has a replaceable filter sifter thing in it so you can change out the size of hole in a single container but you need to be able to shake it back and forth or flip it over So eventually I ended up on this one basically you have a container that you can dump stuff into on the top it has a filter on the bottom that can be slid out so you can change the size of hole and it's on a pivot point so you can spin it like this to sift the pieces out they will fall down into a tray that you can slide out and dump into your own big trays of like siiz pieces this entire thing is held between two uprights so it can sit on a table I think I've got it I'm going to go to fusion and then we can laser cut some test pieces I designed this whole thing in fusion and I've been cutting out test pieces on the glow Forge out of MDF just to be able to make sure that everything fits but the design was a little bit different for me because I was trying to think of it as if I was going to have to make this a 100 times or a thousand times rather than once and that really does change how you design something for example this whole thing is going to go together with like Tab and Slot joinery I guess you would call it I've got these little tabs that are going to go into a slot to hold it together and the length of this tab is based on the thickness of this material I'm testing with MDF but eventually I want to do this out of acrylic because it just look cooler if you could see all the bricks on the inside and you could etch cool things on the outside and use different color acrylic but right now doing it all at of MDF so I can do quick cheap testing and I think I've got a prototype ready and this is my prototype I've got the top panel the side panels This is the insert that'll eventually have a whole bunch of holes in it and I 3D printed the sides I wanted to 3D print this piece just just because I don't know I wanted the detail the little inset and the raised logo and it's super smooth on the back but this piece took 4 hours and I had to do one for each side if I laser cut this out of acrylic it would have looked great been done in a few minutes and the only downside would be that all of these holes at the top would go all the way through which is not a big deal okay so here's the plan with this thing this is the box it will be mounted on these pivot Points right here in something so that it can spin like this so basically it will sit here you dump your bricks in then you take one of these filters that'll have a whole bunch of holes in it like that it slides in here and then fits into the fingers at the end and it's locked in place then you just shake it a whole bunch and all the little pieces fall out of the holes then you just slide the filter out swap it for one with slightly bigger holes put it back in sift it again you just work your way through all the filters until the last pieces inside the container are just the really big ones and you can just dump them out I think this works as a prototype but I've got to figure out the size of holds how many filters I want to have and I've got to figure out how to mount this whole thing in something that will allow it to Pivot so first off let's figure out the holes those sifter insert things are all designed and ready to be cut out of the acrylic that just showed up but unfortunately I've got a little problem so I modeled and 3D printed these pieces to work with this 1/8 in MDF and they fit perfectly they go right in there it's nice and tight but unfortunately the MDF and the acrylic are not both an eighth of an inch in fact this one is125 and this one is1 14 which is a lot less and these pieces just do not fit so I'm going to have to modify my side panels re3d print them that's another 8 hours and then I'm going to have to do test fits before I can actually cut these pieces out now I'm ready to finally cut out my little filter insert pieces and for those I ordered a bunch of sheets of this different colored acrylic like a multi pack with a bunch of different colors and I used these Dimensions to make the piece in Fusion which is this piece but I didn't actually add any extra so turns out that I've got about that much extra material so I have to be very specific about where the laser goes so here's what I did I measured this piece of acrylic then I cut that shape out of a piece of MDF that's locked in place and then I scored the size that I actually need to make sure that it's going to line up in that material so now I've got like a template area where I can drop in my piece of acrylic cut that outline in the exact place in the software and it should end up with just a little bit around the outside let's find out talk about the skin of your teeth look at how much waste I have on this piece I mean do get a lot better than that all right so I'm still shooting this video which means we haven't edited it yet so I have no idea how long you've been watching but I would imagine it's probably 3 4 minutes something like that well I've been working on this project solid for like 6 days now the first couple days of that were just design lots of time in Fusion trying to figure stuff out and then I would change it and then modify it and then I finally got to laser cutting and more laser cutting then I started doing tolerance testing and then a whole bunch of 3D printing then some more laser cutting then even more laser cutting but I think I finally got enough pieces that we can assemble the box to see if this idea is even going to work okay so the fit on those pieces turned out great I'll probably put some acrylic cement to bind these two edges together so that they don't flex but for now I just need to test it the fit on these pieces is fantastic it was absolutely worth the effort this thing is held together really tightly and the inserts come in and out really easily so it's pretty nice except that I realized choosing orange for the end kind of clashes with different colors so if I were going to print these again which I'm not I would make the ends white or black or something so that this color could really stand out now we have the container we have the sifter but it needs to be held on a table so that we can actually test it out so next up we need to make some stands that go on the ends and finally I get to use some woodworking tools this video is sponsored by kiwo and you've probably heard that name before because over the years I've told you about how my kids got kiwi crates several times in fact they got kiwi crates doodle crates Tinker crates and those are all for younger kids with different interests but in each one of the crates they got a complete project with everything they needed plus a magazine with all the instructions and a bunch of extra information about the project well my kids are not young anymore so we've had to move up to Eureka crates and in the most recent one we got to make a complete working set of headphones like this is a legitimate Electronics project and these crates are aimed at ages 14 up to 104 so that includes a lot of different age groups again everything we needed to make these headphones was in this box and it just showed up at the house it's very very cool whether you've got a kid in your life or you just like to have projects show up at your door the crates from kiwi Co are a fantastic way to have projects delivered right to you with a yearly subscription each one of these crates is around 20 bucks but that can get even even cheaper if you go down in the description you click the link and then you use our code Mak stuff that's going to give you 50% off the first crate with the holidays coming up this is a great gift that you can give to a kid in your life or to a kid in your life either way invest in somebody in your life or in yourself that's cool too go down hit that link and use the code make stuff and big thanks to kiwo for sponsoring this video so now you can probably see how this thing is going to work you dump in the bricks into this part you put in the filter flip it over and then you shake it but right now all those bricks would just fall down onto this board so I need to go model a tray that will fit in here to catch the bricks as they're being sifted out I think it's done and now we just got to try it I'm very happy that I spent the time coming up with a new design for this thing because honestly it just works way better than my original one it's easier to use it's nice to have it on the table plus it holds a lot more bricks which is really handy and there's tons of room for improvement I've already thought of ways to make it stronger and easier to build and maybe better looking that got me thinking would you be interested in one of these like a completed thing or maybe a kit or maybe plans to build your own if any of those are interesting let me know down in the comments because we might be able to make something like that happen that's it for this one thanks for watching now it's time for bloopers that can hold a whole bunch of bricks and is way better then when you're done you slide out the filter oh boy the whole thing came apart cuz it's not glued that's not going to work oh no and these pieces slide in out no doy Bobthis is a problem if I ever want to build a project with Lego bricks I have to go through about 30 of these containers just like this to find the piece that I need and it doesn't work and actually I've made a Lego sorder before it works really well but it's way too small and it's made to mount to the side of the table so today we're going to make a new Lego sorder that can hold a whole lot of bricks and is way better so the way that most Lego sords work and this is how my other one worked as well is that you have a series of filters you've got these plates with holes in them biggest holes at the top smallest holes at the bottom so when you pour bricks in all the tiny pieces fall through all the holes till they get to the bottom surface and then the next biggest pieces and the next biggest pieces and then you've got all the big plates and stuff at the top and usually this is so that they are sifted out into individual trays for each kind of size of piece I first saw this whole process from Pete Square 23 on Instagram he's awesome you should definitely go check him out because he makes some really cool stuff but one of the things he makes is a big Lego sorter it's basically like a really big box with a bunch of trays in it and you can roll it around and sift it and then you take each tray off and it's got pieces in it and while it works great and looks really nice too I've got some different requirements for mine so I've decided to come up with my own design that doesn't have to sit on the floor so my plan is to make something that's small enough to sit on a table but big enough to be able to handle a pretty good amount of bricks and also dump them into containers that I already have plus I think be a bonus if I could make it repeatable so I could either maybe sell plans or sell a kit to you if you want to make one of these for yourself if you want to let me know down in the comments we'll see so I went to the Whiteboard came up with a bunch of ideas and most of them are not great but one was kind of cool what if it was a tumbler and each one of these sides had differ size holes in it I think that would be kind of cool although it would do it in the wrong order so I abandoned that one then I thought about what if it's a container that has a replaceable filter sifter thing in it so you can change out the size of hole in a single container but you need to be able to shake it back and forth or flip it over So eventually I ended up on this one basically you have a container that you can dump stuff into on the top it has a filter on the bottom that can be slid out so you can change the size of hole and it's on a pivot point so you can spin it like this to sift the pieces out they will fall down into a tray that you can slide out and dump into your own big trays of like siiz pieces this entire thing is held between two uprights so it can sit on a table I think I've got it I'm going to go to fusion and then we can laser cut some test pieces I designed this whole thing in fusion and I've been cutting out test pieces on the glow Forge out of MDF just to be able to make sure that everything fits but the design was a little bit different for me because I was trying to think of it as if I was going to have to make this a 100 times or a thousand times rather than once and that really does change how you design something for example this whole thing is going to go together with like Tab and Slot joinery I guess you would call it I've got these little tabs that are going to go into a slot to hold it together and the length of this tab is based on the thickness of this material I'm testing with MDF but eventually I want to do this out of acrylic because it just look cooler if you could see all the bricks on the inside and you could etch cool things on the outside and use different color acrylic but right now doing it all at of MDF so I can do quick cheap testing and I think I've got a prototype ready and this is my prototype I've got the top panel the side panels This is the insert that'll eventually have a whole bunch of holes in it and I 3D printed the sides I wanted to 3D print this piece just just because I don't know I wanted the detail the little inset and the raised logo and it's super smooth on the back but this piece took 4 hours and I had to do one for each side if I laser cut this out of acrylic it would have looked great been done in a few minutes and the only downside would be that all of these holes at the top would go all the way through which is not a big deal okay so here's the plan with this thing this is the box it will be mounted on these pivot Points right here in something so that it can spin like this so basically it will sit here you dump your bricks in then you take one of these filters that'll have a whole bunch of holes in it like that it slides in here and then fits into the fingers at the end and it's locked in place then you just shake it a whole bunch and all the little pieces fall out of the holes then you just slide the filter out swap it for one with slightly bigger holes put it back in sift it again you just work your way through all the filters until the last pieces inside the container are just the really big ones and you can just dump them out I think this works as a prototype but I've got to figure out the size of holds how many filters I want to have and I've got to figure out how to mount this whole thing in something that will allow it to Pivot so first off let's figure out the holes those sifter insert things are all designed and ready to be cut out of the acrylic that just showed up but unfortunately I've got a little problem so I modeled and 3D printed these pieces to work with this 1/8 in MDF and they fit perfectly they go right in there it's nice and tight but unfortunately the MDF and the acrylic are not both an eighth of an inch in fact this one is125 and this one is1 14 which is a lot less and these pieces just do not fit so I'm going to have to modify my side panels re3d print them that's another 8 hours and then I'm going to have to do test fits before I can actually cut these pieces out now I'm ready to finally cut out my little filter insert pieces and for those I ordered a bunch of sheets of this different colored acrylic like a multi pack with a bunch of different colors and I used these Dimensions to make the piece in Fusion which is this piece but I didn't actually add any extra so turns out that I've got about that much extra material so I have to be very specific about where the laser goes so here's what I did I measured this piece of acrylic then I cut that shape out of a piece of MDF that's locked in place and then I scored the size that I actually need to make sure that it's going to line up in that material so now I've got like a template area where I can drop in my piece of acrylic cut that outline in the exact place in the software and it should end up with just a little bit around the outside let's find out talk about the skin of your teeth look at how much waste I have on this piece I mean do get a lot better than that all right so I'm still shooting this video which means we haven't edited it yet so I have no idea how long you've been watching but I would imagine it's probably 3 4 minutes something like that well I've been working on this project solid for like 6 days now the first couple days of that were just design lots of time in Fusion trying to figure stuff out and then I would change it and then modify it and then I finally got to laser cutting and more laser cutting then I started doing tolerance testing and then a whole bunch of 3D printing then some more laser cutting then even more laser cutting but I think I finally got enough pieces that we can assemble the box to see if this idea is even going to work okay so the fit on those pieces turned out great I'll probably put some acrylic cement to bind these two edges together so that they don't flex but for now I just need to test it the fit on these pieces is fantastic it was absolutely worth the effort this thing is held together really tightly and the inserts come in and out really easily so it's pretty nice except that I realized choosing orange for the end kind of clashes with different colors so if I were going to print these again which I'm not I would make the ends white or black or something so that this color could really stand out now we have the container we have the sifter but it needs to be held on a table so that we can actually test it out so next up we need to make some stands that go on the ends and finally I get to use some woodworking tools this video is sponsored by kiwo and you've probably heard that name before because over the years I've told you about how my kids got kiwi crates several times in fact they got kiwi crates doodle crates Tinker crates and those are all for younger kids with different interests but in each one of the crates they got a complete project with everything they needed plus a magazine with all the instructions and a bunch of extra information about the project well my kids are not young anymore so we've had to move up to Eureka crates and in the most recent one we got to make a complete working set of headphones like this is a legitimate Electronics project and these crates are aimed at ages 14 up to 104 so that includes a lot of different age groups again everything we needed to make these headphones was in this box and it just showed up at the house it's very very cool whether you've got a kid in your life or you just like to have projects show up at your door the crates from kiwi Co are a fantastic way to have projects delivered right to you with a yearly subscription each one of these crates is around 20 bucks but that can get even even cheaper if you go down in the description you click the link and then you use our code Mak stuff that's going to give you 50% off the first crate with the holidays coming up this is a great gift that you can give to a kid in your life or to a kid in your life either way invest in somebody in your life or in yourself that's cool too go down hit that link and use the code make stuff and big thanks to kiwo for sponsoring this video so now you can probably see how this thing is going to work you dump in the bricks into this part you put in the filter flip it over and then you shake it but right now all those bricks would just fall down onto this board so I need to go model a tray that will fit in here to catch the bricks as they're being sifted out I think it's done and now we just got to try it I'm very happy that I spent the time coming up with a new design for this thing because honestly it just works way better than my original one it's easier to use it's nice to have it on the table plus it holds a lot more bricks which is really handy and there's tons of room for improvement I've already thought of ways to make it stronger and easier to build and maybe better looking that got me thinking would you be interested in one of these like a completed thing or maybe a kit or maybe plans to build your own if any of those are interesting let me know down in the comments because we might be able to make something like that happen that's it for this one thanks for watching now it's time for bloopers that can hold a whole bunch of bricks and is way better then when you're done you slide out the filter oh boy the whole thing came apart cuz it's not glued that's not going to work oh no and these pieces slide in out no doy Bob\n"