Bitbeam is an experiment to combine my two favorite prototyping tools: balsa/basswood and Lego. The idea is to miniaturize Grid Beam and make it Lego Technic compatible. 

Bitbeam height and width is 5/16 inches, and each hole is 8mm apart — just like Lego Technic. For the moment, the hole size is 1/8, slightly smaller than a Technic hole, BUT an 1/8 inch axle fits perfectly into Technic gears and bushings. (I might change this, though, by making the hole size bigger to be compatible wth Lego axles.) The hole size is 4.8 mm wide, also just like Lego Technic. I recently changed the hole size from 1/8 inch to 4.8 mm.

The advantage of building your own Bitbeam parts over Lego is that 1) the materials are cheaper, 2) I can make parts in sizes that Lego doesn’t make, and 3) playing with lasers is fun!

This video is from some of my first laser cutting experiments at TechShop San Francisco in July, 2011. (Background voices in this video are from the TechShop’s Laser Cutting SBU instructor giving a class on one of the other lasers.)