News By Lee Mathews Mar. 24, 2014 5:34 pm
Sometimes the best answers you find are the ones you find yourself, like when Phillipe Cantin wanted to know how many times you could click two Lego bricks together before they fail. After arriving at the impressive figure of 37,112 with his first test rig, Phillipe decided that additional testing was required.
He’s run his test again with a brand new machine and come up with a different (but equally amazing) figure: 32,066. That means even if you built and tore down the same pile of bricks ten times a day every day, you’d get almost 9 years of use out of the super-durable Lego. The moral of the story: if you buy Lego, your kids, their kids, and their kids’ kids will get plenty of enjoyment out of them too.
This time, Philippe got a little help from a corporate sponsor: The Little British Robot Company. They happily provided DC motors and some of the other bits he needed to redesign his brick testing machine. His first attempt took a single weekend to build. The new one? Nearly two months, thanks to a more complex design process and a desire to make sure the project did the folks at TLBRC proud.
This time around, Philippe opted for a more natural clicking motion. Instead of pressing the stop brick straight down as the original machine did, the new one rocks the top brick into place and then gives it a gentle whack to make the final connection. It’s much more like the way you’d click the bricks together by hand.
He also put together a soundproof box to house the noisy little rig, and attached a Bluetooth module so that he could track the machine’s progress remotely with his smartphone.
Philippe was hoping to perform additional runs with his second machine, but the strain on the DC motors proved to be too much. Excessive binding caused them to fail about a third of the way into the second run — well short of the 20 to 40 he was shooting for.
Next time, he’ll use stepper motors instead… but it may be a while before we see results from a third build. Philippe’s just doing this for fun, after all, and he needs a bit of a break. I think all Lego enthusiasts can understand where he’s coming from.
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He’s run his test again with a brand new machine and come up with a different (but equally amazing) figure: 32,066. That means even if you built and tore down the same pile of bricks ten times a day every day, you’d get almost 9 years of use out of the super-durable Lego. The moral of the story: if you buy Lego, your kids, their kids, and their kids’ kids will get plenty of enjoyment out of them too.
This time, Philippe got a little help from a corporate sponsor: The Little British Robot Company. They happily provided DC motors and some of the other bits he needed to redesign his brick testing machine. His first attempt took a single weekend to build. The new one? Nearly two months, thanks to a more complex design process and a desire to make sure the project did the folks at TLBRC proud.
This time around, Philippe opted for a more natural clicking motion. Instead of pressing the stop brick straight down as the original machine did, the new one rocks the top brick into place and then gives it a gentle whack to make the final connection. It’s much more like the way you’d click the bricks together by hand.
He also put together a soundproof box to house the noisy little rig, and attached a Bluetooth module so that he could track the machine’s progress remotely with his smartphone.
Philippe was hoping to perform additional runs with his second machine, but the strain on the DC motors proved to be too much. Excessive binding caused them to fail about a third of the way into the second run — well short of the 20 to 40 he was shooting for.
Next time, he’ll use stepper motors instead… but it may be a while before we see results from a third build. Philippe’s just doing this for fun, after all, and he needs a bit of a break. I think all Lego enthusiasts can understand where he’s coming from.
More...
