Another subzero day. Rode the exercise bike to nowhere while watching my soapie, and shot video of my LEGO gantry crane prior to dismantling it. With the camera running, the crane sometimes took this as an opportunity to act up.
Category: Play
Scandinavian Bounty: IKEA and LEGO
After walking with a friend around the vast Mall of America, popped into IKEA to return a lamp because it’s not dimmable. After meatballs and mash, got lost in a labyrinth of merchandise, feeling oddly guilty for not purchasing a $1.49 Bolmen (toilet brush). Eventually found my way back to the light rail station via the LEGO Store.
LEGO Snow Village
Kicked off the decorating with LEGO gingerbread houses designed and built by Dwight. Decorating the tree can wait for another day.
Our Playhouse
Dwight worked on his second LEGO gingerbread house, a model of the family’s first North Dakota farmhouse (replaced by a house purchased through the Sears Roebuck mail-order catalog). Meanwhile I trained my LEGO gantry crane to locate and move bricks. Tonight we stream Barbie.
Through the Eye of a Gantry Crane
Having refined the LEGO gantry crane’s mechanics sufficiently, I’ve turned my focus to machine vision. This introduces software challenges that I’m tackling in small doses.
Pieceful Thanksgiving
With Dwight immersed in his Sunday plant-care routine, I assembled the first 400 pieces (out of 800) of a LEGO dried flower centerpiece for Thanksgiving. The end result, though lacking some apparently superfluous parts, seems OK to me.
Symmetry vs. Function
Today I had to accept symmetry in my LEGO gantry crane isn’t always achievable. Here’s the hoist and grabber subassemblies, operated by pneumatic pistons. Scissor mechanisms are inherently not symmetric in operation, so I had to consider choosing symmetry in either the extended or closed positions, not both.
Not Quite Ready for Its Closeup
The latest, but not the final, iteration of my LEGO gantry crane. I periodically work and rework mechanisms, frame structure (thank you Pythagoras), or Python program, but it often sits waiting for a fresh idea.
When LEGO Parts Come Out of Hiding
Sunset is generally the best time of day to reunite with small LEGO parts I’d dropped.
Sweating the Small Stuff
I’ve been agonizing over best practices for attaching a LEGO drive chain to a carriage. Today, I was inspired by online instructions for a forklift truck that uses a chain to lift. I attached the chain to one link of a tank tread, and inserted the ends of the link into the holes of Technic beams. Easy!