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Lego Trebuchet
An anonymous reader submitted linkage to a
trebuchet made of legos. Using
australian coins for counterweights, it is able to throw a marble 50 feet or
more. I wish they had some photos of it in action, and maybe some
schematics for do it yourselfers, but regardless, looks like a fun
project if you have a pile of legos and a 4-day weekend ;)
If only they made lego cows to throw. This will change my castle wars now though.
"And your both 6 months pregnant by Billy Ray Sirus" "Then why is mom showing and i'm not?" - Married With Children
Now I finally have some weapons with the proper dementions for my weekly 'hamster death match' on the patio.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Now all we need is a lego Guillotine.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I guess the scientisits should have built som elego models and saved a bit of cash.
looks like a fun project if you have a pile of legos and a 4-day weekend ;)
I wish I got the 4 day weekend too...
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Of course, a major design flaw is the use of Australian coins, which only go about 56% as far as American ones.
http://au.finance.yahoo.com/m5?a=1&s=AUD&t=USD
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
So we've made a trebuchet out of lego bricks, but at what cost? Don't these mad men realise what they're combining? Weapons design, unlimited creativity, and lego bricks!
A few more rungs up the evolutionary design ladder coupled with another advance or two in mindstorms and we'll be recreating the first ten minutes of Teminator 2. Only this time, instead of a steel chromed skull, it'll be a smiling yellow face.
We're doomed.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
There's again, I'm a balding 45 year old father of 2. And if my wife's reading, she might find out what I really get up to in the garage...
...must be related to these 25 hour days we've been listening about the last few days... oh the horror/happiness (depending who you are...;)
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Not lifesize, but pretty darn funny nonetheless
As a buzy research student currently writing his thesis I have no time to sit about and play with LEGO all day.
Oh wait no. Thats what I do all day every day while avoiding work.
Anyway after making a internet controllable camera and an internet controllable robot, I have run out of inspiration.
The research group lego has two motors and I want to make something that people can control over the internet. Any suggestions?
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
but you can only build the lego trebuchet after you upgrade the lego blacksmithy to make the lego siege workshop.
and don't forget to defend your lego trebuchet with lego archers and lego knights.
AND LOOKOUT FOR THE LEGO ZERG!
It was first broadcast about a year ago, part of a series called "Secrets of Lost Empires", and also included a nice Construction of a Chinese Rainbow Bridge.
The Trebuchet episode is scheduled to be rebroadcast on Tuesday, July 16, 2002, in the States.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
All we need now is the castle and Lego French Knights to taunt the English King and his men below...
And a Lego Cow.
RUN AWAY!!
kinda sad really.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Oh that was cool...
:))
:((
It was a long time ago, in my childhood, our history professor told us to build a catapult, a small one (so small we could carry in one hand)... my group (consisting of me and my friends) did a almost full size one, we needed to ask someone father to bring it to school in a truck, it was awesome, all our little friends hanging around with 20cm catapults when we were getting all the attention from the 9 year old girls with our 4 meter trebuchet... good ol times when my weekends used to last 7 days!
the sad part is that we never had the chance to test it...
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
This past year in my one class, Construction Tech.(yes, in school), we built a Trebuchet. Altho ours were limited to 3 feet base (in each direction). It worked out well, some went far, some went short, it was all a matter of how long the sling was and stuff. I have mine still, I gotta fix it up a little tho. I can see it now, a small lego desktop Treb. Brings a new meaning to throwing candy at the guy next to ya :P
The religious^h^h^h^h^h moderation police have punished you for your blasphemy!
According to this article, you are wrong.
If you really wanna impress me why don't you build one like I did! You can shot a 20lbs weight 100 yards! Mind you the counter wieght was about 2 tons.
i once stuck all my lego together into a huge brick. i couldn't throw that 50 feet though.
"if i'd known it was harmless, i'd have killed it myself"
New NRA bumper sticker: Make Lego trebuchet criminal, and only criminals will have Lego trebuchets.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
Although the photos section mentiones that the wheels are not quite necesassry, they are indeed:
The motion of the counterweight falling tries to pull the treb over. A counter to this is to put the trebuchet on wheels. So, as the counterweight falls, the treb rolls forward, allowing the counterweigtht to fall more vertically. This also dramatically increases the distance the treb can make.
More info on DIY trebuchets here
This is the twentieth century... build an army of Lego howitzers. Low cost artillery for the masses!
Of course, if you want to say that an intruder or assailant has a gun, well, if gun laws were in place, they wouldn't have them to begin with.
Because we know criminals always follow the law. Right.
Home defense is a very sad reason, what's wrong with just beating an intruder into unconciousness and calling the cops?
Yeah, that method would work really well for my little 5 foot, 105 pound wife. On the other hand, she can handle a gun just fine, thank you very much.
The "Floating Arm" trebuchet design was used on an episode of Junkyard Wars.
IN that design, the arm has two wheels, and runs on a track along the top of the trebuchet, while the counterweight drops purely downwards down a vertical track.
It wouldn't be suitable in midaeval times (due to the wheel on the arm), but is quite easy to do for modern designs, and nicely effective (as you no longer have the big counterweight swinging along, but only going up and down, something easier to engineer for with Legos).
Test your net with Netalyzr
With enough lego parts you can also build a working catapult, although in Canada the government requires you to register it as a hand gun.
How ironic that you used the word 'constructive'. That is exactly what Legos are, means of constructing things out of small blocks. Were you beaten as a child, or do you not have any creativeness ?
I'd like to see this guy go up against a Lego Machine Gun.
I imagine the outcome would be similar to a Civ III game, after you fall out of the tech trading circle.
Feh, that's nothin! Too many parts, too easy to fail. What you -really- want to do is make a trebuchet out of -tinkertoys-.
Like I did!
http://www.stonekeep.com/trebuchet/
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
How is 180 pounds over weight? Lets assume he is 5'10 or so. Then his ideal weight should be around 165-190. Doesnt make him overweight. Overweight is 10-15% over your ideal weight (something a lot more than 180).
In our society, our children now learn to construct siege engines out of building blocks. When they get older, they further sharpen their martial skills by playing computer simulations of warfare. In ancient Sparta, they produced a generation of warriors by training them young. With some lego, some good PC war games, and a membership with the Military Book Club, we can do the same for our children.
Oh god, the humour, it hurts. Stop. Please.
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
This past year my mom went nuts over building a lego trebuchet. When she first heard about trebuchets, she was really interested. She then came up with the idea of building one out of legos. (She wanted to make it into a project for the physics class she taught at a high school). After many months of searching for the instructions and pieces, we finally assembled one. Unfortunately, it never worked very well (but she had her class make them anyways).
:-)
Seeing this article just brought back some of those wonderful memories. I just had to share!
"No manual entry for woman."
Who's has the obligatory mirror with pics for those of us behind the slashdot?
I made a trebuchet a couple years ago when I was still tinkering with Legos. I was about fourteen when I built it. It was about two feet high (to the axle) and shot marbles across my living room about 20 feet. I had a lot of fun with it before I dismantled it. My work on a 4 foot high (again, to the axle), stalled when my throwing arm broke (it was flimsy wood anyway). I am going to get a new arm and finish it soon. I have two cheap 25lb. workout weights that I want to use as a counterweight. I know that a bucket would work better, but I'm not an engineer!
Try reading that again.. if ideal weight is 160, and he's 180 pounds overweight, he would weigh 340 lbs.
Decidedly overweight.
What a primitive weapon. Given enough time, I'm sure Harshbarger will build a working ICBM. I want to see a /. article about that.
I've made some pretty badass weapons with Construx. They shouldn't be too hard to replicate with other building systems, if anyone's interested in doing so.
| |
___| |__
________ =====|
Okay, so basically what this is supposed to look like is two hollow tubes that are connected like a T, open at both ends. Then there's a plunger sorta thing. You insert it into the tube and attach it with a few rubber bands, so when you pull it back and let go it goes back into the tube.
When the plunger is in its normal position inside the bottom tube, it's blocking the intersection. So drop a bunch of marbles (or whatever projectiles you like) into the top tube. They should be slightly less wide than the tube itself. When you pull the plunger out, one projectile falls into the bottom tube. Let go of the plunger and it hits the marble, shooting it out the other end of the bottom tube.
I've built and fired many of these. They work very well. The one serious drawback is that there are problems firing them at angles too far from the horizontal.
Here's how to turn that semi-automatic into a gatling gun.
| |
___| |__
________ =====|---( o )
Okay, if the illustration is a bit unclear, this is a wheel behind the gun. On the edge of the wheel is a small rod. One end of a string is affixed to it, the other to the plunger. Now you can operate the weapon by turning the wheel. The wheel has to be attached to the gun by some structure along the side which doesn't interfere with anything.
You should put a handle that turns the wheel from the other side. If you use a gearset that allows you several shots per revolution, you'll have something resembling a gatling gun in action.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
All I get ASP.NET error. Sweet. Already slashdotted. Where's a mirror? Preferrably a static page that's not on IIS.
it's /.ed. Too bad.
It serves them right for using IIS.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
2^5
a trebuchet sounds cool but this guy took it into modern warfare, and built a Beretta!!
He even put out a manual so you can build it yourself.
If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.--David Brent
looks like someone trebuchetted the web server. cause it's down.
eh?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Apparently the guy who's hosting the site built his webserver from LEGO too.
/. effect.
NOTHING withstands the
> The only people that see gun laws as draconian
> are the people who own them.
I don't own a gun, but I see gun laws as draconian.
> People who own guns generally have no valid
> reason for owning one.
Sure they do. You've named two such reasons all by yourself.
> Home defense is a very sad reason, what's wrong
> with just beating an intruder into
> unconciousness and calling the cops?
What's arong with just not breaking into someone's home? And if the intruder is armed with a gun, I suppose you're going to charge at them with a baseball bat to accomplish this beating?
> Of course, if you want to say that an intruder
> or assailant has a gun, well, if gun laws were
> in place, they wouldn't have them to begin with.
That's brilliant! Its just like the drag laws. We created laws against drugs, and now there are no drugs in our society. If there were laws against gun ownership, noone would own guns! Why don't we just create laws against murder, then noone would committ murder! Hell, why don't we just create laws against crime, then there would be no crime at all!
> What happens when gun laws aren't "draconian"
> enough? Kids kill their school mates and
> teachers. Seem familiar?
Agreed. We should also create draconian knife laws to prevent stabbings.
> Guns are an easy way to kill people.
Cars are an easy way to kill people. Take it down a busy sidewalk in the city, you can take out tons of people in no time.
This thing is so slashdotted right now, it's even got an official error for it:
Server Error in '/' Application.
They forgot the . after the / though...
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
If a trebuchet made of lego will throw a marble fifty feet, imagine how far one several stories high could throw an object! NASA is betting they could use one to launch satellites into space. It will be called the X-4000 Launch Aparatus.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Seriously? What kind of cowards serve in the Blue Army? My unstoppable force of tiny men, led by the Black Knight, need no trebuchets. They charge gloriously on their plastic horses, bringing death to all foes! They batter down the gates of a castle and charge inside to a glorious conquest!
:p
I need to find the rules I made up for Lego Wargaming. I also need to figure out where my legos are.
Heh heh heh. My officers had capes. That rocked.
Slap some wheels on the base of that thing and you might get as much as 60 to one (distance to throwing-arm-length) instead of the 30 to one you've gotten.
::Colz Grigor
I'm gonna go make one for myself. That's a really cool idea you had...
Wow. I am SO bookmarking that.
Oh, and btw, nice bandwidth pipe you have there. I was getting a nice 300k/sec there.
I will now redundantly add my name to the end of my post. You know, in case you forgot me or something.
Articulating the carriage will in fact increase throwing range, in the same way a FAT mechanism works.
:)
:)
Unfortunatley, for such a low weight unit, it gets unstable with that much weight flying around so fast, as is evidenced by the second video (where the machine actually throws itself off my hottub lid
The next version of this machine, whenever I build it, will probalby have a wheeled carriage, and have a much stronger throwing arm.
60 to 1 would be awfully nice
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
Colo'ed at RCN. Thank them :)
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
Those of you who find this cool, and haven't already read my trebuchet kit review, probably should :-).
>It all started with a documentary we were watching on TV about some history professors and
h et
>traditional builders heading into the English
countryside to build a couple of trebuchets.
>Their aim was to see which design would have been more practical for use in the 14th century.
The show in question was an episode of the PBS
series "Secret of Lost Empires":
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/trebuc
The whole series is very interesting -- they try
to recreate an item from history for which some
or all of the underlying technology is totally
lost, except perhaps for fragmentary text
descriptions. The two teams use different
counterweight theories, with interesting results.
I just wish they hadn't flouted historical
accuracy by using as a projectile one of those
big blue things from "Star Wars Episode 1"...
-- yosemite at programmer dot net "Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting *dirty* for." -- Santos
Yeah, and your little 5 year old could work out how to pull the trigger too. ...in fact ACCIDENTS when guns are easily obtained are more the problem than altercations with criminals. ... all it takes is a superpower to apprehend you, demonise you, and then lock you up in a make shift concentration camp in some remote country ... and label you an "unlawful combatant" ...
What's the chances of somebody breaking into your house weilding a gun? Maybe fairly high in the US - but here in Australia the chances would be much more in favour of friendly fire
Just think about it for a moment. Not every criminal act is planned. A lot of criminal activity is related to drug use and keeping up with an expensive habit. This type of criminal will use whatever weapon they have - and if buying guns isn't immediately an option then they'll use something else. The reason you Americans need your guns is because they're easily obtained, and the chances of gun involvement is much greater. We don't have that problem here yet, and I hope we never do.
And don't think for a moment that the populace can defend their country if they have guns
This is way cool, I remember being in the first year of Junior school (aged about 8) and doing a project on Romans. I was off school ill and my Mum (Physics lecturer and Chartered Engineer)and I built an Onager using legos and a couple of decent elastic bands.
For those who don't already know, an Onager was another type of siege engine, using twisted cord to store energy rather than raising a heavy weight. It didn't have a sling, so it didn't get much distance, but it was pretty cool at the time. i'm just annoyed that I didn't get any pictures before I dismatled it.
Blessed be Google
http://www.weirdrichard.com/trebuchet.htm
A Divx Avi of it firing is now up!
(It's all in the subject line)
Inspired by Junkyard wars, I built a trebuchet from Legos and Duplos (base and supports) and K'nex (frame and throwing arm, counterweight, etc.) I think there are some bits of Erector set in there too. There are some pictures here until my ISP yells at me. It also threw a marble but not nearly so far. Very cool job.
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it. -- Super Chicken
...of this scene from News Radio:
... Who, who's John Chrysler
... there's no such person as John Chrysler.
... wait a minute ... wait a minute.
... you guys get the point I'm trying to make, right?
/MATT: Yeah/Yeah
...
...
---- Dave's Office ----
[Matthew and Joe are sitting on Dave's couch. Dave is standing and
lecturing them.]
DAVE: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why, but I do know if
Henry Ford and John Chrysler had spent all their time fighting, we'd still
be driving around in horse and buggy.
MATT: Umm
DAVE: The guy who invented the Chrysler?
JOE : [Laughing] There's
MATT: Oh no. No. Oh wait a minute
Is he by any chance related to Jack Chevrolet? [Laughs]
[Matthew and Joe laugh]
DAVE: Look. You
JOE
DAVE: Ok, great.
[Joe and Matthew get up to leave.]
MATT: [Repeating joke aloud] John Chrysler
DAVE: Matthew.
JOE : We're not laughing at you boss.
DAVE: Yeah
MATT: We're really not
JOE : [To Matthew] C'mon, we gotta get outta here dude. [To Dave] Hey.
Uh, give my regards to Bill Pontiac. [laughs]
[Matthew and Joe Exit.]
Here see the Star Wars trilogy legos style!
here
We had competitions to build these at PCS (a children's engineering school) in Nampa, Idaho several years ago. We also had a few Lego "Robot Wars". Frankly, everything Lego related I've ever seen on /. is old hat.
Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.