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Man Builds 7-foot Grandfather Clock from Lego
Ravalox writes "Eric Harshbarger has built a 7-foot-tall grandfather clock exclusively from Lego. It keeps accurate time and needs no electricity; it needs to be weight reset every 13 hours. Other pictures include the gears, numbers, the face, and the pendulum mechanics."
its just got smashed!
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Seems to be /.'ed before the first post even (which I'm sure I'm about to be pipped to).
I remember those awesome lego days of my childhood with huge displays in the big dept stores.... no longer. Seems to be pre-moulded crap these days. Good on him.
http://melbournephilosophy.com/
...when his (grand)kid shows up and takes the thing apart to play with it.
what's next for him? A seven foot tall girlfriend made entirely of lego?
I'd love to know when the kit for this goes on sale. Of all the large-scale Lego designs I've seen, just once I'd like someone to start selling a kit or at least instructions to built it yourself.
This is the same Eric who built some guy's desk out of LEGO a few years back. He's been talked about on /. before, just check out his portfolio:
l
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/portfolio.htm
He's built clocks before, but I think this is his first working model. Of course, be sure to check out his Tux and BSD Daemon sculptures as well. This guy is a master at LEGO construction, and be sure to look for him in the future.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Cs8oaitTLG0J: www.ericharshbarger.org/cgi-bin/photo.cgi%3Fclock_ 5.jpg%2Blego/images/clock+&hl=en
.. or so it seems. that poor little server!
before it started to fail though, I noticed the escapement violates the retentive geek's rules on colour matching in lego construction. Just because it's hidden doesn't mean you can just bodge it together out of mismatched pieces, you know.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Doesn't guy wrote this know that at the time when a these 6 foot wonders were invented, there WAS NO ELECTRICITY !!. It runs on pure potential energy stored in weights.
The interesting part is that it would be much harder to make a real grandfather clock (like the one at my ancestral home) - because Lego in comparison is easier to build.
But Kudos to the guy - it's not really pointless , it would have helped if this was part of at least a few mechanical engineer's curriculum - not just carnot cycle engines.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Main
Gears
Numbers
Face
Mechanics
I can almost hear the gears grinding to a halt as a million clients topple his server.
I wonder what the melting point of legos is...
Click here for the good stuff
who had a House of Yes movie poster over my fireplace. Phew. (only on Slashdot..)
click here to incinerate homeless people
is it's about time someone did this.
We should give this guy a big hand. And then a second hand. But then, he's probably got his hands all in place already.
Can this run Linux? It would be a great NTP server.
sigs, as if you care.
Does anyone know if this guy was one of the people who tried to get the Lego Master Builder job awhile back? If not, then he probably missed out on a good chance. I looked at a bunch of the stuff they made during the "interview" for the master builder job, and they were quite amazing. So perhaps Eric wouldn't have blown away the competition, but he at least stands a shot.
I, however, will stick to building little houses and cars just like the directions indicate.
And I thought I had no life
Laugh, it's funny
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
From my hall of mirrors:
Corel Cache
Internet Archive
Google cache Note - images may not be cached.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
According to the bloody dictionary, news is "1 a : a report of recent events"
Eric's desk has been featured on Slashdot, 4 +YEARS ago. He built it in Aug of 2000. The Slashdot story was posted Aug 27, of the same year. He's made the front page of Slashdot 3 more times since.
He built the clock in January. 8 months before the desk, and the story.
This emphatically does NOT qualify as news anymore. No way, no how.
What is it the editors do here again? Anything useful?
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Man Builds 7 foot Grandfather Cock from Lego. I was just about to rush out and by myself a huge Lego set.
Free Firefox news reader.
I hear that in the digitally remastered version, she's holding a walkie-talkie.
Incidentally, was I the only person who expected a poster for something called The House of Yes to be painted by Roger Dean?
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The Lego Grandfather Clock was too tall for the shelf
So it stood for five years on the floor
More complicated by half than my lego castles
And weighed a whole lot more
It was built on the verge of a major Lego urge
And was a major source of his pride
Till its server stopped, short
Never to go again
When 'twas Slashdotted till it died
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
When "computer architecture" consisted of asking the question "how big a room do we need to hold it?"
Someone had to do it.
...yes, he's made a girl out of Legos. Only a mosaic, unfortunately.
I just sucked all the relevant pages through the coral cache, so it should be fine that way. Here's a link.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
It's a technic wheel with the tyre removed.
Leo's LEGO has the answer to this particular question .
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
He recently "discovered" a new type of lego brick which allowed a vast improvement in the mechanism. The update is dated 12 March 2003, the original dating from 20 January 2000.
Either I live in a time warp, or this same exact story was one /. like 6+ months ago?
Can't you all at least approve stories that have NEW news in them?
Man Builds 7-Foot Tall Grandfather From Lego ?
Now *that* would be impressive!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The gear ratios just determine that the hour hand makes one revolution for every twelve revolutions of the minute hand. Since one gear tooth pushes another gear on by exactly one tooth, it's a fairly trivial matter to choose appropriate numbers of teeth so this will be the case. What really determines the accuracy of the clock is the pendulum and the escapement. A pendulum always takes the same amount of time to complete a cycle {centre - edge - centre - other edge - back to centre} {Or at least, as long as the amplitude is small wrt the length of the pendulum.} What's more, there is a certain, "obvious" length of pendulum which takes {as near as damn it is to swearing} a certain, "obvious" amount of time to complete half a cycle {edge to opposite edge}.
As the weight falls, its PE is converted to KE and the drum around which its cord is wound rotates. This drives the escapement gear, which hits hard against one or other of the pallets and stops moving. When the pendulum swings to the other extremity, the gear is free to move again; but only for a brief instant, because then the other pallet catches it and stops it, hopefully exactly one tooth on from where it was before. KE is transferred to the pendulum when the escapement is blocked by the pallets, so it keeps swinging.
As long as the escapement gear does move by only one tooth between swings of the pendulum, the hands will move a precise amount per swing of the pendulum. Accuracy will only be lost if there is enough input power to move the escapement gear by two or more teeth between swings {the clock will run fast} or not enough to move the escapement gear by a full tooth between swings {the clock will run slow and the pendulum may stop altogether}. The free-running speed of the escapement gear is determined by friction in the mechanism. The time taken for the pendulum to make one cycle depends only upon the length of the pendulum. This will be affected by thermal expansion, but there is a cunning trick that can be used: a brass rod 1m. long expands about 1.5 times as much as a steel rod of the same length for the same temperature rise. By using three steel rods and two brass rods, joined so that the expansion of the brass works against the expansion of the steel, it is possible to make a pendulum which keeps its length over a wide temperature range.
Improved clock mechanisms use a ratchet driven from the pendulum to turn the hands, and just use the stored PE to top up the pendulum's KE. This means that the mechanism can be wound up without affecting timekeeping, as long as the pendulum has enough stored PE to last out swinging while the clock is being wound.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
In Korea, old people are clocks.
Oh, oh, and in Soviet Russia, grandfather clocks you.