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Man Builds 7-foot Grandfather Clock from Lego

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the snappy-timepieces dept.

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."

31 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. server made of lego too? by deft · · Score: 4, Funny

    its just got smashed!

    --

    There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
    1. Re:server made of lego too? by skids · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's not down, it's just very slow. With 4cm logic, you probably only get about 0.002 hertz CPU speed.

      Hrm... 386 has about 275,000 transistors and looking at the
      gates
      I'd estimate that works out to about 10 legos a transistor.... That's one expensive server!

      --
      Someone had to do it.
    2. Re:server made of lego too? by zeath · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That is by far the best use of legos I've ever seen. I wish I had enough gears in the bins I have tucked away to do something elaboratively creative with that. Though I bet once you get too many in sequence the gears would require more torque than the lego housings can resist.

    3. Re:server made of lego too? by cide1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Just finishing up my end of semester projects, had to analyze several CPUs I designed this semester. One very simple one used 1048 logic cells, but could do integer arithmetic, jumps, branches, and memory operations. Not quite sure how many transistors that translates too, but normally an FPGA cell is a binary operation. Removing several of the odd arithmetic operations would lower that size quite a bit more. I also designed a 5 stage pipelined CPU with 32 word instruction cache, and 32 word data cache in about 2300 logic cells.

      When the first vacuum tube based computers were invented, I'll built the designers felt like they were implementing a CPU of this size in Legos. It seems funny now, but this analogy probably holds a lot of water.

      --
      -- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
    4. Re:server made of lego too? by zeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I guess I don't understand the lego thing. Mind you, I grew up with an arc welder around and had lots of scrap to build stuff out of. Tinkering with legos, well, seemed silly when I could fabricate a perfectly useful table fireplace log holder which can support 500lbs without as much as a strain. :)

      I would definently agree with you; playing with heat and metal is far more practical than plastic blocks, but making stuff with legos offers both a handicap and limitation that challenges the builders to be creative. With stuff like this it's not so much "look what I can do" but rather "look what I can do with all these limitations and obstacles". To reverse the roles, welding together a bunch of metal interlocking blocks and making a small castle out of them would be equally cool, even though the legos would have been an easier solution and ultimately achieved the same design.

    5. Re:server made of lego too? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Why wouldn't it keep fairly accurate time? The physics of a pendulum are fairly well understood and gravity is reasonably constant. The plastic is much less subject to environmental effects than the wood and metal that clocks of this style were traditionally made of and LEGO's tolerances are a lot higher than was possible for many of those clocks.

      Part of the appeal of lego technic in particular is the large toolkit of compatible parts. I build a lot of gadgets and trying to mate the motor from a CD player with the gearbox off a toy truck is not as easy as it sounds. I'm no purist...if I am trying to accomplish a task, I will use whatever works. The nice thing about lego is that it is convenient and does work for many "human-scale" tasks. Also you can build with it in your living room which is especially nice for those of us without a workshop or garage.

      Finally, I'll bet it keeps better time than a clock built with an arc welder

    6. Re:server made of lego too? by R.Caley · · Score: 4, Funny
      It's not down, it's just very slow.

      It's not the CPU which is the problem, it's constructing TCP/IP packets out of Lego and squeezing them through the ethernet cable.

      They get stuck at every kink in the cable, and someone has to go and clear the blockage by hand.

      Mind you, packet fragmentation is far easier than with the traditional hand-whittled wooden packets.

      --
      _O_
      .|<       The named which can be named is not the true named
  2. Awesomely cool! by BlackMagi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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/
  3. Boy he'll be pissed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...when his (grand)kid shows up and takes the thing apart to play with it.

  4. wow! by ssand · · Score: 5, Funny

    what's next for him? A seven foot tall girlfriend made entirely of lego?

    1. Re:wow! by Besjon · · Score: 5, Funny

      No no, a seven foot tall girlfriend made entirely of lego would be mortally dangerous as it could lead to a crushed pelvis and death by snu-snu.

    2. Re:wow! by Smylers · · Score: 3, Informative
      what's next for him? A seven foot tall girlfriend made entirely of lego?

      Not quite, but he has built a girl out of lego.

      Smylers
  5. Kit by leapis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. just so you know.... by Lxy · · Score: 4, Informative

    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:

    http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/portfolio.html

    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
  7. No Electricity.... by Gopal.V · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
    1. Re:No Electricity.... by Dephex+Twin · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.
      I think it is safe to say he does, since he built a working grandfather clock, and probably didn't re-invent the mechanical design himself from scratch.

      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.
      For building the housing, this might be, but if you are limiting yourself to pure lego parts, there is a good deal of creativity involved in order to make a full-sized, functioning clock that is accurate without cheating.
      --

      If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
    2. Re:No Electricity.... by elmegil · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think he meant the guy who wrote the slashdot submission, not the guy who built the clock.

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
  8. Re:slashdotted already... by meatflower · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When you design an escapement gear made only out of lego's that actually works than YOU can bitch about the colors matching.

  9. MIrrors by kerbe6 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Main
    Gears
    Numbers
    Face
    Mechanics

  10. Grinding by borgasm · · Score: 3, Funny

    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...

  11. Re:Google cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why do people insist on using the google cache when the pictures tell most of the story. It's still pulling the pictures from the original souce.
    Now this coralized link on the other hand is pulling from the coral servers and since the pictures are relative (rather than absolute), coral works quite well.

  12. For a while there I thought I was the only one... by tonyz2k · · Score: 5, Funny

    who had a House of Yes movie poster over my fireplace. Phew. (only on Slashdot..)

    --
    click here to incinerate homeless people
  13. All I can say by RealProgrammer · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  14. Re:slashdotted already... by fredopalus · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, that seems like a fair complaint.
    Especially when you consider he built a WHOLE GRANDFATHER CLOCK out of legos.

    --
    Jonahweb.com has stuff.
  15. This is NOT news by unicorn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  16. Re:For a while there I thought I was the only one. by Pseudonym · · Score: 3, Funny

    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?

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  17. Ahh, back in the days... by skids · · Score: 5, Funny

    When "computer architecture" consisted of asking the question "how big a room do we need to hold it?"

    --
    Someone had to do it.
    1. Re:Ahh, back in the days... by Rhys · · Score: 3, Interesting

      For those of us who work with supercomputers, it still means that. And "how much more power do we need" and "how much cooling do we need" and "there are how-many-thousnad-ethernet-cables?"

      --
      Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
  18. To answer the obvious question... by rdwald · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...yes, he's made a girl out of Legos. Only a mosaic, unfortunately.

  19. The next generation can run for 30 hours, not 13 by brianmf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  20. Did anyone read that title as... by tekrat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Man Builds 7-Foot Tall Grandfather From Lego ?

    Now *that* would be impressive!

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.