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The Mechanical Spider can bear more stress than other walking mechanisms, why?
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Walkers require very strong frames to handle the weight and torque. This is best accomplished through the use of triangles. Also, linkage attachments to frames need holes at precise locations, which often requires the use of right triangles. However, making right triangles is difficult as LEGO can only use integer numbers to construct them, such as 3,4,5 etc… Since the 3,4,5 or 6,8,10 triangles might not work well with a walker frame, what other integer triangles, or almost integer triangles, can you come up with to create a stronger frame? Alternatively, how could we use LEGO's bent lift-arms to create sturdy right triangle-based frames? The parts and their lengths are below. Remember, when counting how long a LEGO beam is, the first hole is always counted as 0! In other words, a beam with 9 holes has a length of 8. If you don't count LEGO beam lengths in this way then you won't be able to use the Pythagorean Theorem or Law of Cosines to solve for which beams to use as diagonal members.  How do you make cranks for 12 legged walkers with LEGO? Twelve legged walkers require each leg pair to be 120 degrees out of phase with its adjacent leg pairs. The only LEGO part we found with an 120 degree angle was the Technic Rotor 3 Blade Liftarm (part #44374), which required additional parts to make into cranks, added width to the walker, and it was also kinda weak. Can you come up with a better solution?  Below is one idea. You can make an equilateral triangle with 3 Technic beams of the same length.  Add a 2nd equilateral triangle to it to create a 120 degree angle:  To transfer the rotation from one axle to another, LEGO parts with cross-shaped holes are needed. Below is one idea for making 120 degree cranks of length 4.    
It was amazing - so many interesting people to share passions with, and new creations to explore - thank you Organizers, NYSCI, Attendees, and Makers!
Here's some media from our corner of that huge faire. In case you are wondering, the piano you can hear in the background is how attendees controlled a video game - we heard crazy tunes all weekend!
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Ben VagleWelcome to DIYWalkers! I'm Ben Vagle, and I've been building mechanical walkers since I was 11 years old, both big and small. I started this blog to share what I've learned, and to collaborate with you. Let's see if we can take walkers to the next level! Categories
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