Hey everyone, Jason here. Last week I posted this model of the Cow Jumping Over the Moon, which I
built around my custom designed LEGO escapement mechanism. And since then I
thought it would be interesting to try
and build another model powered in the
same way. So I came up with this model, which is of two kids playing on a seesaw,
or a teeter-totter as it is often
called, and there are a couple little
things different about this model so
let's take a closer look. So, one of the
first things you might notice about this
model is that there is no obvious
hanging pendulum, and that is because I'm using the seesaw itself as the pendulum,
and if I take it off the base you can
see that when I displace it, it will swing
back and forth, and that is because the only real requirement for something to be a
pendulum is that the center of gravity
has to be below the pivot point. And that way
whenever you displace it, like so, gravity
will always keep pulling it back to a state of
equilibrium. The other thing I've done with this model is I've added this 3 to 1 gear reduction
between the escapement gear and the spool holding the weight, and in that way the
weight will actually travel a third of the
distance as it normally would if it was
attached directly to the escapement gear, and in that way we get three times the run time and this
model will run for about 15 minutes
without having to reset the weight. It
also means that the weight has to be
three times the mass is it would
normally have to be as well. And one
advantage of having this gearing system
is that when I need to reset the weight
I can just slide this gear forward on the
axle to disengage it, then I can rotate
it to bring the weight up,
and just slide it back to re-engage it. I
have put together building instructions
for the core escapement mechanism if you'd like to see how it is built or even try and
incorporate it into your own models. You
can find those over at jkbrickworks.com
If you have any questions feel
free to leave a comment.
As always thanks for watching, keep on
building, and I will see you next time.
