Steem Lego Dune Buggy Build

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#hive-142010 is a Lego community :)

I received the shipment of bulk Lego I bought with Steem from @steemmatt. ERMAGURD I am a happy eyeball.

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There are a ton of Lego Technic pieces, which I am particularly excited about because that was a big hole in my current collection. When I started building up my collection as an adult I mostly bought cheap bulk lots on eBay, which were by and large stripped of most cool parts. Bulk Technic lots cost 2-3 times more than normal Lego lots.

I actually don't have much experience building with Technic pieces at all, as we only had a couple small Technic sets in our family collection growing up as well. So the first thing I did once I dumped out the box was start a freestyle Technic build.

Let's start at the very end

So here is what I ended up with :) Process to follow.

This is a fun little toy car, my kids quite like playing with it as it is very responsive to the touch. Push it forward or backward and it will come back toward you when you let go, and the spring in the frame shocks has a very pleasing feel when you push down on it from above.

Process

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These were the first few pieces I slapped together, I ended up discarding the section on the right but the left side of this became the rear end of the finished dune buggy.

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I was thinking about doing a motorcycle at the beginning.

There is a gap in my process shots as I played around with a few different things before I settled on the below (still the same basic frame on the left but with two wheels, and a totally rebuilt section on the right).

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Click 'em to embiggen

In the finished build I didn't really do anything with the gearing you can see above (where the frame hinges). If I were going to put more time into this build I would flip the gears around so the larger gear was on top and attach a lever to it that you could use to mechanically set the height of the buggy off the ground. And of course, add a steering wheel and gear the front axle to turn.

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I added independent front wheels on shocks. At this point I was also using two flexible tube parts as shocks for the back section. This allowed quite a lot more movement than the final design I settled on with spring shocks in the back as well. You can see that the tubes pulled the buggy up into a more upright position at equilibrium:

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Next I added the rubber band motor.

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This is a very simple design where two rubber bands are secured through a hole in the middle of the rear axle and looped around a drum above. Rolling forward or backward winds the rubber band up around the rear axle, which will propel the vehicle in the opposite direction when released. It actually was strong enough to crawl right over my hand set in front of it on the carpet! As you can see in the video above it had no problem at all with piano keys :)

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Finally I added spring shocks to the frame and called 'er done :)


Original Lego design & photographs by moi


Subscribe to the Lego community: https://beta.steemit.com/created/hive-142010

Thanks to @galenkp for creating the community, @steemmatt for helping me transmogrify Steem into Lego, and @brickmanbrad for having an online Lego store that accepts Steem!


Three cheers for real life use cases for Steem! LEGO! LEGO! LEGO!



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40 comments
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Lego community gonna moon the STEEM :D

This stuff was my first proper toy, the hours spent building things!

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Yeah, I loved Lego more than anything else when I was a kid really :) It is so cool now to share it with my sons, @thingone is becoming a master builder already
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Less screen and more work with hands. Good man!

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Could you imagine it? We'd all be rollin' it it brah! Lol

Money, not Lego.

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Yeah I've rolled on enough Lego to know that isn't so pleasing!

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I concur...And I've never had enough money to roll on so...Moon away steem!

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Are you serious? That's gold!

I'd say maybe grab one in readiness...But don't jinx it by wearing it too soon.

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I'm tempted, maybe at $1 :)

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It's all good if one has 27 gazillion steem...I don't. I'd put the shirt on for...$9 let's call it $12 ok, $14!

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$14 would be T-shirts for everyone!

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Yeah I was gonna say, I think a lot of people would be happy with even $1 steem LOL

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According to the Bible, Is the Bible final and complete? How does it support science? (Part 3 of 4)

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Well aren't you quite the engineer. This is gold man! Steampunk Lego buggy!

I'm kinda jealous as I don't have the ability to freestyle through not having the blocks. All my Lego is sets so far. Gotta get me some blocks because freestyling is whats up! I could break up all my Lego Technic of course, but I think I'd regret mixing the parts.

My wife Faith and I were saying last week that we are going to find some blocks and do some freestyling together...So romantic!

Thanks for joining the Lego Community, and with such a powerful first post too. Keep it coming; You certainly don't have any shortage of blocks.

Nice work on getting the hive tag right. Lol.

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What you doin' Friday night? We Lego freestylin!

!ENGAGE 25

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Lego freestylin' can be romantic right? Lol

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No rules against candles and a bottle of wine in the mix :)

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Well, I was thinking corn chips and salsa, but ok, candles and wine it is!

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for the large technic sets you get I wouldn't want to break them up either. I have a ton of Lego but hardly any sets at all LOL You should definitely get some bricks, it does scratch a different itch to design something from scratch vs. following instructions.

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Yes, that's the plan actually. I am in the middle of that 4x4 build right now (which is looking sexy by the way) and the next Lego I buy will be some blocks for freestlying. Your buggy is so cool! I might hit @steemmatt up to see what he has.

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You know, I would say that the shipping from the US is probably prohibitive... but in all honesty once you make a post about buying Lego with Steem the post will probably earn the difference in the shipping cost vs. buying from an Australian source with fiat LOL

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I was thinking the same thing actually, more costly, but not. I think the cool factor of it carries some benefit too of course. We'll see, maybe he has something suitable.

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and don't forget @brickmanbrad's online Lego store accepts Steem as payment and he is based in Australia to boot

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Yep, down in Tassie. I've seen his online store...Planning to buy some stuff. (Need to win the lotto!) 😂

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Hah! Yeah that is basically how I feel about Lego sets in general - I would love to buy them but they are too damn expensive for me. When I win the lotto I will get some of those rad technic kits like you have been building. So cool that you will be able to remote control drive the one you are making now!!!

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If I win the lotto I'll buy you some. Promise.

That 4x4 I'm building now is cool. I have a post going up later today about stage one of the build actually. Really looking forward to having this one working.

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Crush that piano! I never had Technic... Only the regular lego. Mostly the Castle stuff!

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Yeah we had a bunch of the old castle bricks growing up... but the super old castle yellow castle bricks from before they even had gray castle wall sections :) My parents started buying Lego for my older sisters from basically as soon as Lego USA first came out, and we had a collection that spanned all the way down through my younger brother (16 years between the birth of my oldest sister and my younger brother). That Lego collection is still up at my parents' house but we siblings can't decide who gets the collection so it has stayed with my parents LOL

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Seems like the Lego family on Steemit is growing. Nice to see many other parents hooked on Lego as much or even more than the kids.

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Yeah for sure - Lego is so good for creativity and hand coordination. I don't know if I could say more so than my kids, as my oldest is SUPER into Lego as well... but yeah I really love Lego myself. So satisfying to click the bricks into place and see something come to life before your eyes.

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So many things are really cool about this @carlgnash!

Not only that you created something awesome, got something for your collection... but also this was real commerce happening in the Steem community... something being traded without the use of fiat money! We need more examples like this to bring Steem to the greater world!

And then, of course, how awesome to have something like a Lego community here! Something the world can relate to... forget "join Steem" for a bit, and instead consider "join our Lego community!" That's a MUCH easier "sell" in the real world.

Awesomeness all around!

=^..^=

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Yes, I totally agree on all fronts! Onboarding people into communities where the focus isn't "this is a blogging platform where you can make money" but is instead "this is a community for posting about this thing we are all interested in" is a much better model for user retention on Steem.

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I am always amazed about what can be created with Lego pieces. Now, there's a show on television!

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