Back to the brick

It's an air powered LEGO engine. Sure it's been done before (and will probably be done again!)

My version was directly inspired by this one--

A LEGO Technic ``Steam'' Engine

I built that exact engine and had it displayed at our last Hobby Show, and was very impressed with the 'eclectic' building method, what, with the various angles and all. However, I'm more of a straight and square builder myself so I decided to have a go at it last night and this is what I came up with.

Back to the brick

Looks very similar to the inspiration, but a little less, well, funky. I like the funky--don't get me wrong. But for my builds, I gotta have parallel lines

So here's a walk thru on how the thing works.

First, you need to add air to the system via the manual air pumps

The air is stored in these air storage tanks

The air is transferred to this switch

The switch makes this pneumatic cylinder go up and down

Which makes this beam go up and down like a teeter-totter

The other end of the beam will also then go up and down

Which will pull this cam around, thus changing linear motion into rotational motion

Which then turns the wheels

Not much to it.

Here's a YouTube vid of the thing working--

So there you have it. A one cylinder LEGO pneumatic engine. It wasn't the first, definitley won't be the last, but it's the one I built (last night).

See all the bricky pics here--LEGO Pneumatic Engine