Hey everyone, Jason here. Today I'm excited to show you my latest custom LEGO model which is this
kinetic sculpture of Sisyphus endlessly pushing his boulder. So, before I explain
how all the mechanics work I thought I would show you the base of the model where I have
depicted my interpretation of some of the scenes of Sisyphus' life
in this Greek relief style. On the front we have him in his chariot and horse
attacking some of the visitors to his kingdom. This is actually Hades in the
underworld being chained up. He was actually supposed to chain Sisyphus up
but Sisyphus managed to turn the tables on him. Here he is hosting a
dinner party and stabbing some of his guests. He really was a pretty evil dude.
This is Zeus who finally had enough of his shenanegans and punished him
by having him roll the boulder up the mountain. And of course Zeus cursed the boulder
so that it would always roll back down when it got to the top. The stand also
opens up in the front and the back, so you can really see what's going on on
the inside. Right now I have it powered using this Power Functions M motor and
battery box which you can just turn on. You can also disengage the motor just by
sliding this gear to the back and once that's done
you can close it up again and you can see that there's an axle sticking out
of the back which you can attach a crank to. And then you can operate it manually.
So, let's take a look at the mechanics. Of course, I have this stand-alone model so you can really
see what's going on and it's all driven by this central shaft in the middle.
And if we take a look at the legs first you'll see that it drives through these two gears to
this crankshaft at the bottom here,
and that drives the leg pushers, which are just simple beams, and they are attached to the feet at
each end to get that nice fluid
walking motion. The driveshaft also drives this crankshaft up here through
this Technic chain in the back,
and that crankshaft drives the body pusher which basically behaves the same as the leg pushers.
The geometry is just a little bit different so that the body doesn't move as much as the feet.
At the same time it is also connected to the boulder through these
two links here and the boulder pivots at its base, and that way as the body rocks forward
the boulder also moves forward. And that way we get this nice bending of the arms
which really makes it look like he's pushing the boulder. One important thing to note is that the
drive shaft is connected to the rear crankshaft using a 12 tooth gear
meshed to a 24 tooth gear, and that way every time the legs go through one full motion
cycle the boulder and the upper body actually go through two cycles and in
that way every time either the legs gets pushed to the back, the boulder and the upper
body move forwards. If you'd like to see how it is built in more detail or even try and
build one yourself I have created building instructions for the core model which
you can find over at jkbrickworks.com
As always I hope you enjoyed the model and the video.
Thanks for watching, keep on building and I'll see next week.