Hey, what is up everybody? Today, we are going to dive deep into this crazy LEGO walking machine
that I've been working on, and this all started a couple of months ago when this video made the
rounds, and it is a toy from 1987 produced by Bandai, and it's clearly some kind of science
fiction military vehicle, and I have no idea what the origins of it are but I was really
intrigued by the walking mechanism. It's unorthodox, completely impractical, and ridiculously awesome.
So, of course I had to build a LEGO version. Now, I wasn't the only one with this thought.
There was a thread on r/lego about how it could be done, and user tralux21 actually sketched
out a concept for the loop and how it could work, which is pretty much how I ended up building it.
So, big shout out to them for their conceptual design. And it actually only took a few days to get this
working prototype up and running and it has since been sitting on my build table waiting for parts
and time to finish it up. And I ended up going with a retro future design style, as some kind
of scientific research vehicle, and it works quite well it can even go up and down some shallow steps,
and walk up and down a slight incline. There is no way to steer it unfortunately, but it is still
pretty awesome. So, how does this all work? There is obviously a loop with two pairs of connected legs,
which can just swing freely on their own. So, as the loop flips over, it's just gravity that keeps
the legs oriented so that the feet are facing down. With this basic leg design, they can actually only
be as long as the distance between the legs, so that as the trailing legs flip over, they
clear the top of the leading legs. The leading legs then become the trailing legs and it just repeats.
We can actually overcome that limitation with a slightly more elaborate leg design
like in this one. In this version the legs flare out by a few plates so that as it flips over
the lower section of the trailing legs can pass outside of the upper section of the leading legs.
The drive unit is essentially a trolley that drives along the inside of the loop
on a set of wheels. The wheels are just a pair of half bushings with these small rubber tires.
And there's a simple gear train going down to a single drive axle that is powered by a motor.
The key to all this working is that the trolley has to be heavy enough to actually lift the back
end of the loop and the trailing legs up when it gets to the front. If it's not heavy enough
it just doesn't work. The trolley will drive up the front of the loop but it really can't get anywhere.
So, in order to add enough weight, I'm using four of these standard LEGO weight bricks which each weigh
around 53 grams, and in total with the motor and the battery and all the other pieces, this trolley
weighs around 380 grams, which is pretty beefy. And, as you can see it counter balances the other end
of the loop quite nicely, and you can even pose it in different positions and it will stay balanced.
As a result, as the trolley drives up the front of the loop it pulls the front end down and can
continue driving as the entire loop flips over. The trolley then continues to drive along the
bottom of the loop to get back to the front and it just keeps going. When the loop flips
over, the front of the loop drops down pretty close to the ground, so there actually isn't a
lot of clearance for the trolley, which means it has to be quite compact. So, for this version of
the trolley I'm using a Circuit Cubes motor and battery controller because they're just so much
smaller than any of the LEGO components. And even still it results in some pretty tight clearance.
In the long legged version there is quite a bit more room underneath, so I believe the Empire
will have a lot more power options available to them. I'm not sure if I'll finish up the Imperial
version. Let me know in the comments if you think I should and what kind of vehicle it should be.
And that's about it for this one. As always, thanks for watching, keep on building,
and I'll see you in the next one.