Otto Jaques Design, Build & Lego Robotics

Lego Drop Ride

I wanted to have a drop tower like the one that you would find in a theme park because I love them. I wanted to build a mini one for my figures first I built a small base and then a tall spike the spike was really wobbly so I found a couple of ways to reinforce It Then I had to figure out how to make the drop system work.

 

I do not have any Lego chains, so I just used string. The first string I used was thick, and it kept coming off the world that I’d put at the top for it to run through, so I changed to a slightly thinner string. This worked much better as it had an easier time flowing through the wheel. Then I had to build the cart that would go up and down.

 

 My immediate thought was that I wanted it to go all the way up to the top, hold up, then drop. I went through a few variations until I found a small lever that, when it got to the top, a pin would push it up and release the string. Now I have the cart done, all I had to do was motorise it. I got my remote control, a motor, and a hub. And then put some gears on the motor and wrapped string around now it could spin and the cart would come up to the top and fly back down but most of the time the gears would come off and the string would derail from the wheel so I move the motor slightly to the left and that fixed that problem now I had a black bass plate surrounding the spike so many figures could stand up and I also found a place for the hub to sit and then it was finished

Problems - & How I solved them

Problem with the tower The first problem was that the tower was too wobbly and it needed reinforcement so we use some clever building techniques and sandwiched it in between some technic pins

The next problem was the way to get it to release the string so the cart would drop.

My first idea was to use just enough strings that when it got to the top it would fall out but then I realised that would not even pull the cart up so then I found a technique piece that looks a bit like NL and put it in between a pin and raise it up a bit and then I connected a pin to the top of the tower and then when it went up, it would hit the L shaped piece and it would push up and release the string