Subject:
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Re: New Civil Engineer - Lego vs Meccano debate
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.uk, lugnet.mediawatch
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Date:
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Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:18:09 GMT
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Viewed:
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1167 times
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www.minifig.co.uk/web/images/temp/lego-7.jpg
Dear Paul
I enclose an image of the Lego model which was used by myself (and my 9 year
old daughter) to develop the concept for maintaining the horizontality of
the wheel. It also had a "sophisticated" lego brick attachment which looked
at the idea of a water driven wheel using ballast tanks in the form of hooks
at the end of each arm.
best regards
Tony Kettle
"James Stacey" <James@minifig.co.uk> wrote in message
news:GHAE43.K3p@lugnet.com...
> The article:
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> Ensuring the gear ratio is correct
> Construction News 17/05/2001
> Page: 22 23
> Record Number: 53996
>
> THE 35 m-high Falkirk Wheel will allow boats to enter one of two 30-m long
> double-walled gondolas from either a short aqueduct off the Union Canal or • a
> large circular basin linked to the Forth & Clyde 25 m beneath.
>
> Each 150 tonnes gondola is supported at its ends by a 35 mlong curved arm,
> which turn about a 3.8 m diameter axle.
> A set of 10 hydraulic motors, housed in the axle's fixed end bearing, • rotate
> the shiplift through 180 degrees. This is the only motive power needed, as
> the rotating arms also indirectly turn the gondolas to ensure they always
> remain horizontal.
>
> A series of cogs and gears - positioned between the circular rim in the • arm
> housing the gondola, and a fixed gearing ring on the aqueduct wall - • rotate
> the boat-filled caissons at the same speed as the wheel turns.
>
> This simple yet innovative mechanism was devised by the tendering team's
> architect RMJM, whose partner Tony Kettle arrived at a brainstorming • meeting
> clutching a model of the mechanism made from his son's Lego.
>
> "It was a brilliant idea, " Butterley Engineering's Colin Castledine, a
> civil engineer, admits grudgingly, before adding with a wry smile."But the
> gear ratios on his model were all wrong and the gondolas would have turned
> over."
>
>
>
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: New Civil Engineer - Lego vs Meccano debate
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| (...) Do you perchance have an updated link to that, I am getting a 404 trying to go to it. The entire idea of the Falkirk Wheel is totally daft. :-) I mean that as the highest sort of praise, mind you. Only in the UK would this even have been (...) (22 years ago, 17-Apr-02, to lugnet.loc.uk)
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