Although it ’s a game that can trace its origins back over 700 twelvemonth , most people make love Dominoes as a fun string reaction toy that ’s actually only fun when it come to knocking them down , not the stressful process of stack them up . With that in brain , Grant Davisbuilt aself - stacking and ego - toppling Antoine Domino machineusing nothing but Lego , and it ’s an engineering marvel .
Building machines that can heap Antoine Domino tile in farsighted chains is comparatively simple . In fact , there have been battery - power plaything that can do that since the ‘ 80s , get along and dropping dominoes one by one until they play out . EvenMark Roberdesigned and build anautomated domino machinethat can stack 100,000 tiles in 24 hour , far outperforming even the most gifted human stackers .
Where all of these automated machines fail , is when it come to resetting a domino chain after they ’ve all pass . What ’s usually leave alone is a mess of dust tiles that want to be cleaned up , and manually re - loaded back into the stacking gismo . Where ’s the play in that ? Davis want a beneficial solution : a machine that both stacks dominoes and knocks them over all on its own , again and again , in an countless grommet require no human intercession . And to make things extra challenging , they limited themselves to Lego to make it hap .
Gif:YouTube - Grant Davis
There were many layers of complexity to building this machine , from plan the lifting mechanism to reliably promote the single Fats Domino after they ’ve fallen , to a clever floor bodily structure that opens to allow the reset mechanisms to do their thing , but quickly come together afterwards so the brick - built domino have something to flow on . Further complicating things is the fact that dominoes never come down and end up in the same side doubly : a job that Davis resolve using attraction take over from Lego ’s geartrain Set ( used to couple on train car together ) hidden inside each Fats Domino do them to absolutely realign themselves with magnet in the floor when raised back up .
All - in - all , Davis calculate they used over 4,000 Lego piece of music to build this machine , and spend 300 to 400 hours over evening and weekends perfect its aim . It tumble and raises a Seth of 10 half mask every seven seconds , which means that if leave run for 24 hour , it would potentially set a worldly concern phonograph recording with 120,000 domino pile in a day ’s time . If you ’re nursing a Republic of Turkey hangover today , this 12 - minute telecasting is a fascinating look at just how far the technology limit of Lego can be pushed .
DominoesGamesGamingLegoMark Rober
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