This Excellent Lego Domino Machine Can Effectively Perform Self-Stacking

November 26, 2022 By Jozeph P

(Image Credit Google)

Although the game can be traced back over 700 years, most people know Dominoes as a fun chain reaction toy that is only fun when knocking them down and not the stressful process of stacking them up. With this in mind, Grant Davis created a self-stacking and self-toppling domino machine out of Lego that is an engineering marvel. It is relatively simple to construct machines that can stack domino tiles in long chains. Since the 1980s, there have been battery-powered toys that can drive along and drop dominoes one by one until they run out. Mark Rober even designed and built an automated domino machine capable of stacking 100,000 tiles in 24 hours, outperforming even the most skilled human stackers. When it comes to resetting a domino chain after they've all fallen, all of these automated machines fail. Usually, what's left is a jumble of scattered tiles that must be cleaned up and manually re-loaded into the stacking contraptions. What's the point of that? Davis envisioned a better solution: a machine that stacks and knocks down dominoes on its own, in an infinite loop with no human intervention. To make things even more difficult, they only used Lego to make it happen. Self-Stacking Domino Lego Machine

The design of the lifting mechanisms to reliably raise the individual dominoes after they've fallen, to a clever floor structure that opens to allow the reset mechanisms to do their thing, but quickly closes afterwards so the brick-built dominoes have something to fall on, all added to the machine's complexity. Adding to the confusion is the fact that dominoes never fall and end up in the same position twice: a problem Davis solved by hiding magnets from Lego train sets (used to couple train cars together) inside each domino, causing them to perfectly realign themselves with magnets in the floor when raised back up. All-in-all, Davis estimates that they used over 4,000 Lego pieces to construct this machine and spent 300 to 400 hours perfecting its design over evenings and weekends. It topples and raises a set of ten dominoes every seven seconds, which means that if left running for 24 hours, it could set a world record by stacking 120,000 dominoes in a day. If you're still hungover from Thanksgiving, this 12-minute video is a fascinating look at how far the engineering limits of Lego can be pushed. Also, Read: Robert Kraft 81 ties the knot with Dana Blumberg 47 in star-studded wedding

By Jozeph P

Journalism explorer, tech Enthusiast. Love to read and write.

This Excellent Lego Domino Machine Can Effectively Perform Self-Stacking

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