Lego Tower

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

New Corner Pillar Design


The tower I made back in October used 2x2 bricks stacked up for all the vertical pillars between layers. These are light and quite strong. The big problem with a stack of 2x2 is tipping. Even with some weight on them, they can be pushed sideways easily. I think I found a good solution to that problem. By using a different corner pillar design that has greater effective width I think it will be much less likely for individual pillars to tip over. The new design is still based on 2x2 bricks but every five layers a 1x6 is added in one direction. The next layer is another 1x6 at a 90 degree angle. This is repeated every five layers. At the other end of the 1x6s is a stack of 1x2s. Effectively each corner pillar is made up of three "sub" pillars a 2x2 in the middle and two 1x2 pillars at 90 degrees from each other. The three subpillars are joined into one piece by the 1x6 pieces. This structure is still very light which is important when a tower gets tall but is very stable in each of the two directions with the 1x2 subpillars. Since one of these new pillars is put in each corner, the overall structure seems much less likely to tip sideways at each level. I have a lot of 1x6 bricks but longer 1x bricks could be used like 1x8 or 1x10 for even more stability. This same approach could be used with the remaining pillars but I think it is unnecessary. The corners being less likely to tip seems to make the whole structure more stable.

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