Brilliant Self-Stacking Lego Domino Machine Is Perpetually Mesmerizing

Although it’s a recreation that may hint its origins again over 700 years, most individuals know Dominoes as a enjoyable chain response toy that’s truly solely enjoyable with regards to knocking them down, not the worrying strategy of stacking them up. With that in thoughts, Grant Davis constructed a self-stacking and self-toppling domino machine utilizing nothing however Lego, and it’s an engineering marvel.

Building machines that may stack domino tiles in lengthy chains is comparatively easy. In reality, there have been battery-powered toys that may do this for the reason that ‘80s, driving along and dropping dominoes one by one until they run out. Even Mark Rober designed and built an automated domino machine that can stack 100,000 tiles in 24 hours, far outperforming even the most talented human stackers.

Where all of these automated machines fail, is when it comes to resetting a domino chain after they’ve all fallen. What’s normally left is a multitude of scattered tiles that must be cleaned up, and manually re-loaded again into the stacking contraptions. Where’s the enjoyable in that? Davis needed a greater answer: a machine that each stacks dominoes and knocks them over all by itself, many times, in an infinite loop requiring no human intervention. And to make issues further difficult, they restricted themselves to Lego to make it occur.

There have been many layers of complexity to constructing this machine, from designing the lifting mechanisms to reliably elevate the person dominoes after they’ve fallen, to a intelligent flooring construction that opens to permit the reset mechanisms to do their factor, however rapidly closing afterwards so the brick-built dominoes have one thing to fall on. Further complicating issues is the truth that dominoes by no means fall and find yourself in the identical place twice: an issue that Davis solved utilizing magnets borrowed from Lego’s practice units (used to couple practice vehicles collectively) hidden inside every domino inflicting them to completely realign themselves with magnets within the flooring when raised again up.

All-in-all, Davis estimates they used over 4,000 Lego items to construct this machine, and spent 300 to 400 hours over evenings and weekends perfecting its design. It topples and raises a set of 10 dominoes each seven seconds, which signifies that if left operating for twenty-four hours, it might probably set a world document with 120,000 dominoes stacked in a day’s time. If you’re nursing a turkey hangover immediately, this 12-minute video is an enchanting take a look at simply how far the engineering limits of Lego will be pushed.