TOOLS

Gearing Ratio Calculator

Check out the Beta version my Lego Technic Gearing Ratio Calculator Tool:

This tool allows you to upload your Lego Technic project .ldr file and analyse the gearing ratios between any two connected gears or axles. Currently supports most gears, axles, worm gears, some differentials, cv joints and universal joints. See the video tutorial on how to use it. It is a work in progress and I would love to hear your feedback on it. Click here to try it out.

Note: As of 25 Septemeber 2021 the tool supports CV joints, linear speed via the radius of the component and improves on the frame rate for higher numbers of parts in a model).

Technic Elbow Art

This is a tool to create "Lego Technic Elbow Art" - a series of intertwined elbow pieces as a single sequence. Choose your dimensions and search parameters and search for new dense solutions and set a record! 

Download your Elbow Art as an .ldr file and build it yourself. Click here to try it out!

Lego Technic Powered Up 3 Speed Automatic gearbox 2

24 Jul 2021

This video presents a revised version of an earlier Lego Technic Powered Up 3 speed automatic gearbox. The previous gearbox used a differential for torque measurement and used a powered up large motor to convert the differential rotation into a torque measurement.

However as it turns out it is possible to simply use the main motor (Lego Techni powered up XL Motor) speed measurement to infer the torque on that motor simply through the inverse linear relationship between the motor speed and it's load or torque. This saves the entire torque measurement portion of the gearbox resulting in a more compact and robust design.

The Lego Powered Up app was used on an iphone to program the automatic gear switching points using a calculation based on an electric motor power curve and the gearing ratio between the current gear and the gear being switched down to.

The final lego technic 3 speed automatic gearbox using the Powered Up components is demonstrated at the end of the video.

More to explore

Lego Technic Pi Day Machine

14 Mar 2022

 

Here I present a Pi Day special Lego Technic machine that produces a gearing ratio of Pi/8 using a 56mm wheel driving a 13x13 square wheel.

The correctness of the ratio is confirmed by matching it with output of a 2 differential gearing system that produces a ratio of 355/9...read more

Powered Up 3 Speed Automatic Gearbox

10 Jun 2021

The lego technic Powered Up motors and functions have been used to create a lego technic 3 speed automatic gearbox. With the lego Powered Up functions you can accurately control motor speed and motor position, as well as being able to measure the angular position of a motor. These new possibiliti...read more

Lego Technic 3 Speed Automatic Gearbox

1 Jul 2020

Here a Lego Technic 3 speed automatic gearbox is presented. The gearbox automatically switches between one of 3 gear ratios, namely a ratio of 1, 1/3rd and 1/9th depending on the load on the output.  It uses two 2 speed automatic transmissions in series to create the three speed automatic ge...read more

Spirograph Machine

19 Dec 2023

Here I present a Lego Technic Spirograph machine programmed using Powered Up. The powered up controller is used to maintain the desired gearing ratio between the turn table and the inner gear to draw a spirograph that replicates the real original spirograph drawing toy.

...read more

Lego Technic Powerful 2 Speed Auto Gearbox

3 Jun 2022

Here I present my design for a compact and powerful Lego Technic 2 speed automatic gearbox.

The gearbox uses the Lego Technic Powered Up functions to detect speed and deduce torque from that to make gear switching decisions. The gearbox switches between a high gear of 1 to 4, to a low gea...read more

Lego Technic New 12/20 Gear High Speed Friction Test

21 May 2022

The Lego Technic set 42140 App-Controlled Transformation Vehicle introduces two new gears - a flat version of the 12 tooth bevel gear and a flat version of the 20 tooth bevel gear. These gears are designed to have less friction.

In this follow up video I measure the high speed difference ...read more

New Flat 12/20 Gear Friction

23 Apr 2022

The Lego Technic set 42140 App-Controlled Transformation Vehicle introduces two new gears - a flat version of the 12 tooth bevel gear and a flat version of the 20 tooth bevel gear. These gears are designed to have less friction.

In this video I measure the difference in gearing efficiency...read more

Measuring Gearbox Efficiency

6 Nov 2021

This video describes a method for measuring the efficiency of a gearbox using the Lego Technic Powered Up hub. Gearbox efficiency is defined as the ratio of the output power to the input power and here I show how to measure each of these values to allow you to calculate the overall efficiency.read more

Lego Technic Gearing Ratio Calculator Tool

16 Jul 2021

Here I present my new Lego Technic Gearing Ratio Calculator tool. This tool allows you to upload your Lego Technic .ldr (Lego Draw) file and it will simulate the gearing system and visualize it as well as showing the gearing ratios relative to the input component.

The tool can be accessed...read more