The Contraption

So, Halloween was last week (one week ago today, in fact!) and, despite my infatuation with the toys, I did not dress up as a Lego. I wanted to dress up as The Shadow, the great dark superhero who shot people, laughed a lot, and wore a wide brim hat with a long red scarf and an overcoat. Alas, I was missing the wide brim hat. And the long red scarf. I do, however, have a black overcoat, but it's more a raincoat and not conducive to hiding guns (of which I also have none).

Now, that said, the boys ended up with a wealth of candy treasures, and I ended up with some leftovers. Very often I'll keep the leftovers and use them to decorate gingerbread houses. Considering that I also bought candy canes to mix in with the Halloween candy - and I have leftovers! - this seems like a really fine idea indeed.

But... I also wanted to do something different. It's so boring to reach into the candy dish, pull out a candy, and snack on it. I wanted something different. Something better. Something... lego.

So I built myself a lego candy dispenser.

Seriously, is this contraption not awesome? Let's take a closer look.

The bowl itself is of a large enough diameter to allow an arm to sweep around and push the candy around and, ultimately, down a chute. The arm is long enough, but just not quite deep enough; I need to add one more 1x deep piece to it. If you look closely at the center you'll see the cylinder that spins the arm.

The arm itself is driven by these gears; they spin and the arm spins.

The gears themselves are driven by this handle. I turn this handle which turns the gears which turns the arm and pushes the candy down the chute (yes, this sounds like a kids song).

But wait! There's more!

There is a second contraption involved. After the candy is pushed down the chute it is collected in a bucket. I have yet another contraption to push the bucket along like a train to dump the candy onto the desk:

Looking closely inside the machine you can see where the gear will turn. It's spokes hook into the bottom of the bucket and push it forward and back.

Of course, it wouldn't be fun if it didn't actually work. I really need to hook up my NXT controller with it's motors to this contraption. Now that'd be epic.

This is my day 9 #hiveblopomo post. And #posh too!

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(c) All images and photographs, unless otherwise specified, are created and owned by me.
(c) Victor Wiebe

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About Me

Amateur photographer. Wannabe author. Game designer. Nerd. 
General all around problem-solver and creative type.

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