My latest MOC, “Happy Hourglass,” was built for Eurobricks’ collaboration, “Potion Shoppe,” displayed at Brickworld Chicago 2019.
This project was originally planned as a time realm for Eurobricks’ world tree the prior year, but since I couldn’t make the trip, I repurposed the gears and clock face as a fanciful glockenspiel-style grandfather clock.
As usual, the final design weighed in heavier than anyone anticipated, so the table underneath was designed and built last. For the tabletop, I sandwiched 2 layers of 4x (32x32) Technic brick grids originally planned as risers for my plot of land in Happy Mountain (EB BW17). The result was quite indestructible, as it didn’t sag a bit! For the table legs, I modified the poles from my River Wheel, filling the hollow center with perpendicular Technic bricks.
The gears in both the turntable and clock face are another iteration of the high-torque gears from the River Wheel, this time adding 4 planetary gears inside the 11x11 Technic arches. Unfortunately, the 11x11 quarter circles don’t rotate smoothly when driven with 4 gears, since the driving gears all pass over the gaps simultaneously, leading to an eccentric, jerky motion. This led to frequent questions whether the hourglass had stopped working happily, only to be proven otherwise when it’d restart untouched within moments. As they say, there’s no stopping time!
Happy Hourglass and the Potion Shoppe (topic and pictures soon forthcoming) won Best Mechanical and Best Group Display, respectively, at Brickworld Chicago 2019.
View larger photos and videos on my flickr!
Edit: I have posted an updated video here.