LEGO Technic Umbrella

LEGO Umbrella

I was inspired to make an umbrella out of LEGOs after taking a stroll outside during a rainy storm. The umbrella I held was not strong. The fiberglass arms of the umbrella bent whilst the umbrella faced the wind. After a few minutes of battling the wind, a stiffer one T-boned me and blew the umbrella inside out. 

I thought I could make a stronger umbrella out of LEGO Technic parts.

The umbrella has 6 arms, for 6 is the largest divisor of a full circle I could find.

Pictured below are the bases for the top joint and center moving joint.

Assembled Umbrella, no legs

Umbrella Legs

Fully Assembled Umbrella

Unfortunately, the joints between the LEGO Technic beams using the two pin connectors is rather weak, so the umbrella bends a lot. (video?)

A second, more durable version might be built. Depends on the amount of LEGO beams I have left. (Update, I took apart the umbrella for another project... heh)

Lego Vending Machine (Elementary School)

This is a lego vending machine my brother and I build when I was in fourth grade. The mechanism to recognize quarters and dispense the candy was inspired by many other designs at the time, but the rest was designed by the two of us. There are three layers.

The bottom layer houses the slide to move the candy to the front. Next to that part is the coin safe where the quarters drop down into, along with a locking mechanism for that safe.

The second layer composes of the coin reception and mechanism to dispense candy. Coins smaller than quarters slip under the arm and fall into the coin safe. Unfortunately this means someone can put a washer the size of a quarter in and it will dispense candy...

The top layer holds all the candy which funnels into a 2x2 hole.

Because of a lack of bricks, the top was never finished.

Information on the previous versions
Because I was so young, I never thought to take pictures of earlier versions. The first version of this machine was slightly different from this final version. The major difference is in the placement of moving elements, specifically the coin pushing lever (the thing shaped like a F) and the dispenser, which dispenses the candy and is pushed by the coin. The original design had the candy dispenser closer to the customer, when viewed from the front. This was done to minimize the space the ramp to facilitate the movement of the candy to the customer's receptacle. However, this meant that the ramp to move the coin from the front of the machine had to go over the candy dispensing mechanism, which took a lot of space from the candy hopper on the top level and increased the complexity of the build. As a result, the F shaped coin pushing lever was moved to the front, and a ramp built into the arm allowed the coin to fall in place.