These images have been chosen for their uniqueness. Subject matter ranges from
historic events, to really cool phenomena in science and engineering, to relevant
place, to ingenious contraptions, to interesting products (which now has its own
dedicated Featured Product
category).
Did you wish when you were a kid that
you could get paid for building stuff out of LEGO blocks? It probably never occurred
to me at the time (not much did), but obviously it occurred to the people at
Bright Bricks. While a lot of artists create their LEGO sculptures out of a
sense of artistry[sic] je ne sais quoi, for these folks it's serious business. Bright
Bricks has paying customers who use the talent of the team to design and build promotional
props. In this case, Rolls-Royce contracted with them to prepare a half-size scale
model of their new Trent 1000 gas turbine jet engine, which is destined for Boeing's
787 Dreamliner. According to
Gizmodo, it took 152,455 LEGO bricks to build the 677-pounds, 6.5-foot-long
model. Time from start to finish was an incredible eight weeks by four people -
pretty amazing! "It required the builders to go through the actual CAD plans of
the engine to reproduce every component accurately with Lego pieces." No doubt critical
detail was omitted from the plans.
No cost info could be found, but the cost of the LEGO blocks alone was probably
pretty high. LEGO donates material for some non-profit projects, but I'm guessing
for commercial ventures like this that they have to buy everything - albeit probably
at a good bulk price since it is good free advertising for LEGO.
The video below
is a time-lapse compilation of the team building the engine. You can see the computer
sitting there with the construction details on it. These images are captured from
the videos.
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling
2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed
formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit
design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at
the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps
while tying up your telephone line, and a nice lady's voice announced "You've Got
Mail" when a new message arrived...
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and text used on the RF Cafe website are hereby acknowledged.
All trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other rights of ownership to images
and text used on the RF Cafe website are hereby acknowledged.
