Playing with Lego

 

It’s been over two weeks since the deadline for our design projects came and went. As it fit well with my dissertation I decided to try to hone my skills in terms of piston design. In the meantime I have thrown together a conrod in my spare time. The conrod isn’t quite up to the standards I’d like it to be yet, but it gives some perspective as to the shape of the set-up as a whole. Although it was banned in F1 years ago, i decided to design the conrod from a beryllium-aluminum alloy, due to its favorable mechanical properties (beryllium has the lowest specific density of any homogeneous material with suitable properties for engineering applications). This entire piston & connecting rod assembly has a mass of 355g, but as mentioned, work on the conrod is at a draft stage and the piston design has yet to be validated by professor Goddard, so there is definitely room for improvement.

When I was a child I loved playing with Lego. I would spend hours designing and building cars a planes only to destroy them and start over. Although sitting endlessly in front of a computer screen and building digital models is a lot harder on the eyes, I am glad to report that I get the same satisfaction I did as a child playing with those small Danish blocks. It’s a nice feeling to finally be happy with the work you do, my hope now is that I can land a job doing it!