View allAll Photos Tagged CAD_drawings
Continuing our trip down memory lane of my 1972 vacation....
Here we see the "RV" Roseville Fruit train rolling past Tower A at the West end of Cheyenne, Wyoming. I spent about an hour this day up in the tower talking to the operator. One of my biggest rail fanning regrets is that I did not take any photos of the inside of the tower. I would not get a second chance as the tower was demolished at the end of this year. Even though the tower ceased to exist, for years afterward you could hear crews calling "we're rolling by the tower" on the scanner.
Using Bob Odland's notes, I made a CAD drawing of the tower years later. That drawing was used by Overland Models to manufacture a brass model of Tower A. I modeled Tower A junction on my model railroad and have one of the OMI models watching over it.
Type: supply vehicle
Manufacturer: Lockheed Martin Shipyards (formerly Lockheed Martin Co.)
Model: JP-07 Mammoth
Class: M-class
Reg: 1809246(17)
Affiliation: UN
Crew: 7
Cargo-capacity: 1.750.000 metric tons
Counterparts: Costaguana
__________________________________________________
I've started designing this ship in CAD way back in May of 2014. Initially I intended to build it out of paper/cardboard in a much smaller scale. At some point I tried to adapt the CAD drawings to the Lego format and began building. After a failed attempt which resulted in a scale I was not happy with I figured out a fitting size that would let my allow to translate my vision to Lego. After a very long building process I can say that I'm very happy to have actually finished this project.
Parts count: close to 6000 pieces
Full credit for the ring segment goes to Péter Ittzés.
……”CNC milled aluminium bowl depicting the Col du Galibier landscape, by Drummond Masterton. Inspired by landscape and geometry, Drummond Masterton uses a combination of hand drawing, 3D CAD (Computer Aided Design) software and industrial CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled milling machines to create unique objects. To create Grand Galibier, Masterton turned his hand-drawn maps into 3D CAD drawings, made test pieces to help refine the design, and then prepared a 60kg block of aluminium for milling. CNC milling machines are primarily used in industrial processes to speed up product manufacture. Masterton instead exploits it as a craft tool and takes hundreds of hours to produce a finished piece. The contours of the bowl represent the landscape around Col du Galibier (2645m) in the Southern Alps, France. In 1911 this area became one of the routes in the Tour de France, and the victory of Marco Pantani in 1998 inspired Masterton to explore the terrain. This bowl was created as a visual representation of the changing landscape that captured his imagination.”
We had a busy W/End with family up to stay, we took them to Enginuiy in Telford - Enginuity is a fun-filled, hands on science and engineering centre for all ages. This item took my eye (taken through glass on my phone). Thank you for all your visits, comments & faves - I shall now endeavour to ‘catch-up’. Alan:-)
For the interested I’m growing my Shutterstock catalogue regularly here, now sold 143 images :- www.shutterstock.com/g/Alan+Foster?rid=223484589&utm_...
©Alan Foster.
©Alan Foster. All rights reserved. Do not use without permission.……
Sir Arthur Heywood / Perrygrove Railway inspired flat wagon with a 1:4 scale 6' x 3' deck & wheelbase 1/2 of the wagon's length.
An image of the CAD drawing storage area in our Ottawa branch. Seeing the grid with the drawings sticking out like that I knew that I wanted to use my 14mm ultrawide to capture this one!
For my exam and everybody in the 4th year of Engineering (about 60 students) we needed too design, build and deliver a working Christmas balls packing machine in a time span of 10 weeks time. Here you guys can see an overshot of the machine.
Its was build in 14 separate segments. With magazines, encoding, filling stations, box sealing, palletizers and pallet sealing.
I personally worked on a palletizer and as the mechanical engineer of my group, I was mainly responsible for the CAD drawings, frame and conveyor line.
I also uploaded a video of it working to Youtube for anyone that is interested.
Dutch version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRjM_gzrNEY
English version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x072gZzKKg
Of every project that I have done at my school in the last 4 years this was the most fun to do. It was a pain at times, I made a several long days. But it was a great project to end with.
Because at this moment I'm busy with my final internship and will be done with school in May, if everything goes as planned and then it will be really the end of my school life. Because I'm planning to start working after I'm done.
prrt1steamlocomotivetrust.org/ - Please help fund the PRR T-1 Trust! They are a wonderful organization building a new 4-4-4-4 T-1 from scratch!
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A gorgeous, even if somewhat over-the-top depiction of, what to me looks a lot like a Hubble servicing mission. Note the non-tethered MMU-wearing Astronauts, representing the heady & all too cavalier vision of what future EVAs would look like. Note also that the orbiter is without the Remote Manipulator System arm…hmm.
Disappointingly/per SOP, the NASA photo whoevers botched the layout of the image; to include the ‘landscape’ orientation and the excessive cropping, lopping off half of the shuttle & half of HST’s aperture door and, in the process, the artists’ signatures.
The complete image was featured on the cover of the 2015 Winter Issue of “Pulsar”, the bi-annual newsletter of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA), at:
iaaa.org/CygnusX1/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Pulsar-2015-...
Credit: IAAA website
Within the newsletter, per the artist responsible, Rick Sternbach:
“Science Digest, Astronomy, and Sky & Telescope all featured this painting of the HST done as a collaboration between myself and Don Dixon. Extensive use of airbrush and acrylics, a similar rendering style, and detailed CAD drawings from Lockheed Sunnyvale allowed us to produce this orbital view a few years before Hubble was launched.”
With a flipped "order of billing", reference to it being Perkin-Elmer copyrighted & dated 1984. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯:
www.cosmographica.com/spaceart/Technology/index.html#img=...
Credit: Cosmographica website
Regardless, as a card-carrying member of IAAA’s peanut gallery - if you have even the slightest interest in this type of artwork - I highly recommend taking a look at the following gallery. I can attest that IAAA members are conscientious & consummate professionals constantly striving to create meaningful works:
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A group of men servicing and cleaning a T1.
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To many people, this is a worthless bit of slightly dog-eared junk, but to me, it is something of real interest and value. "It" is a coloured architects drawing from the Great Central Railway's drawing office at Marylebone, and shows details of the new canopies at Gainsborough Central Station, in Lincolnshire.
It's sadly undated, but I think it is from around 1920, and is beautifully done in pencil and watercolour on thick, glossy "paper": much more aesthetically pleasing than a modern CAD drawing, and worthy of framing. In fact, I must frame it, to conserve it - it is in a moderately delicate stage, so it will be staying rolled in it's tube now until it is framed.
Central Station had been built by the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway (the GCR's direct forebear), in 1849. At that time, the architects, Hadfield & Weightman of Sheffield, built the station with an overall, "train shed" roof covering the two through tracks. However, in 1921, the overall roof came down (perhaps to provide scrap iron for a wartime scrap drive), and was later replaced by more conventional canopies, as per these drawings.
The station, though still open, had all it's buildings pulled down in the 1970s, so no trace of these canopies survive on the ground - except as the odd mark in the platform surface where once stood an upright support.
In progress. Base and back cut out. There are some mistakes in cad drawings, but parts fit together.
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3" gator foam & aluminum plane sections. Conceptual design, cad drawings, detailing, fabrication coordination, installation.
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Early 18th century high tech. Still works perfectly as intended, operator error excepted.
Serves all your chart plotting, CAD drawing, ciphering needs at any altitude, in any weather conditions, marine environment tested tough. Some ink required. Graphite, vellum, and paper not included.
Cognitive & fine motor skills as well as deductive reasoning required for safe operation. Zero carbon footprint.
Setting up directly to fit dimensions and building without a CAD drawing is something I've been daydreaming about for awhile.
I got tired of building a one-off jig for each frame so I built this jig.
Now I can set it up according to the measurements in my CAD drawing, load the tubes and tack it all together.
Using the CAD drawing downloaded into the lab 60watt CNC laser the masks were precision cut in just under 3 minutes to and accuracy of 0.2 of a mm!...
www.1001pallets.com/2016/01/pallet-crafter-interview-8-ma...
For our first interview of 2016, we had the chance to ask some questions to Marc Anthony called "Pallet Man", founder of The Green Palette, a New-York based company that represents the art in reclaimed pallet furniture and the design in resourcing recyclable materials. If you think you deserve to be featured in the next interview, please, drop us an email.
Tell us a little more about you? Who you are? Where are you from?
My name is Marc Anthony I'm from New Paltz NY, I went to FIT for sustainable design and was a sales designer for Crate & Barrel & Restoration Hardware & Environment Furniture. In 2008 I decided to go at it on my own and after a failed attempt with a store in the East Village I went at it again in 2010 with The Green Palette in New Paltz, NY.
Why do you craft?
In 2008 I was importing from Indonesia and sending my auto-cad drawings there and went to visit the factory in Jakarta. I lived with a family for a month assisting them with my order and it was there I began to learn about woodworking and using salvaged materials to make furniture from. They were using reclaimed teak and carving into it making beautiful cabinetry.
Since when are you working with pallets? Why do you choose to work with wooden pallets?
Then in 2010 After the collapse of the economy I found it hypocritical to charge such high prices for reclaimed/recycled furnishings. So I thought about other ways to make furniture inexpensive yet recycled. I saw some pallets at a hardware store by my home and thought this could make some cool furniture. I taught myself the tricks and trades to building furniture with pallets there were some painful lessons in the beginning.
What are your can’t-live-without essentials?
I can't live without my sawzall I use it to take every pallet apart so I can use every square inch of the pallet to make something from. The demo blades last about 30-40 pallets before changing them.
How would you describe your style? Are there any crafters/artists/designers that you particularly look up to?
I love Tom Bina he designed for Environment Furniture years ago and now designs for Four Hands Furniture. He has a Franklin Lloyd Wright design sense to him where he adds the natural element of nature into his design aesthetic.
How is your workspace, how do you make it inspiring?
Our space is set up like an art studio we feel we are not a furniture factory, we are artists collaborating together making unique pieces everytime we build something. We hear our clients needs and we begin painting the scene they wish to envision their furnishing in.
What sorts of things are inspiring you right now? Where do you look for inspiration?
Anything with plumbing pipe is inspiring me these days, it adds an industrial element to the pallet and gives the pallet a more aesthetic design to it. I love going to Brimfield antique show in MA to get my inspiration and other antique trade market shows.
When do you feel the most creative?
Whenever I see garbage on the side of the road I begin rambling in my head thinking what can I make out of that.
We live in such a mass-produced, buy-it-now society. Why should people continue to make things by hand?
We have show people that a hand in waste is a hand in our future. The more we show what we can do with pallets the more conscious people become allowing their homes to be furnished in the wastes we failed to consume.
What is your favorite medium to work in (other than pallets)?
That would be plumbing pipes or scrap metals.
What are your tips for people who'd like to start crafting?
Find shared spaces that allow you to work their so you don't have to invest in all the tools right away. We have a work with us program letting people come to our facility for the day and work on their own designs. We show them how to use certain tools and then let them go about making their own masterpiece.
What is your guilty pleasure?
Burning and carving wood to make it look a 100 years old I'm getting better at it, they say ;)
What is your favorite thing to do (other than crafting)?
I write alot of Eco-poetry talking about connecting ourselves with nature and the environment. My IG marco_poetically has over 365 posts dealing with the daily struggles of mans greed and pollutants.
What do you recommend that most people do in terms of cleaning pallets and prepping them to become something else?
Whenever I take in pallets I sand them down first with an 80 grit paper. Then I wash them off in case anything is there that could be harmful. Then sawzall time its faster and salvages the wood the most. Using the crow bar cracks or splits the wood and sadly leaves you using maybe 30% of the wood the pallet has to offer.
We found you through Instagram where you are very active and through ETSY where you sell your pallet creations. Is that a full-time job and are you able to earn a decent living out of your recycled pallet works?
I run The Green Palette on Instagram & Etsy its a Corporation and we sell at markets in NYC 77th and Columbus and Brooklyn Artists & Fleas. We custom design for stores and restaurants and the trade as well. We staff right now 5-6 employees full time including myself. I have yet to make a salary from the business but I hope this will be a break out year for us and help me make a living too.
If someone want to start its own job in the pallet world, do you have any advice for him?
Yes start in your garage build crates and simple things watch your time and try to add your own artistic flair to it. Stand out from the rest don't just copy Pinterest designs.
Anything else you would like to tell to pallet community?
We need better press about THT and heat treated pallets so many people fear pallets are unsafe around their children or used for tables and beds. I try to assure them IKEA MDF and veneers are 10-times worse pollutants than a pallet could ever be.
Thanks Marc for this interview :)
To find more on The Green Palette: website, Instagram, Facebook & ETSY.
The heavily corroded rear crossmember removed. It looks outwardly fairly reasonable, particularly looking at it from the engine bay. It isn't though, with the ends almost rusted to nothing and the inner section loosing about 3/4 of its thickness.
A new member is being laser cut, folded and drilled from CAD drawings. The internal castings with be transferred over to the new one, and then it will be refitted before the bulkhead is repaired.
Dotsan did an amazing job for me producing the CAD drawings for our unusual buses in Nottingham England during the 1970s. He was patient, understanding and very helpful. I told him what I wanted and he did exactly that. What he did for me was amazing and the result is better than I expected.
Lego is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously colored interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Moulding is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, and China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in the Czech Republic. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second.
Films, games competitions, and eight Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. One of Europe's biggest companies, Lego is the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
History
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 the business began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, invented by Hilary Page in 1939 and patented in the United Kingdom in 1940 before being displayed at the 1947 Earl's Court Toy Fair. Lego had received a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that it purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.
The Lego Group's motto, "only the best is good enough" (Danish: det bedste er ikke for godt, literally "the best isn't excessively good") was created in 1936. Christiansen created the motto, still used today, to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. By 1951, plastic toys accounted for half of the company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine Legetøjs-Tidende ("Toy Times"), visiting the Lego factory in Billund in the early 1950s, wrote that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in children's toys, due in part to the high standards set by Ole Kirk.
By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: Their locking ability was still limited, and they were not yet versatile. In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; it took five years to find the right material for it, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer. A patent application for the modern Lego brick design was filed in Denmark on 28 January 1958 and in various other countries in the subsequent few years.
The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and is a range of blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children. In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.
In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program. In May 2013, the largest model ever created, made of over 5 million bricks, was displayed in New York City; a one-to-one scale model of a Star Wars X-wing fighter. Other record breakers include a 34-metre (112 ft) tower and a 4 km (2.5 mi) railway.
In February 2015, marketing consulting company Brand Finance ranked Lego as the "world's most powerful brand", overtaking Ferrari.
Lego bricks have acquired a reputation for causing extreme pain when stepped on.
Design
Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variations in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made presently, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Six bricks of 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.
Each piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When two pieces are engaged, they must fit firmly, yet be easily disassembled. The machines that manufacture Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 10 micrometres.
Primary concept and development work for the toy takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at their respective national markets. The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, split into three stages. The first is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holidays, while others interview children. The second stage is the design and development of the product based on the results of the first stage. As of September 2008 the design teams use 3D modelling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and testing by parents and children during the "validation" process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organisation for marketing and packaging.
Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS X and Windows which allows users to create their own digital Lego designs. The program once allowed customers to order custom designs with a service to ship physical models from Digital Designer to consumers; the service ended in 2012.
Manufacturing
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). As of September 2008, Lego engineers use the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimised by way of mould flow and stress analysis. Prototype moulds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production. The ABS plastic is heated to 232 °C (450 °F) until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the moulds using forces of between 25 and 150 tonnes and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The moulds are permitted a tolerance of up to twenty micrometres to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the moulds to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness. According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required.
Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be re-used in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold on to industries that can make use of it. Lego, in 2018, set a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly alternative to the ABS plastic.
Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Monterrey, Mexico; and most recently in Jiaxing, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in Kladno in the Czech Republic. The Lego Group estimates that in five decades it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. According to an article in BusinessWeek in 2006, Lego could also be considered the world's number-one tyre manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tyres a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012.
In December 2012, the BBC's More or Less radio program asked the Open University's engineering department to determine "how many Lego bricks, stacked one on top of the other, it would take for the weight to destroy the bottom brick?" Using a hydraulic testing machine, members of the department determined the average maximum force a 2×2 Lego brick can stand is 4,240 newtons. Since an average 2×2 Lego brick has a mass of 1.152 grams (0.0406 oz), according to their calculations it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse, which represents a stack 3,591 metres (11,781 ft) in height.
Private tests have shown several thousand assembly-disassembly cycles before the bricks begin to wear out, although Lego tests show fewer cycles.
In 2018, Lego announced that it will be using bio-derived polyethylene to make its botanical elements (parts such as leaves, bushes and trees). The New York Times reported the company's footprint that year was "about a million tons of carbon dioxide each year" and that it was investing about 1 billion kroner and hiring 100 people to work on changes. The paper reported that Lego's researchers "have already experimented with around 200 alternatives." In 2020, Lego announced that it would cease packaging its products in single-use plastic bags and would instead be using recyclable paper bags. In 2021, the company said it would aim to produce its bricks without using crude oil, by using recycled polyethylene terephthalate bottles, but in 2023 it reversed this decision, having found that this did not reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.
Set themes
Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, pirates, trains, (European) castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west, as well as wholly original themes like Bionicle and Hero Factory. Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City (a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973) and Lego Technic (a line aimed at emulating complex machinery, introduced in 1977).
Over the years, the company has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises and some from video games. These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, and Minecraft. Although some of these themes, Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, the company expressed in 2015 a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes and less upon such licensed themes. Some sets include references to other themes such as a Bionicle mask in one of the Harry Potter sets. Discontinued sets may become a collectable and command value on the black market.
For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots Vinicius and Tom.
One of the largest commercially produced Lego sets was a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and contained 5,195 pieces. It was surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal. A redesigned Millennium Falcon retook the top spot in 2017 with 7,541 pieces. Since then, the Millennium Falcon has been superseded by the Lego Art World Map at 11,695 pieces, the Lego Titanic at 9,090 pieces, and the Lego Architect Colosseum at 9,036 pieces.
In 2022, Lego introduced its Eiffel Tower. The set consists of 10,000 parts and reaches a height of 149 cm, which makes it the tallest set and tower but the second in number of parts after the World Map.
Robotics themes
Main articles: Lego Mindstorms, Lego Mindstorms NXT, Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0, and Lego Mindstorms EV3
The company also initiated a robotics line of toys called 'Mindstorms' in 1999, and has continued to expand and update this range ever since. The roots of the product originate from a programmable brick developed at the MIT Media Lab, and the name is taken from a paper by Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who developed the educational theory of constructionism, and whose research was at times funded by the Lego Group.
The programmable Lego brick which is at the heart of these robotics sets has undergone several updates and redesigns, with the latest being called the 'EV3' brick, being sold under the name of Lego Mindstorms EV3. The set includes sensors that detect touch, light, sound and ultrasonic waves, with several others being sold separately, including an RFID reader.
The intelligent brick can be programmed using official software available for Windows and Mac computers, and is downloaded onto the brick via Bluetooth or a USB cable. There are also several unofficial programs and compatible programming languages that have been made to work with the brick, and many books have been written to support this community.
There are several robotics competitions which use the Lego robotics sets. The earliest is Botball, a national U.S. middle- and high-school competition stemming from the MIT 6.270 Lego robotics tournament. Other Lego robotics competitions include FIRST LEGO League Discover for children ages 4–6, FIRST LEGO League Explore for students ages 6–9 and FIRST Lego League Challenge for students ages 9–16 (age 9–14 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico). These programs offer real-world engineering challenges to participants. FIRST LEGO League Challenge uses LEGO-based robots to complete tasks, FIRST LEGO League Explore participants build models out of Lego elements, and FIRST LEGO League Discover participants use Duplo. In its 2019–2020 season, there were 38,609 FIRST LEGO League Challenge teams and 21,703 FIRST LEGO League Explore teams around the world. The international RoboCup Junior football competition involves extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its extreme limits.
The capabilities of the Mindstorms range have now been harnessed for use in Iko Creative Prosthetic System, a prosthetic limbs system designed for children. Designs for these Lego prosthetics allow everything from mechanical diggers to laser-firing spaceships to be screwed on to the end of a child's limb. Iko is the work of the Chicago-based Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres, and is a modular system that allows children to customise their own prosthetics with the ease of clicking together plastic bricks. Designed with Lego's Future Lab, the Danish toy company's experimental research department, and Cirec, a Colombian foundation for physical rehabilitation, the modular prosthetic incorporates myoelectric sensors that register the activity of the muscle in the stump and send a signal to control movement in the attachment. A processing unit in the body of the prosthetic contains an engine compatible with Lego Mindstorms, the company's robotics line, which lets the wearer build an extensive range of customised, programmable limbs.
In popular culture
Lego's popularity is demonstrated by its wide representation and usage in many cultural works, including books, films, and art. It has even been used in the classroom as a teaching tool. In the US, Lego Education North America is a joint venture between Pitsco, Inc. and the educational division of the Lego Group.
In 1998, Lego bricks were one of the original inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York.
"Lego" is commonly used as a mass noun ("some Lego") or, in American English, as a countable noun with plural "Legos", to refer to the bricks themselves, but as is common for trademarks, Lego group insists on the name being used as an adjective when referring to a product (as in "LEGO bricks").
prrt1steamlocomotivetrust.org/ - Please help fund the PRR T-1 Trust! They are a wonderful organization building a new 4-4-4-4 T-1 from scratch!
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www.facebook.com/t1locomotive/videos/vb.591467160889599/3... - Amazing video by the T-1 Trust, feel free to share this post, and help fund this project!
Another PRR T1 Trust update. This is a drawing of the new Belpaire firebox for the locomotive!
If you enjoy my photos, feel free to favorite, share and thanks for viewing!
Lego is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously colored interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Moulding is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, and China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in the Czech Republic. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second.
Films, games competitions, and eight Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. One of Europe's biggest companies, Lego is the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
History
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 the business began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, invented by Hilary Page in 1939 and patented in the United Kingdom in 1940 before being displayed at the 1947 Earl's Court Toy Fair. Lego had received a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that it purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.
The Lego Group's motto, "only the best is good enough" (Danish: det bedste er ikke for godt, literally "the best isn't excessively good") was created in 1936. Christiansen created the motto, still used today, to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. By 1951, plastic toys accounted for half of the company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine Legetøjs-Tidende ("Toy Times"), visiting the Lego factory in Billund in the early 1950s, wrote that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in children's toys, due in part to the high standards set by Ole Kirk.
By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: Their locking ability was still limited, and they were not yet versatile. In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; it took five years to find the right material for it, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer. A patent application for the modern Lego brick design was filed in Denmark on 28 January 1958 and in various other countries in the subsequent few years.
The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and is a range of blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children. In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.
In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program. In May 2013, the largest model ever created, made of over 5 million bricks, was displayed in New York City; a one-to-one scale model of a Star Wars X-wing fighter. Other record breakers include a 34-metre (112 ft) tower and a 4 km (2.5 mi) railway.
In February 2015, marketing consulting company Brand Finance ranked Lego as the "world's most powerful brand", overtaking Ferrari.
Lego bricks have acquired a reputation for causing extreme pain when stepped on.
Design
Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variations in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made presently, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Six bricks of 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.
Each piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When two pieces are engaged, they must fit firmly, yet be easily disassembled. The machines that manufacture Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 10 micrometres.
Primary concept and development work for the toy takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at their respective national markets. The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, split into three stages. The first is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holidays, while others interview children. The second stage is the design and development of the product based on the results of the first stage. As of September 2008 the design teams use 3D modelling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and testing by parents and children during the "validation" process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organisation for marketing and packaging.
Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS X and Windows which allows users to create their own digital Lego designs. The program once allowed customers to order custom designs with a service to ship physical models from Digital Designer to consumers; the service ended in 2012.
Manufacturing
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). As of September 2008, Lego engineers use the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimised by way of mould flow and stress analysis. Prototype moulds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production. The ABS plastic is heated to 232 °C (450 °F) until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the moulds using forces of between 25 and 150 tonnes and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The moulds are permitted a tolerance of up to twenty micrometres to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the moulds to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness. According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required.
Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be re-used in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold on to industries that can make use of it. Lego, in 2018, set a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly alternative to the ABS plastic.
Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Monterrey, Mexico; and most recently in Jiaxing, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in Kladno in the Czech Republic. The Lego Group estimates that in five decades it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. According to an article in BusinessWeek in 2006, Lego could also be considered the world's number-one tyre manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tyres a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012.
In December 2012, the BBC's More or Less radio program asked the Open University's engineering department to determine "how many Lego bricks, stacked one on top of the other, it would take for the weight to destroy the bottom brick?" Using a hydraulic testing machine, members of the department determined the average maximum force a 2×2 Lego brick can stand is 4,240 newtons. Since an average 2×2 Lego brick has a mass of 1.152 grams (0.0406 oz), according to their calculations it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse, which represents a stack 3,591 metres (11,781 ft) in height.
Private tests have shown several thousand assembly-disassembly cycles before the bricks begin to wear out, although Lego tests show fewer cycles.
In 2018, Lego announced that it will be using bio-derived polyethylene to make its botanical elements (parts such as leaves, bushes and trees). The New York Times reported the company's footprint that year was "about a million tons of carbon dioxide each year" and that it was investing about 1 billion kroner and hiring 100 people to work on changes. The paper reported that Lego's researchers "have already experimented with around 200 alternatives." In 2020, Lego announced that it would cease packaging its products in single-use plastic bags and would instead be using recyclable paper bags. In 2021, the company said it would aim to produce its bricks without using crude oil, by using recycled polyethylene terephthalate bottles, but in 2023 it reversed this decision, having found that this did not reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.
Set themes
Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, pirates, trains, (European) castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west, as well as wholly original themes like Bionicle and Hero Factory. Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City (a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973) and Lego Technic (a line aimed at emulating complex machinery, introduced in 1977).
Over the years, the company has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises and some from video games. These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, and Minecraft. Although some of these themes, Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, the company expressed in 2015 a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes and less upon such licensed themes. Some sets include references to other themes such as a Bionicle mask in one of the Harry Potter sets. Discontinued sets may become a collectable and command value on the black market.
For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots Vinicius and Tom.
One of the largest commercially produced Lego sets was a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and contained 5,195 pieces. It was surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal. A redesigned Millennium Falcon retook the top spot in 2017 with 7,541 pieces. Since then, the Millennium Falcon has been superseded by the Lego Art World Map at 11,695 pieces, the Lego Titanic at 9,090 pieces, and the Lego Architect Colosseum at 9,036 pieces.
In 2022, Lego introduced its Eiffel Tower. The set consists of 10,000 parts and reaches a height of 149 cm, which makes it the tallest set and tower but the second in number of parts after the World Map.
Robotics themes
Main articles: Lego Mindstorms, Lego Mindstorms NXT, Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0, and Lego Mindstorms EV3
The company also initiated a robotics line of toys called 'Mindstorms' in 1999, and has continued to expand and update this range ever since. The roots of the product originate from a programmable brick developed at the MIT Media Lab, and the name is taken from a paper by Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who developed the educational theory of constructionism, and whose research was at times funded by the Lego Group.
The programmable Lego brick which is at the heart of these robotics sets has undergone several updates and redesigns, with the latest being called the 'EV3' brick, being sold under the name of Lego Mindstorms EV3. The set includes sensors that detect touch, light, sound and ultrasonic waves, with several others being sold separately, including an RFID reader.
The intelligent brick can be programmed using official software available for Windows and Mac computers, and is downloaded onto the brick via Bluetooth or a USB cable. There are also several unofficial programs and compatible programming languages that have been made to work with the brick, and many books have been written to support this community.
There are several robotics competitions which use the Lego robotics sets. The earliest is Botball, a national U.S. middle- and high-school competition stemming from the MIT 6.270 Lego robotics tournament. Other Lego robotics competitions include FIRST LEGO League Discover for children ages 4–6, FIRST LEGO League Explore for students ages 6–9 and FIRST Lego League Challenge for students ages 9–16 (age 9–14 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico). These programs offer real-world engineering challenges to participants. FIRST LEGO League Challenge uses LEGO-based robots to complete tasks, FIRST LEGO League Explore participants build models out of Lego elements, and FIRST LEGO League Discover participants use Duplo. In its 2019–2020 season, there were 38,609 FIRST LEGO League Challenge teams and 21,703 FIRST LEGO League Explore teams around the world. The international RoboCup Junior football competition involves extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its extreme limits.
The capabilities of the Mindstorms range have now been harnessed for use in Iko Creative Prosthetic System, a prosthetic limbs system designed for children. Designs for these Lego prosthetics allow everything from mechanical diggers to laser-firing spaceships to be screwed on to the end of a child's limb. Iko is the work of the Chicago-based Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres, and is a modular system that allows children to customise their own prosthetics with the ease of clicking together plastic bricks. Designed with Lego's Future Lab, the Danish toy company's experimental research department, and Cirec, a Colombian foundation for physical rehabilitation, the modular prosthetic incorporates myoelectric sensors that register the activity of the muscle in the stump and send a signal to control movement in the attachment. A processing unit in the body of the prosthetic contains an engine compatible with Lego Mindstorms, the company's robotics line, which lets the wearer build an extensive range of customised, programmable limbs.
In popular culture
Lego's popularity is demonstrated by its wide representation and usage in many cultural works, including books, films, and art. It has even been used in the classroom as a teaching tool. In the US, Lego Education North America is a joint venture between Pitsco, Inc. and the educational division of the Lego Group.
In 1998, Lego bricks were one of the original inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York.
"Lego" is commonly used as a mass noun ("some Lego") or, in American English, as a countable noun with plural "Legos", to refer to the bricks themselves, but as is common for trademarks, Lego group insists on the name being used as an adjective when referring to a product (as in "LEGO bricks").
prrt1steamlocomotivetrust.org/ - Please help fund the PRR T-1 Trust! They are a wonderful organization building a new 4-4-4-4 T-1 from scratch!
If you enjoy these photos, please favorite, share and thanks for viewing!
www.landscape-design-advisor.com - This colorful 2d landscape architecture rendering was created using 2d shapes and architectural symbols from 2d Landscape Architecture. The sketch gives a bird’s eye view of a luxury beach resort, displaying every feature with full color 2d graphics, including trees and shrubs, outdoor furniture, people, and vehicles. Realistic landscape texture maps were used to create lawns, parking lots, and outdoor spas. These symbols and graphical representations make the 2d landscape architecture image come to life. For more member photos, visit us at www.landscape-design-advisor.com, follow us on Tweeter and Like us on Facebook for a free gift!
Christopher Johnson has created a cad drawing from measurements off the GNR GA drawing and he and his father Paul have made a wooden mock up. This is to see how it looks in the saloon and whether it matches the height of the body side location points.
Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus CAD drawings leak: no new design, but 3.5mm jack is gone and dual camera in iPhone 7 Plus corroborated10
Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus CAD drawings leak: no new design, but 3.5mm jack is gone and dual camera in iPhone 7 Plus corroborated17
Lego is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously colored interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Moulding is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, and China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in the Czech Republic. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second.
Films, games competitions, and eight Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. One of Europe's biggest companies, Lego is the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
History
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 the business began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, invented by Hilary Page in 1939 and patented in the United Kingdom in 1940 before being displayed at the 1947 Earl's Court Toy Fair. Lego had received a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that it purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.
The Lego Group's motto, "only the best is good enough" (Danish: det bedste er ikke for godt, literally "the best isn't excessively good") was created in 1936. Christiansen created the motto, still used today, to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. By 1951, plastic toys accounted for half of the company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine Legetøjs-Tidende ("Toy Times"), visiting the Lego factory in Billund in the early 1950s, wrote that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in children's toys, due in part to the high standards set by Ole Kirk.
By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: Their locking ability was still limited, and they were not yet versatile. In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; it took five years to find the right material for it, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer. A patent application for the modern Lego brick design was filed in Denmark on 28 January 1958 and in various other countries in the subsequent few years.
The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and is a range of blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children. In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.
In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program. In May 2013, the largest model ever created, made of over 5 million bricks, was displayed in New York City; a one-to-one scale model of a Star Wars X-wing fighter. Other record breakers include a 34-metre (112 ft) tower and a 4 km (2.5 mi) railway.
In February 2015, marketing consulting company Brand Finance ranked Lego as the "world's most powerful brand", overtaking Ferrari.
Lego bricks have acquired a reputation for causing extreme pain when stepped on.
Design
Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variations in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made presently, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Six bricks of 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.
Each piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When two pieces are engaged, they must fit firmly, yet be easily disassembled. The machines that manufacture Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 10 micrometres.
Primary concept and development work for the toy takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at their respective national markets. The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, split into three stages. The first is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holidays, while others interview children. The second stage is the design and development of the product based on the results of the first stage. As of September 2008 the design teams use 3D modelling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and testing by parents and children during the "validation" process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organisation for marketing and packaging.
Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS X and Windows which allows users to create their own digital Lego designs. The program once allowed customers to order custom designs with a service to ship physical models from Digital Designer to consumers; the service ended in 2012.
Manufacturing
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). As of September 2008, Lego engineers use the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimised by way of mould flow and stress analysis. Prototype moulds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production. The ABS plastic is heated to 232 °C (450 °F) until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the moulds using forces of between 25 and 150 tonnes and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The moulds are permitted a tolerance of up to twenty micrometres to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the moulds to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness. According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required.
Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be re-used in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold on to industries that can make use of it. Lego, in 2018, set a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly alternative to the ABS plastic.
Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Monterrey, Mexico; and most recently in Jiaxing, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in Kladno in the Czech Republic. The Lego Group estimates that in five decades it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. According to an article in BusinessWeek in 2006, Lego could also be considered the world's number-one tyre manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tyres a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012.
In December 2012, the BBC's More or Less radio program asked the Open University's engineering department to determine "how many Lego bricks, stacked one on top of the other, it would take for the weight to destroy the bottom brick?" Using a hydraulic testing machine, members of the department determined the average maximum force a 2×2 Lego brick can stand is 4,240 newtons. Since an average 2×2 Lego brick has a mass of 1.152 grams (0.0406 oz), according to their calculations it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse, which represents a stack 3,591 metres (11,781 ft) in height.
Private tests have shown several thousand assembly-disassembly cycles before the bricks begin to wear out, although Lego tests show fewer cycles.
In 2018, Lego announced that it will be using bio-derived polyethylene to make its botanical elements (parts such as leaves, bushes and trees). The New York Times reported the company's footprint that year was "about a million tons of carbon dioxide each year" and that it was investing about 1 billion kroner and hiring 100 people to work on changes. The paper reported that Lego's researchers "have already experimented with around 200 alternatives." In 2020, Lego announced that it would cease packaging its products in single-use plastic bags and would instead be using recyclable paper bags. In 2021, the company said it would aim to produce its bricks without using crude oil, by using recycled polyethylene terephthalate bottles, but in 2023 it reversed this decision, having found that this did not reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.
Set themes
Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, pirates, trains, (European) castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west, as well as wholly original themes like Bionicle and Hero Factory. Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City (a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973) and Lego Technic (a line aimed at emulating complex machinery, introduced in 1977).
Over the years, the company has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises and some from video games. These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, and Minecraft. Although some of these themes, Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, the company expressed in 2015 a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes and less upon such licensed themes. Some sets include references to other themes such as a Bionicle mask in one of the Harry Potter sets. Discontinued sets may become a collectable and command value on the black market.
For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots Vinicius and Tom.
One of the largest commercially produced Lego sets was a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and contained 5,195 pieces. It was surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal. A redesigned Millennium Falcon retook the top spot in 2017 with 7,541 pieces. Since then, the Millennium Falcon has been superseded by the Lego Art World Map at 11,695 pieces, the Lego Titanic at 9,090 pieces, and the Lego Architect Colosseum at 9,036 pieces.
In 2022, Lego introduced its Eiffel Tower. The set consists of 10,000 parts and reaches a height of 149 cm, which makes it the tallest set and tower but the second in number of parts after the World Map.
Robotics themes
Main articles: Lego Mindstorms, Lego Mindstorms NXT, Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0, and Lego Mindstorms EV3
The company also initiated a robotics line of toys called 'Mindstorms' in 1999, and has continued to expand and update this range ever since. The roots of the product originate from a programmable brick developed at the MIT Media Lab, and the name is taken from a paper by Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who developed the educational theory of constructionism, and whose research was at times funded by the Lego Group.
The programmable Lego brick which is at the heart of these robotics sets has undergone several updates and redesigns, with the latest being called the 'EV3' brick, being sold under the name of Lego Mindstorms EV3. The set includes sensors that detect touch, light, sound and ultrasonic waves, with several others being sold separately, including an RFID reader.
The intelligent brick can be programmed using official software available for Windows and Mac computers, and is downloaded onto the brick via Bluetooth or a USB cable. There are also several unofficial programs and compatible programming languages that have been made to work with the brick, and many books have been written to support this community.
There are several robotics competitions which use the Lego robotics sets. The earliest is Botball, a national U.S. middle- and high-school competition stemming from the MIT 6.270 Lego robotics tournament. Other Lego robotics competitions include FIRST LEGO League Discover for children ages 4–6, FIRST LEGO League Explore for students ages 6–9 and FIRST Lego League Challenge for students ages 9–16 (age 9–14 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico). These programs offer real-world engineering challenges to participants. FIRST LEGO League Challenge uses LEGO-based robots to complete tasks, FIRST LEGO League Explore participants build models out of Lego elements, and FIRST LEGO League Discover participants use Duplo. In its 2019–2020 season, there were 38,609 FIRST LEGO League Challenge teams and 21,703 FIRST LEGO League Explore teams around the world. The international RoboCup Junior football competition involves extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its extreme limits.
The capabilities of the Mindstorms range have now been harnessed for use in Iko Creative Prosthetic System, a prosthetic limbs system designed for children. Designs for these Lego prosthetics allow everything from mechanical diggers to laser-firing spaceships to be screwed on to the end of a child's limb. Iko is the work of the Chicago-based Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres, and is a modular system that allows children to customise their own prosthetics with the ease of clicking together plastic bricks. Designed with Lego's Future Lab, the Danish toy company's experimental research department, and Cirec, a Colombian foundation for physical rehabilitation, the modular prosthetic incorporates myoelectric sensors that register the activity of the muscle in the stump and send a signal to control movement in the attachment. A processing unit in the body of the prosthetic contains an engine compatible with Lego Mindstorms, the company's robotics line, which lets the wearer build an extensive range of customised, programmable limbs.
In popular culture
Lego's popularity is demonstrated by its wide representation and usage in many cultural works, including books, films, and art. It has even been used in the classroom as a teaching tool. In the US, Lego Education North America is a joint venture between Pitsco, Inc. and the educational division of the Lego Group.
In 1998, Lego bricks were one of the original inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York.
"Lego" is commonly used as a mass noun ("some Lego") or, in American English, as a countable noun with plural "Legos", to refer to the bricks themselves, but as is common for trademarks, Lego group insists on the name being used as an adjective when referring to a product (as in "LEGO bricks").
www.facebook.com/t1locomotive/videos/vb.591467160889599/3... - Amazing video by the T-1 Trust, feel free to share this post, and help fund this project!
A CAD drawing of the under construction PRR 5550 locomotive smokebox and stack!
If you enjoy these photos, please favorite, share and thanks for viewing!
A chance to have a look at this pre-production resin Optare Versa. Having listened to how CAD drawings are used to produce these shells and have the chance to see the model up close I would certainly buy any of TTC's future releases 'sight unseen'.
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
1979Philip Johnson
1980Louis Barragan
1981James Stirling
1982Kevin Roche
1983I.M.Pei
1984Richard Meier
1985Hans Hollein
1986Gottfried?Boehm
1987Kenzo Tange
1988Gordon Bunshaft
1989Frank Gehry
1990Aldo Rossi
1991Robert Venturi
1992Alvaro Siza
1993Fumihiko Maki
1994Christian de Portzamparc
1995Tadao Ando
1996Rafael Moneo
1997Sverre Fehn
1998Renzo Piano
1999Norman Foster
2000Rem Koolhaas
2001Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
2002Glenn Murcutt
2003Jorn Utzon
2004Zaha Hadid
2005Thom Mayne
2006Paulo Mendes da Rocha
2007Richard Rogers
2008Jean Nouvel
2009Peter Zumthor
2010Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa
2011Eduardo Souto de Moura
2012Wang?Shu
2013Toyo?Ito
2014Shigeru?Ban
2015Frei Otto
2016Alejandro Aravena
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
To honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
The international prize, which is awarded each year to a living architect/s for significant achievement, was established by the Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979. It is granted annually and is often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel” and “the profession’s highest honor.”
The award consists of $100,000 (US) and a bronze medallion. The award is conferred on the laureate/s at a ceremony held at an architecturally significant site throughout the world.
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
1979Philip Johnson
1980Louis Barragan
1981James Stirling
1982Kevin Roche
1983I.M.Pei
1984Richard Meier
1985Hans Hollein
1986Gottfried?Boehm
1987Kenzo Tange
1988Gordon Bunshaft
1989Frank Gehry
1990Aldo Rossi
1991Robert Venturi
1992Alvaro Siza
1993Fumihiko Maki
1994Christian de Portzamparc
1995Tadao Ando
1996Rafael Moneo
1997Sverre Fehn
1998Renzo Piano
1999Norman Foster
2000Rem Koolhaas
2001Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
2002Glenn Murcutt
2003Jorn Utzon
2004Zaha Hadid
2005Thom Mayne
2006Paulo Mendes da Rocha
2007Richard Rogers
2008Jean Nouvel
2009Peter Zumthor
2010Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa
2011Eduardo Souto de Moura
2012Wang?Shu
2013Toyo?Ito
2014Shigeru?Ban
2015Frei Otto
2016Alejandro Aravena
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
To honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
The international prize, which is awarded each year to a living architect/s for significant achievement, was established by the Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979. It is granted annually and is often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel” and “the profession’s highest honor.”
The award consists of $100,000 (US) and a bronze medallion. The award is conferred on the laureate/s at a ceremony held at an architecturally significant site throughout the world.
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
1979Philip Johnson
1980Louis Barragan
1981James Stirling
1982Kevin Roche
1983I.M.Pei
1984Richard Meier
1985Hans Hollein
1986Gottfried?Boehm
1987Kenzo Tange
1988Gordon Bunshaft
1989Frank Gehry
1990Aldo Rossi
1991Robert Venturi
1992Alvaro Siza
1993Fumihiko Maki
1994Christian de Portzamparc
1995Tadao Ando
1996Rafael Moneo
1997Sverre Fehn
1998Renzo Piano
1999Norman Foster
2000Rem Koolhaas
2001Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
2002Glenn Murcutt
2003Jorn Utzon
2004Zaha Hadid
2005Thom Mayne
2006Paulo Mendes da Rocha
2007Richard Rogers
2008Jean Nouvel
2009Peter Zumthor
2010Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa
2011Eduardo Souto de Moura
2012Wang?Shu
2013Toyo?Ito
2014Shigeru?Ban
2015Frei Otto
2016Alejandro Aravena
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
To honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
The international prize, which is awarded each year to a living architect/s for significant achievement, was established by the Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979. It is granted annually and is often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel” and “the profession’s highest honor.”
The award consists of $100,000 (US) and a bronze medallion. The award is conferred on the laureate/s at a ceremony held at an architecturally significant site throughout the world.
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
1979Philip Johnson
1980Louis Barragan
1981James Stirling
1982Kevin Roche
1983I.M.Pei
1984Richard Meier
1985Hans Hollein
1986Gottfried?Boehm
1987Kenzo Tange
1988Gordon Bunshaft
1989Frank Gehry
1990Aldo Rossi
1991Robert Venturi
1992Alvaro Siza
1993Fumihiko Maki
1994Christian de Portzamparc
1995Tadao Ando
1996Rafael Moneo
1997Sverre Fehn
1998Renzo Piano
1999Norman Foster
2000Rem Koolhaas
2001Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
2002Glenn Murcutt
2003Jorn Utzon
2004Zaha Hadid
2005Thom Mayne
2006Paulo Mendes da Rocha
2007Richard Rogers
2008Jean Nouvel
2009Peter Zumthor
2010Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa
2011Eduardo Souto de Moura
2012Wang?Shu
2013Toyo?Ito
2014Shigeru?Ban
2015Frei Otto
2016Alejandro Aravena
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
To honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
The international prize, which is awarded each year to a living architect/s for significant achievement, was established by the Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979. It is granted annually and is often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel” and “the profession’s highest honor.”
The award consists of $100,000 (US) and a bronze medallion. The award is conferred on the laureate/s at a ceremony held at an architecturally significant site throughout the world.
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
1979Philip Johnson
1980Louis Barragan
1981James Stirling
1982Kevin Roche
1983I.M.Pei
1984Richard Meier
1985Hans Hollein
1986Gottfried?Boehm
1987Kenzo Tange
1988Gordon Bunshaft
1989Frank Gehry
1990Aldo Rossi
1991Robert Venturi
1992Alvaro Siza
1993Fumihiko Maki
1994Christian de Portzamparc
1995Tadao Ando
1996Rafael Moneo
1997Sverre Fehn
1998Renzo Piano
1999Norman Foster
2000Rem Koolhaas
2001Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
2002Glenn Murcutt
2003Jorn Utzon
2004Zaha Hadid
2005Thom Mayne
2006Paulo Mendes da Rocha
2007Richard Rogers
2008Jean Nouvel
2009Peter Zumthor
2010Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa
2011Eduardo Souto de Moura
2012Wang?Shu
2013Toyo?Ito
2014Shigeru?Ban
2015Frei Otto
2016Alejandro Aravena
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
To honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
The international prize, which is awarded each year to a living architect/s for significant achievement, was established by the Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979. It is granted annually and is often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel” and “the profession’s highest honor.”
The award consists of $100,000 (US) and a bronze medallion. The award is conferred on the laureate/s at a ceremony held at an architecturally significant site throughout the world.
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
★Pritzker Architecture Gallery
1979Philip Johnson
1980Louis Barragan
1981James Stirling
1982Kevin Roche
1983I.M.Pei
1984Richard Meier
1985Hans Hollein
1986Gottfried?Boehm
1987Kenzo Tange
1988Gordon Bunshaft
1989Frank Gehry
1990Aldo Rossi
1991Robert Venturi
1992Alvaro Siza
1993Fumihiko Maki
1994Christian de Portzamparc
1995Tadao Ando
1996Rafael Moneo
1997Sverre Fehn
1998Renzo Piano
1999Norman Foster
2000Rem Koolhaas
2001Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
2002Glenn Murcutt
2003Jorn Utzon
2004Zaha Hadid
2005Thom Mayne
2006Paulo Mendes da Rocha
2007Richard Rogers
2008Jean Nouvel
2009Peter Zumthor
2010Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa
2011Eduardo Souto de Moura
2012Wang?Shu
2013Toyo?Ito
2014Shigeru?Ban
2015Frei Otto
2016Alejandro Aravena
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-download/
www.boss888.net/cad-drawings-download
www.boss888.net/cadgallery-interiordesign
To honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
The international prize, which is awarded each year to a living architect/s for significant achievement, was established by the Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979. It is granted annually and is often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel” and “the profession’s highest honor.”
The award consists of $100,000 (US) and a bronze medallion. The award is conferred on the laureate/s at a ceremony held at an architecturally significant site throughout the world.