Lego bricks are pretty awesome, they can be used to recreate iconic airportsleave you build your dream car and can now be used to demonstrate what’s going on inside your car’s transmission. That’s thanks to a social media user who’s made it his mission to explain the complex engineering using fun plastic toys.
Instagram User Bricks Master Builders has made a name for itself by building complex models out of Lego bricks. In the past, this has included recreating engines, pistons and even a working fan to keep itself going cool during hot summer days. Now they’re taking on the humble continuously variable transmission.
The CVT is what many automatic cars use instead of a traditional gearbox full of cogs and gears. Instead of stepped gears, The CVT uses a pair of cones to provide a theoretically unlimited number of gears. But how does it do this?
Well, Bricks Master Builders is here to show you their Lego brick box. For the model, they use two cones made from Lego bricks and connect each one to a shaft: one simulating the input to the engine and the other the output that would normally be transferred to the wheels of your car.
The two cones do not touch each other and are instead connected to each other by a band that wraps around each of them. Using a simple Lego stickthe belt is moved over the cones, which changes the output speed. When the belt is on the thickest part of the input cone and the thinnest part of the output, it spins much, much faster. Conversely, when it is on the thinnest part of the input cone and the thickest part of the output, it spins much slower.
It might not be the most complex Lego model we’ve ever seen, but it does a pretty good job of showing you what’s going on under the hood of your beloved Subaru.
If this makes you want to learn more about engineering, we have a great deep dive into How Honda Built a CVT for Its ATVsand another article here examining the wild technology used in building Koenigsegg seven-clutch gearbox.
News Source : jalopnik.com
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