December 7 (Builders) Gears, Gears, Gears!

Gears are very useful for building powered contraptions with Legos but it takes some practice trying to get the teeth to sit correctly.  We started out with some simple gear trains and experimented from there.

Gordon's device used gears to turn a bucket that dropped "trash" into a dump-bed.

Josh made a crank-powered contraption (on a braced wall - go, Josh!) that turned a Lego monkey's tail.



 Here are a couple of good books and links for building with Lego gears:
LEGO Technic Idea Book: Simple Machines
Building Lego Robots for First Lego League (pdf)