Astroblog: More Meccano Frustration

Friday, February 22, 2008

More Meccano Frustration

So, after several tries we never could make the Meccano Robot work properly. Literally, the wheels kept coming off, no matter what Middle One and I tried. So finally we disassembled the robot, and built the motorcycle. This was much simpler, it only took a week to make (with lots of backing and forthing, checking of parts lists and some reassembly. Hint, photocopy the parts list and always have the parts list next to the instructions, so you can tell which ambiguous-almost-looking-the same-bits are which).
So we finally finished it. When activated the wheels moved perfectly, when held in the air. Place it on the ground, after a few desultory moves the wheels disconnected from the drive cogs and the thing stopped moving. I give up, it looks like this bit of Meccano has a major design flaw. El Mucho disappointed.

Labels: miscelaneous, robot

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 8:28 pm

Comments:

Hi Ian you are correct there are a number of problems with the original design.I only got the robot to work correctly by substituting the small plastic clips for real meccano collars which have grub screws to hold them in place. They also require a few other meccano parts to beef up the support for wheels and gears. It was a worthwhile concept but spoilt by not enough trial testing before sales.

# posted by