MachineCat
Member
I used to be a coach of my daughter's LEGO robotics team. So I had a lot of LEGO pieces home. 
When I started scratch building foam airplane with my son, my initial thoughts were that I could just use some of the LEGO wheels for the plane. But it turns out most of those wheels were too heavy for the small plane I was making. So I decided to go with foam wheels.
But I cannot just let those LEGO pieces sitting there. So I made a lathe out of LEGO, to make the foam wheel.
First cut the foam to near circle shape. Put the LEGO "pin join round" roughly at the center
Then take a LEGO axle, put through the pin join round in the wheel-to-be. Then connect a LEGO gear. And have another two axles go through the foam, so the wheel-to-be can rotate along with the axle in the center of the gear.
And then put the whole set in my LEGO lathe. I had the LEGO EV3 large motor, and used geared it up.
Write a simple program to start the motor at full speed for long enough time. Using double sided tape to tape the sand paper to another LEGO piece, to sand the wheel while it rotates.
And then we got the wheels. I put the two wheels in there at the same time, to make sure the pair are the same size.
And since I already had the pin joint round in the center, I can naturally use LEGO axle on the landing gear.
My plane is not very successful yet, it is under powered, so it was not able to really take off. But at least it lands well.
When I started scratch building foam airplane with my son, my initial thoughts were that I could just use some of the LEGO wheels for the plane. But it turns out most of those wheels were too heavy for the small plane I was making. So I decided to go with foam wheels.
But I cannot just let those LEGO pieces sitting there. So I made a lathe out of LEGO, to make the foam wheel.
First cut the foam to near circle shape. Put the LEGO "pin join round" roughly at the center
Then take a LEGO axle, put through the pin join round in the wheel-to-be. Then connect a LEGO gear. And have another two axles go through the foam, so the wheel-to-be can rotate along with the axle in the center of the gear.
And then put the whole set in my LEGO lathe. I had the LEGO EV3 large motor, and used geared it up.
Write a simple program to start the motor at full speed for long enough time. Using double sided tape to tape the sand paper to another LEGO piece, to sand the wheel while it rotates.
And then we got the wheels. I put the two wheels in there at the same time, to make sure the pair are the same size.
And since I already had the pin joint round in the center, I can naturally use LEGO axle on the landing gear.
My plane is not very successful yet, it is under powered, so it was not able to really take off. But at least it lands well.
