Steerable Dune Buggy
Here is an attempt to create a steerable dune buggy out of K'nex pieces. Unlike
the custom pieces often found in Lego sets, K'nex parts are generic and require
a bit more creative thinking in order to formulate workable mechanical designs.
Early on, we noticed that all of the many vehicle designs in the K'nex
instruction books showed wheels in a fixed orientation, capable of moving only
in a straight line. The simplest approach to making a vehicle steerable would
be to attach the midpoint of a rigid front axle to a vertical pivot rod that
passes through a horizontal hole in the front of the car body. The top of the
pivot rod could then be firmly attached at right angles to a control rod passing
back to the cab area of the vehicle. While simple, this construction lacks
realism since the front wheels do not turn with respect to their axle and the
control mechanism is not in the form of a steering wheel. Instead, we looked at
ways we could create a flexible parallelogram out of K'nex pieces - the front
wheels could then attach via kingpins to one pair of corners and the other pair
of corners would be used as part of the steering control apparatus. The design
we finally ended up with uses quite a few parts in order to establish rigidity
where it's needed. It includes a hook attached to a horizontal steering column
to move vertical posts fixed to the rear edge of the front axle parallelogram.
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