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LEGO Robotics – Session 1 – Pneumatics Intro

Introduction

Pneumatics is using compressed air or other gases to accomplish a task that is otherwise really hard. Like digging a big hole, lifting a heavy car or stamping metal sheets in the right form (to build automobile parts)

There are large stamping presses (We’ll build a smaller one)… (44) 1000T Press Machine for automobile parts, metal stamping – YouTube

Before we begin

We’ll build various machines that uses pneumatics to accomplish certain tasks.

There are a few special items that we’ll work with 🙂

This is a container where compressed air can be pushed in (to perform an action) or can be sucked out.
This is a “switch” where can can control the flow of the compressed air
This container can hold compressed air for us to use in our experiments
This device can measure the air pressure (in bar)

LEGO building

the instruction is also available here: pneumatics_tutorial

The task is to build these 5 models and fill out the below form with observations what’s happening.

The below worksheet is also accessible here:

LEGO-robotics-session-1-pneumatics-intro-worksheetDownload
ModelPictureObservation
1
2
3
4
5

Final observations

  • air pressure is measured in “bar” (in many tires, … you can also find psi, which is also a unit of air pressure (pound per square inch). 1 bar is equal to approximately 14.50377 psi
  • air pressure will help us do hard things more easily