LEGO Windmill
A few weeks ago I was brainstorming for my next LEGO build. I wanted something with some fun motion and lots of gears. A windmill seemed like a good idea: the basic problems of windmill gears were solved hundreds of years ago, so I wouldn’t have to design anything from scratch, but turning that motion into LEGO would still take some trial and error!
Before we get into the internal mechanism, let’s take a look at the outside. This windmill represents one of the later medieval designs. Wind in Europe often changes direction, so it didn’t take Europeans long to figure out that they should make their windmills able to change directions too. At first, mills were square boxes with the sails in the middle of the wall. The whole box could be turned to catch the wind from any angle.
Later on, the sails were moved to the roof, and only the roof was designed to rotate. I chose to copy this design, because it’s more visually appealing.
So I built a tall round tower on a stone foundation, and then the red roof on top, which instead of being attached to the walls is attached to a center axle.
So as you can see in this next picture, the roof can be turned (without removing it) to face anywhere in the sky and make the best use of the breeze!
The gear box that transforms the sail motion from horizontal to vertical is inside the roof. So there’s a short axle coming down from the roof that attaches to the worm gear on top of the inside axle in this next picture. The worm gear (the grey gear on top) is an interesting piece–it’s got a + shaped hole inside, but it has no friction. That worked perfectly in this case–you can slide the roof on and off easily, but still get the traction needed to turn the axle when the roof is on.
The center axle of the windmill reaches down to the largest gear–tan in my mill. This turns a smaller gear which then turns a small grindstone.
Theoretically there’s a little hole in the top grindstone that allows the wheat to drop through and get caught between the two stones. There it gets ground into flour. The flour empties from the box around the grindstones into a lower box, where it can be scooped into sacks!
This creation was designed to be seen inside as well as out, so the roof and walls were built in two sturdy segments that are easy to remove!
Of course, I couldn’t build a functioning windmill and not make a video for it! This video includes a time lapse of the building process where you can see how many tries it took me to get that roof and sails just right!
If you’d like to see this as an actually LEGO set, you can support it on LEGO Ideas!
You might also enjoy these other LEGO creations of mine:
LEGO Fighting PitBuild Log: WaterwheelBuild Log: Classic Pirates FortBuild Log: Seaside FortBuild Log: LEGO Ninjago ScrollBuild Log: Wading PoolBuild Log: Ninjago Legacy LighthouseJapanese Fortress Build LogBehind the Scenes: Space Travel PosterBuild Log: Cherry Blossom Fort
