LEGO Abacus:A photo of the completed abacus. (Click to enlarge).
Ages
Suitable for ages 7 and up.Requirements
- LEGO set 8032 Generic Construction Set (bricks)
- LEGO set 8412 Nighthawk Helicopter (axles and connectors)
Of course, if you are a LEGOmaniac, you can gather the parts from whatever kits you may have available.
Instructions & Complete Plans
Click on each image for the enlarged version.
LDRAW File
LEGO Abacus: model designed in Bricksmith (Click to enlarge).
The LDRAW file, Abacus.ldr, is available for download. I designed the model using Bricksmith, the Mac version of LDRAW.
Additional Resources
Acknowledgements
This project was inspired by a query from William Hart (grade 6 teacher at Olivet Elementary School in Santa Rosa, California) for ideas for class projects about the abacus. Thanks also, to Jim Koch for introducing me to the joys of LEGO Technic.
Colophon
Sometime in 1995, the LEGO abacus plans (abacus.mif.zip) were designed using FrameMaker 3.1 on a Sun SPARCstation LX running SunOS 4.1.3. The images were grabbed and converted to GIFs using xv 3.10a and then coloured using xpaint 2.1.1 running on a Sun Ultra Enterprise 2 server.The LEGO lawyers insist that I state that LEGO is a trademark of the LEGO Group.
