‘Most Complex Lego Machine Ever Built’: See This 152,455-Piece Rolls-Royce Jet Engine

Posted on July 12, 2012 at 7:53am by Liz Klimas

The Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine is composed of 160 different engine components. It‘s this engine that helps propel Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. Imagine how complex such a machine must be.
Now imagine building a half-scale replica of it — out of Legos. It took a team at Bright Bricks 152,455 Lego bricks, weighing 677 pounds and measuring 6.5 feet long to accomplish this feat, according to Gizmodo.

(Photo via Wired)

(Photo via Wired)

(Photo via Wired)

The team sponsored by Rolls-Royce along with graduates and apprentices presented their creation — only a fraction of the actual engine weighing 1.25 tons — at the Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom. Watch the machine in action at the show:

Wired reports Rolls-Royce Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stein saying the replica is “as realistic as possible” and that the company hopes “this representation of our technology will help to enthuse and inspire the potential scientists and engineers of the future about the career opportunities they could pursue.”
CNN reports another Roll- Royce representative saying of the project “some people clearly have a lot of time on their hands.”
Wired explains the model created is a “cutaway” of the actual engine to show the inner workings. It shows the fan blades, compressor blades and compression section in “plastic brick detail.“ Gizmodo describes it as the ”most complex Lego machine ever built.”
Watch this speedy representation of the engine being built: