LEGO Formula 1 Display – What and Why

As mentioned previously in other posts. I am a major LEGO and F1 fan. Recently, with the collaboration between the two, they produced some sets of some of the teams’ F1 cars. These are the McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari. Over the years, I collected and built them all. The one issue is that they are large, and I have run out of room to display them in my college room. For some context, one of these cars is roughly 25 inches long, 10 inches wide, and 5 inches tall, and I have 4 of these. I wanted to make a display for these to show them off and give me more room throughout my room. Through this research and brainstorming, these are some of the examples I found. I also find backlighting to be really cool, so I plan on having lights on the back of the boards to give it all a glowing effect to bring focus to the display. This would also add an interactive aspect to the project, making it more of a challenge and more interesting.

I really liked the wall-mounted idea above since it would require less ground space within my room. Also, I loved the floating look that the acrylic had and wanted to incorporate that into my design. I decided instead of a simple all mount, I would challenge myself and have them angled like one of the inspiration photos above.

I was trying to figure out what aesthetic I wanted to go with and how it would fit with everything else in my room. I found that my room is a bit of a nerdcore and cluttercore aesthetic, where I have a bunch of trinkets and art covering everything in my room. This has aspects such as Music, Pokémon, LEGO, Formula 1, Animation, 3D Printing, etc. Adding this display would fit with the nerd and cluttercore aesthetic. I also have a lot of black in my room, so this got me thinking about the actual aesthetic of the project. For the aesthetic, I was thinking of going minimalistic. I would combine this with Dark Aero Aesthetic since that has everything as dark black and grey, but adds color as the pop. This would bring focus to the cars themselves, but have the frames supporting them. I had a toss-up between having the background be simple with an F1 logo behind the cars or integrating a vintage travel poster behind them, as displayed below. I decided I wanted to go with the Dark Aero Aesthetic and integrate F1, so I decided to make the background look like carbon fiber with the F1 logo behind the cars, as well as a little pop of the team’s color.

I also decided that a cool touch would be to have the displays be modular. This would allow me to switch the order with somewhat ease. Also, if I ever moved, it would be easier to move, and I could change the amount depending on the space available. On top of this, it will allow me to add more if/when more of these LEGO cars come out! This changed the idea from my original design of having them all on 1 sheet of wood to multiple smaller ones. Something to take into consideration with making it modular, I had to make sure the electronics could be changed. I planned on using LED strips on all sides of each board. I planned on using couplers that would allow me to switch between each board depending on how it all is oriented. To get the project going, I did some initial CAD brainstorming. I started with one car since I would be mimicking this to all 4 with minor changes to make it fit with each car. This can be seen below.

I intended the acrylic to come out of some slots and lock into the board to hold up the cars. From some initial testing, these would be too weak and break the supports, dropping the cars. All of these acrylic brackets are different due to the differences in the bottom of each car. I added these 3D-printed gusset brackets to support the acrylic supports. I had these printed in black to blend into the background and support the Dark Aero aesthetic. To have these be modular, I planned on attaching the bottom and side “frame” pieces to the boards, but having the top open. This would use the bottom of the board above as its top piece. For the very top, I would have a simple board that would temporarily attach to the top to complete the look

This would lead me to my final design for one section is shown below.

REFERENCES

Images:

Amazon.com: WETCEAOM Display Wallboard for Lego technic Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance 42171 car, compatible with Lego Mercedes F1, gift ideas for Lego Car wall mount frame fans, size:17.7x 29.5in, no model! : Toys & games. (n.d.-a). https://www.amazon.com/Mercedes-AMG-Performance-42171-Compatible-Enthusiast/dp/B0CZ39KZ3F

[0] https://www.wickedbrick.com/en-us/products/display-case-for-lego-mclaren-formula-1-race-car-42141 [1] https://www.amazon.com/SONNIES-Display-Wallboard-Decorative-Displays/dp/B0CYL7WVCG

[2] Wiki, C. to A. (n.d.-a). Dark aero. Aesthetics Wiki. https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Aero [3] Wiki, C. to A. (n.d.). Minimalism. Aesthetics Wiki. https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Minimalism [4] Wiki, C. to A. (n.d.-c). Vintage. Aesthetics Wiki. https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Vintage

Wiki, C. to A. (n.d.-a). Cluttercore. Aesthetics Wiki. https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Cluttercore

Wiki, C. to A. (n.d.-b). Geek. Aesthetics Wiki. https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Geek

Wiki, C. to A. (n.d.-d). Maximalism. Aesthetics Wiki. https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Maximalism

Wiki, C. to A. (n.d.-b). Nerdcore. Aesthetics Wiki. https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Nerdcore