42146 - Liebherr LR13000

[Bubbha]

On 4/4/2024 at 11:12 AM, craneson said:

now everybody who buyed the set is happy or have settled , there are besides the shortcomings  also new parts and new a tricks to build .  like the four ring turntable and the "turntable"  "hinge" that carries the main boom.   I see people started to improve and extend the dimentions  does everyone agree the model in basic is a good start or is that the first to change ?    (all the discussion about the salesprice are very boring ... so stop that !)

I recently bought It with a huge discount, and i think this Is a very good set. It works perfectly and it's a really strong build. Can lift 1 kg in the shortest position that Is a good deal for an official set.

I managed to lift the Mercedes G500 ( little more than 2kg) with a little mod  to the boom lenght and doubling the counterweight.

Yes, for me was a nice surprise, the first c+ set i appreciated (and i still prefer Power functions). It's expensive even at 500€, but Is  playable, moddable and has unique MOC Crane parts. 

 

 

[M_longer]

42 minutes ago, Bubbha said:

the first c+ set

Dont' worry, it might be last :)
LEGO sells last Powered Up parts on sale lately, C+ motors were discontinued too.

[Auroralampinen]

Well in case you have wanted to see a non technic builder to rant the liebherr crane it's in this video beginning at 3:21 it was for me really hilarious;) 

[Bartybum]

So I just copped this absolute monster secondhand for a 50% discount, and my god I'm impressed. There's definitely a different feeling you get between criticizing a set online, and then seeing and operating it in person. That being said, wouldn't have paid full RRP for this. $1050AUD is unreasonable.

Something I noticed during construction, slightly to my disappointment, was that unlike the Arocs, BWE or MkII mobile crane, this set's construction didn't really feel modular like I had hoped, especially the undercarriage. I was expecting to first build the core in its entirety, then each track, then combine the two with a marriage of completed subassemblies. Instead it all sort of just melds together into a single amorphous assembly with a huge mishmash splattering of yellow and DBG colours. I feel like this set would have benefited from a highly modular construction for transport, especially since it's enormous (its side profile literally occupies an entire square metre, if not more). Imagine building it like the real thing!

Another pretty interesting thing was how crazy fast the structures come together when you build them with giant frames. Those 3x19 frames are nuts, and there's a stupidly high amount of them in this set.

Something about the play that I'm not a fan of is how limited the range of motion for the arm is. You can't lay out the boom and jib (with the default C+ profile) on the floor like you do during the construction of a real crawler crane. This would've been a nice addition to the building process, and would've improved the authenticity of it.

The weights also feel like an odd choice. I wonder if they had considered designing aesthetic hollow boxes to fill with special moulded water bottles. Besides, everyone who has this set has access to running water, so why not just do that? It'd use MUCH less plastic. I also wonder how necessary the new lattice frames were. Could this not be built more economically with liftarms and a large amount of friction pins? Perhaps it would've been too heavy, who knows. Something that I did like about the lattice frames though, was how excitingly fast the boom came together because of them.

Last thing of note is how malformed the proportions are. Even ignoring the inaccurate boom configuration (which I'm happy to forgive), the top jib supports feel quite aesthetically sloppy, and the proportions of the superstructure and undercarriage don't accurately portray just how enormous the real crane is. It's especially obvious how narrow and top heavy the undercarriage looks - I think it could've used two or three extra studs in either direction, and sprockets the next size down.

All that being said, quite an impressive accomplishment of the designer. The set works pretty flawlessly - does what it says on the box.

[howitzer]

8 hours ago, Bartybum said:

The weights also feel like an odd choice. I wonder if they had considered designing aesthetic hollow boxes to fill with special moulded water bottles. Besides, everyone who has this set has access to running water, so why not just do that? It'd use MUCH less plastic. I also wonder how necessary the new lattice frames were. Could this not be built more economically with liftarms and a large amount of friction pins? Perhaps it would've been too heavy, who knows. Something that I did like about the lattice frames though, was how excitingly fast the boom came together because of them.

The water bottle idea is nice, though I wonder if they wanted an easily adjustable counterweight, as in you can just add or remove counterweight pieces as necessary. Or maybe the water bottle just didn't cross the minds of designers.

I think the new lattice frame pieces were necessary for the design as they allow for much stronger and simpler structure than liftarms and friction pins. Friction pins also have an unfortunate tendency to dislodge and come loose if the structure is twisted and bent a lot, unless the whole structure is properly form-locked, which I think wouldn't look that great here and also would add more pieces.

[Bartybum]

8 hours ago, howitzer said:

as in you can just add or remove counterweight pieces as necessary

That's actually a good point, I hadn't considered the idea of it being adjustable, at least visually. You can of course just fill water to a lower level with the aid of visual markers on the bottle, but you'd still be left with a potentially oversized counterweight for your MOC. Perhaps you could just have more bottles? Although, the problem here could be that you start running into size constraints.

8 hours ago, howitzer said:

Friction pins also have an unfortunate tendency to dislodge and come loose if the structure is twisted and bent a lot, unless the whole structure is properly form-locked, which I think wouldn't look that great here and also would add more pieces.

While pieces coming loose from twisting is another fair point, this set is at a common size for crawler crane MOCs, most of which would appear to get away just fine with regular liftarms (just check out VirtualMakerLuca's LR11000 moc below:

I imagine pin lift-out should be mostly mitigated with diagonal crossbeams. On a side note, I wonder if a truss is possible using just flip-flop beams for the longitudinal beams, with normal liftarms for the diagonal crossbeams.

It's also worth pointing out that the friction pins, even on this set's truss, can become dislodged with a bit of twisting. There's only three pins per frame connection, and nothing at all to stop the frame from expanding horizontally.

It would add more pieces, but that's only really an issue for weight and therefore playtime (perhaps that was a problem they ran into?). I don't imagine cost would be an issue here, given how low cost and optimized liftarms and pins are for Technic.

Edited July 7 by Bartybum

[howitzer]

12 hours ago, Bartybum said:

While pieces coming loose from twisting is another fair point, this set is at a common size for crawler crane MOCs, most of which would appear to get away just fine with regular liftarms (just check out VirtualMakerLuca's LR11000 moc below:

I imagine pin lift-out should be mostly mitigated with diagonal crossbeams. On a side note, I wonder if a truss is possible using just flip-flop beams for the longitudinal beams, with normal liftarms for the diagonal crossbeams.

It's also worth pointing out that the friction pins, even on this set's truss, can become dislodged with a bit of twisting. There's only three pins per frame connection, and nothing at all to stop the frame from expanding horizontally.

It would add more pieces, but that's only really an issue for weight and therefore playtime (perhaps that was a problem they ran into?). I don't imagine cost would be an issue here, given how low cost and optimized liftarms and pins are for Technic.

Hard to really say one way or another, could also be an aesthetics thing with the truss pieces having those bar-thickness diagonal supports instead of liftarm-thickness ones that MOC makers and TLG alike had to deal with before the introduction of these new parts.

I haven't really tested personally how easily liftarm-built lattice frame would come apart by twisting, but the Liebherr's frames seem to be quite resistant to it, loosening a bit first but then no more. Of course if you use enough force anything will come apart but I imagine TLG has standards on that - these are toys after all so they'll have to withstand whatever children might reasonably do to them, but no more than that.

[vanczakp]

 The 3 unit long frictionless pin is the hardest to dismount. I built an LR12500, its big and heavy, and it would just fall to one side intead of breaking. The larger the lego set, or a real crane and the larger the lifting weight the more you have to ensure you start lifiting exactly above the center of gravity, unless you will have problem. Which is not easy at all with a Lego because the stuffs you lift is not designed to precise lifting.  Same with the turntable speed. 

Regarding adjustable weight: the crane does it by changing the radius of ballast (tilting the secondary Derrick boom) plus the bearing of turntable can handle hundreds of tons without tilting more than 1-2 deg. You cant do it with lego. I put 2mm thick plastic ring into the groove of the lego bearing, reinforced the whole connection, and it got just a bit better. That is the reason why the original set has support legs.

 

20 minutes ago, howitzer said:

Hard to really say one way or another, could also be an aesthetics thing with the truss pieces having those bar-thickness diagonal supports instead of liftarm-thickness ones that MOC makers and TLG alike had to deal with before the introduction of these new parts.

I haven't really tested personally how easily liftarm-built lattice frame would come apart by twisting, but the Liebherr's frames seem to be quite resistant to it, loosening a bit first but then no more. Of course if you use enough force anything will come apart but I imagine TLG has standards on that - these are toys after all so they'll have to withstand whatever children might reasonably do to them, but no more than that.

13 hours ago, Bartybum said:

That's actually a good point, I hadn't considered the idea of it being adjustable, at least visually. You can of course just fill water to a lower level with the aid of visual markers on the bottle, but you'd still be left with a potentially oversized counterweight for your MOC. Perhaps you could just have more bottles? Although, the problem here could be that you start running into size constraints.

While pieces coming loose from twisting is another fair point, this set is at a common size for crawler crane MOCs, most of which would appear to get away just fine with regular liftarms (just check out VirtualMakerLuca's LR11000 moc below:

I imagine pin lift-out should be mostly mitigated with diagonal crossbeams. On a side note, I wonder if a truss is possible using just flip-flop beams for the longitudinal beams, with normal liftarms for the diagonal crossbeams.

It's also worth pointing out that the friction pins, even on this set's truss, can become dislodged with a bit of twisting. There's only three pins per frame connection, and nothing at all to stop the frame from expanding horizontally.

It would add more pieces, but that's only really an issue for weight and therefore playtime (perhaps that was a problem they ran into?). I don't imagine cost would be an issue here, given how low cost and optimized liftarms and pins are for Technic

Edited July 7 by vanczakp
Plus note

[Bartybum]

8 hours ago, howitzer said:

Hard to really say one way or another, could also be an aesthetics thing with the truss pieces having those bar-thickness diagonal supports instead of liftarm-thickness ones that MOC makers and TLG alike had to deal with before the introduction of these new parts.

I think you're correct there, these new panels definitely look cleaner than pure liftarm lattices.

8 hours ago, howitzer said:

I haven't really tested personally how easily liftarm-built lattice frame would come apart by twisting, but the Liebherr's frames seem to be quite resistant to it, loosening a bit first but then no more. Of course if you use enough force anything will come apart but I imagine TLG has standards on that - these are toys after all so they'll have to withstand whatever children might reasonably do to them, but no more than that.

Yeah testing it just now in front of me, the blue pins definitely loosen a millimetre or so, but the black pins stay put. You're also correct about the rigidity of it all - this truss is stiff as hell.

7 hours ago, vanczakp said:

The larger the lego set, or a real crane and the larger the lifting weight the more you have to ensure you start lifiting exactly above the center of gravity, unless you will have problem. Which is not easy at all with a Lego because the stuffs you lift is not designed to precise lifting.  Same with the turntable speed.

That reminds me of another thing I noticed about the design. You only need to load up the hook to approximately half capacity on the C+ profile before the slew bearing and the superstructure begin to bend over. A shifting counterweight would've been a really cool feature to try implement.

God there's a lot of things about this set that open it up to a pimp-my MOD. I'd be so tempted to try something if not for the fact that I bought this set at a bargain only to resell at a higher price lol

[vanczakp]

On 7/8/2025 at 1:57 AM, Bartybum said:

That reminds me of another thing I noticed about the design. You only need to load up the hook to approximately half capacity on the C+ profile before the slew bearing and the superstructure begin to bend over. A shifting counterweight would've been a really cool feature to try implement.

This is how the real crane works. I built it as 12500 with double wide main boom. Programmed in Pybricks, controlled by xbox controller.

When the derrick boom moves, the ballast, the cable of derrick boom, the actuators, and the main boom cable moves as well. All in sync based on angle of the two booms .

When I turn on the balancing, after 0,05deg difference from flat of the superstructure, the derrick boom moves until the tiling gets 0. Tyis can be automatic or triggered.

 

[Bartybum]

12 hours ago, vanczakp said:

This is how the real crane works. I built it as 12500 with double wide main boom. Programmed in Pybricks, controlled by xbox controller.

When the derrick boom moves, the ballast, the cable of derrick boom, the actuators, and the main boom cable moves as well. All in sync based on angle of the two booms .

When I turn on the balancing, after 0,05deg difference from flat of the superstructure, the derrick boom moves until the tiling gets 0. Tyis can be automatic or triggered.

*snip*

Oh dude that's so cool, great job  I wonder if it's possible to do this in the PU environment?

Could you explain why the derrick boom uses both linear actuators AND a cable to change its angle here? I would've thought the cable should be enough. Including linear actuators seems to make it redundant.

In the real crane, are the linear actuators used as hydraulic cylinders to move/lock the derrick in place, or are they just dampers?

[Saberwing40k]

If I recall correctly, on the real crane, what would be on the boom where the linear actuators are on the model are some cylinders that are there as basically an end stop to prevent the derrick from angling too far back. At least, I think that's all they do. They might be used to maintain some tension on winches, to prevent any lines from going too slack. I haven't heard anything about that function, so further research is needed.

[Bartybum]

2 hours ago, Saberwing40k said:

If I recall correctly, on the real crane, what would be on the boom where the linear actuators are on the model are some cylinders that are there as basically an end stop to prevent the derrick from angling too far back. At least, I think that's all they do. They might be used to maintain some tension on winches, to prevent any lines from going too slack. I haven't heard anything about that function, so further research is needed.

Mmm yeah you might be right there. There don't seem to be any polished shafts like you'd expect from hydraulic cylinders. They might just be locking struts during construction, which are then released during operation.

[Bricktrain]

On Liebherr crawler cranes the backstops are pressurized so they can reach higher boom angles than most other cranes.  

[vanczakp]

7 hours ago, Bartybum said:

Oh dude that's so cool, great job  I wonder if it's possible to do this in the PU environment?

Could you explain why the derrick boom uses both linear actuators AND a cable to change its angle here? I would've thought the cable should be enough. Including linear actuators seems to make it redundant.

In the real crane, are the linear actuators used as hydraulic cylinders to move/lock the derrick in place, or are they just dampers?

Thanks! The program of mine is way complex to program it with powrered up. But everything is original lego, and you can install the pybricks firmware on the hub! The main problem with lego app is that it runs on your phone/tablet and the program is secondary compared to the operating system. When I got a low battery notification the lego program has stopped. With pybricks the codes run on the hub itself so you can run extremely complex stuffs on it.

I needed the actuator to keep the cable tense in order to have proper winching. On the other hand it gives me more stability because at a certain tilting of structure to back would mean collapse.

[Bartybum]

16 minutes ago, vanczakp said:

I needed the actuator to keep the cable tense in order to have proper winching. On the other hand it gives me more stability because at a certain tilting of structure to back would mean collapse.

I'm quite surprised that you actually need it to be honest, I would've thought the forward weight of the booms should be enough to keep it taught. Do you have any feedback system in place to make sure the LA and winch don't go out of sync? I noticed that in the second video the winch appears to go slack for just a second.

Edited July 10 by Bartybum

[vanczakp]

16 minutes ago, Bartybum said:

I'm quite surprised that you actually need it to be honest, I would've thought the forward weight of the booms should be enough to keep it taught. How do you make sure the LA and winch don't go out of sync?

When I started the build it was way smaller. I needed to put a hub into the main boom to have a certain weight while it is fully erected and I tried to make the weight ratio of the main elements similar to the real one ( worked only when I built it and felt it) - you can see the main boom fixation is not in the center of the turntable like he original due to I needed more front weight. Now I would not need the actuators really but they are there, and the link between the the drives is just a 0.6 multiplier. Cable motor position = 0.6 x actuator motor position based on measurement. The actuator always has exact position but the cable diameter on the winch might not - but the boom handles bending well - that is why the actuator position is the base of everything in my program.

The first grooved wheel after the winch can move axially so with it the winching is accurate and repeatable any time. Same with the ballast lift, main boom cable between main and derrick boom - this needed too for tilting the derrick boom while the main boom stays still -> this one took me hours to measure, because it depends on the angle of the main boom (measured with 0.02 accuracy) and the angle of the derrick too (motor position) so the equation is something like x=y*constant + 'other constant'. I used linear equations instead of second or third order.

Edited July 10 by vanczakp

[Bartybum]

14 hours ago, vanczakp said:

When I started the build it was way smaller. I needed to put a hub into the main boom to have a certain weight while it is fully erected and I tried to make the weight ratio of the main elements similar to the real one ( worked only when I built it and felt it) - you can see the main boom fixation is not in the center of the turntable like he original due to I needed more front weight. Now I would not need the actuators really but they are there, and the link between the the drives is just a 0.6 multiplier. Cable motor position = 0.6 x actuator motor position based on measurement. The actuator always has exact position but the cable diameter on the winch might not - but the boom handles bending well - that is why the actuator position is the base of everything in my program.

The first grooved wheel after the winch can move axially so with it the winching is accurate and repeatable any time. Same with the ballast lift, main boom cable between main and derrick boom - this needed too for tilting the derrick boom while the main boom stays still -> this one took me hours to measure, because it depends on the angle of the main boom (measured with 0.02 accuracy) and the angle of the derrick too (motor position) so the equation is something like x=y*constant + 'other constant'. I used linear equations instead of second or third order.

Sounds quite complex but I think I follow. Crazy how there's much more to consider than you think at first glance.

[vanczakp]

15 hours ago, Bartybum said:

Sounds quite complex but I think I follow. Crazy how there's much more to consider than you think at first glance.

So this is how it moves :)

[Bartybum]

13 hours ago, vanczakp said:

So this is how it moves :)

Very nice