[TC24] Intergalactic Lifting Service

[Erik Leppen]

It has been a while since I posted anything of my own builds. Maybe posting what I got right from the start, encourages me to actually finish something. I have no idea whether I will have time (February is usually my album-writing month) and where things will lead me, but I thought, let's start with the outside this time. So I made a little cabin/cockpit thingy.

This wil probably be the frond end. No functions yet. The plan now is to have 1 or 2 seats and a joystick inside the cabin to control thrusters of some kind (because it's weird to have flight control surfaces in space, and you still need to steer somehow).

I'll probably keep the white and yellow, but I'm not sure about the medium blue yet. I have really few small parts and mostly large panels, which are hard to work with, and it's not my favorite color. But I had the 5x7 panels lying around in the required number in that color. Might switch to another color. Thinking of orange right now...

I have the following sections in mind:

• cabin
• weapons
• crane
• thrusters

I'm thinking these elements front-to-back, which would make the ship quite long (say 80 studs long). But it remains to be seen what will work and what won't, or whether I might change plans entirely.

Not much to see from below, except that the whole things is held together by a 11x15 frame for easy attachment to some kind of chassis later.

 

I'm one of those people still using Brickshelf, so here's the folder once public: Brickshelf Gallery - Spaceship for Eurobricks Technic competition TC24

 

So... I have actually started a build this time around :D Have fun building everyone! :)

Edited February 25, 2023 by Erik Leppen
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[Seasider]

Looks good so far, a bit like a space shuttle cockpit/nose shape. You have definitely made more progress than me.

[Thirdwigg]

I like the shaping you have so far. It's going to be big!

[Erik Leppen]

On 1/16/2023 at 2:39 PM, Thirdwigg said:

It's going to be big!

I'm afraid so... 

 

Anyhow. I made some progress. I have restarted the cabin module, but now from the underside, adding seats and joysticks.

I actually put 2 joysticks in now. My plan now is that one will control a weapon, and the other will control some thrusters. I actually wanted blue seats, but I somehow ran out of blue 2L beams and i don't have the seat panels at hand either, so I used dark-blue and black as substitutes.

Two 2-way joysticks means 4 outputs, indicated by the red axles.

 

Second, I wanted to have a crane, so I made a rather standard two-functions-through-turntable module.

To eliminate too much play in the drivetrain, I opted to use the old differential as an idler gear instead of a driving ring.

The module has - not surprisingly - three inputs, which are the three red axles on the left. 1 drives the differential, which drives the red axle ath te top. 1 drives the axle the differential sits on, which drives the 12t gear at the top (the plan is that that will drive a linear actuator for the crane). And one drives the rotation. I tried for a while to have the drive gear on the left of the turntable, and I had a solution but that didn't have the necessary gearing down to make the rotation speed manageable. So in the end I decided to move this part over to the right, using the yellow triangles. Unfortunately that made the module 3 studs longer and not as "nice looking".

All the gray and tan axles sticking out the side will just be for bracing to some kind of chassis later. As always, I try to stick to use red/yellow axles for functions, and gray/black axles for structure.

Here's a better view on the gearing:

(I used the white frames only because my black frames are all in use in other mocs currently... I have to say, those new 7x11 and 11x15 frames are rather awesome :D)

 

The third module I made is a gearbox module to hopefully controll all these 3 inputs from 1 motor.

The idea is that the three side-by-side axles will be the selectors, these will be manual.

The black beams will be connected to the chassis (which is to be made). From the other side:

I wanted it to be bi-directional, so the two sets of red gears turn in opposite directions. The idea is that the top layer will be connected to a motor.

Together:

Next step is a weapons unit and then connect everything to a chassis to have one whole to work on.

Enjoying it a lot so far :D

 

[GerritvdG]

Good progress!  It's certainly going to be big, and 7 or more functions  

The bi-directional gearbox will be good for playability, nice....

[MangaNOID]

Can’t wait to see how you wrap this up 

[Erik Leppen]

On 1/19/2023 at 7:31 PM, GerritvdG said:

Good progress!  It's certainly going to be big, and 7 or more functions  

Yes, if I can get everything to work that is ;)

On 1/19/2023 at 11:43 PM, MangaNOID said:

Can’t wait to see how you wrap this up 

Me neither!

 

I fiddled some more and have some progress again. First of all I wrapped up the cockpit. The 3 seats and 2 joysticks all fit in!

I keep a digital file as well now, and I updated some shapes so things fit better. (Some gray and white parts of the side window should be yellow).

 

I also found out that the gearbox and crane drive module could be a lot more compact, so I made it into 1 module.

 

Third, and perhaps most excitingly, I have a weapons module!

(minus the white beams) There will be 3 guns: top, left, right, attached to the modules with the black triangles. The cool thing is that they will move together, aiming at the same direction at all times. The yellow and red linkages control their 2 degrees of freedom.

Seen from the front. The red linkage will move all 3 guns sideways. The yellow linkage will move all 3 guns upways. And again, frames are super useful to make things stay together while leaving a lot of interior space to have mechanisms.

 

So, to summarize the progress up to now, all modules together, the plan is therefore this:

Next up is to connect everything together and hopefully make some of the planned fucntions actually work :D By the way, since things are looking scarily like some sort of "spaceship tow truck", I changed the name (it may not be final, but it's better than to have it unnamed) :D To have an in-competition justification for all this, let's say the crane can be used to steal stuff :D and the weapons to defend against the police.

[Jurss]

Good approch - build functional modules, and then try to fit them together

[Erik Leppen]

Sorry for not updating for so long, I sometimes think I have too many hobbies, one of which is concentrating around February.

My ship is actually almost done. I have to fix some problems with gears skipping, and I have to add some kind of gripper or something to the end of the crane. But the rest, I think, is more or less done.

I decided to switch colors. Medium blue is too hard to build in, because I mostly have large panels, not too little other stuff. So I took the other color I had enough 5x7x2 panels in (besides white), and ended up at orange. I think it fits nicely with white and yellow and is still a combination not too often seen.

The guns move in unison, which is a cool effect, but due to lack of friction they face down when not touched.

I actually had some trouble finding a soluton for the thrusters, and eventually the only option was to have them on the sides sticking out, and using a wheel as the thruster. The wheel can of course rotate, coupled to the motor. But, almost accidentally I found a way to de-couple them, using the green 1x3 beam as a switch. This way, they can spin when the motor is on, but they can also be decoupled so the motor can be used to drive the crane. The coupling is independent, so the crane can still work when they rotate, but I haven't tested whether the motor can handle this. I expect not, becaues the crane functions move rather fast, and I hvaen't found a good place to gear things down.

The white paneling fitted nicely around the structure, which was very satisfying, but I also wanted to have some kind of "flight surface" so I added nonfunctional orange bits on the sides.

The unsightly red axles are functional parts of the movement of some kind of rudders. I know this doesn't work like that in space, but I didn't see any other way to suggest "steering". I may give the actual rudders (now represented by two gray 1x5 beams) a more exciting color (I think yellow) to make them stand out more.

I also added some rear lights :) and added some black panelling around the bottom edge.

Because the thrusters are now on the side, the controls for the gaerbox couldn't go to the side, where I originally wanted them (unless I would make the whole thing much wider, and I like a compact build :) ). The linkages to control the steering (in red) are rather ugly and I had to work them around all the existing functions, because I didn't want to make the thing longer. This meant that the levers for the gearbox had only one way to go - the back. I actually made 3 different colored levers to control the 3 crane functions. I'm not completely satisfied by their position, because now, the levers are within the crane's operating space, which is less playable.

The crane has a nice range :)

That was it for now :) I hope to finish on time, but this shouldn't be a problem now I have come this far. The model is not perfect, but it is what it is, and I still think it's a fun build :) 

[Erik Leppen]

So I decided to post my entry. I added a nice grabber and made it so that it can move in all directions.

Personally I'm quite happy with my entry. I think it's a fun build, with lots of functionality and a cool color scheme, the orange-yellow-white works well for me.

Both the batterybox and the motor can be taken off easily for easy replacement :)

I also added a little video showing the functions. Nothing special, no editing, just recorded some controlling of the functions.