Lifting Pantasy's Steam Punk Airship (#85021) into the air

[Toastie]

Dear All,

after @Auroralampinen has very recently posted an excellent and very positive review of the Pantasy #85021 Steam Punk Airship set in this thread, I thought I briefly share a couple of things I did with my own copy of that set, purchased earlier this year.

As you can see in @Auroralampinen's review, all 3 propellers, as well as the fins in the back, plus a number of decorative gears, are connected through a serious drive train to one single knob on the starboard side of the ship’s body/aft upper structure. Manually turning this knob turns on everything. This location is fully compatible with installing (literally just adding and securing it with a couple of plates) a Tenka Cubit Motor Cube others here on EB as well as myself have used to motorize their MOCs/models. In the recent past, I used two of these motors to get my Pantasy #85007 Steam Punk Suspended Train moving on elevated track consisting of 5V/12V rails, see here. The motors are propelled by the Tenka Bluetooth Battery Cube, which has BL connectivity (well, as the name says ^^). As described in the above referenced 85007 thread, and particularly owing to @Asper and @Ts__, these cubes nicely hook up to an ESP32 Devkit 1 board or the like, provided the appropriate libraries are referenced in the PlatformIO plugin for Visual Studio Code. Not only one of them Cubes, but many can be addressed, if you like. In addition, the ESP32 also knows how to hook up a PUp LEGO remote (#88010) and there you go, you have two dials and 7 buttons at your disposal for remote control.

Upon turning the two BT Battery Cubes, one in the train, the other one in the airship, as well as the LEGO remote on and firing up the ESP32, all three devices connect and I can control both train and airship using the buttons. Or do some automation, as shown in the 85007 thread.

... yeah, there always is.

In addition to propelling the propellers, I wanted to

• lift the airship into the air, and then have it circling around. There is not that much free airspace in my attic (first, it has sloped walls, second all sorts of things are hanging from the ceiling: Tie fighters, propeller airplanes, X-wings, helicopters …), so the radius of that circle needed to be small. Nevertheless, a 3 kg heavy bunch of ABS bricks exerts some dragging force to the mount when pivoting around.
• mount that airship to one of the two stacked glass disc insulators (4 discs) I saved from being trashed by the Deutsche Bahn years ago when they renewed the overhead lines for local trains nearby. The insulators are simply beautiful. Thick green glass, as if they were made from emeralds. All these years, both of them were sitting in my workshop in the basement, and I could not come up with something appropriate, well, until now .

This calls for making a ceiling mount for the insulator and a turntable for the airship. Well, and using another motor for turning the turntable. I selected a second Cubit Motor Cube, as then I could fuel that thing using the BT Battery Cube installed in the back section of the airship.

With regard to getting electricity to both motors: The propeller drive is easy, two female Dupont connectors + two insulated wires, as Cubic elements use Dupont style connectors to connect, it is that simple. For juicing the turntable motor from below (to prevent wires from tangling up upon multiple 360° rotations) I decided to running current through the two steel wires carrying the airship. Each is wired from the wooden mount attaching to the turntable through the airship’s roof down to the white 1x4 technic bricks (as seen in section “bag 5” of @Auroralampinen’s review), over to the adjacent side, and back through the roof to the mount. I then made a cable with one Dupont connector with 2 insulated cables and soldered the ends to the two ship-carrying steel wires. The turntable motor uses also a custom cable: Dupont connector, insulates wires, soldered to two alligator clips. The latter are just for the looks – it is more steam punky. Well, nonsense, this way it is much easier to get the airship off the hook for maintenance and stuff. Well, and it >is< more steam punky. Here are a few photographs of the ship and the mount:

The entire assembly nicely "swings", when the ship is pivoting.

Finally: Yes, I know, much more powerful turntables are readily available for purchase. But there is a strict rule implemented here: If there is a chance that I can make "a thing" from "stuff" I have available in the house, I have to use that "stuff". Upon failure, there are chances for negotiating that rule with the house authority. What was available? All sorts of scrap wooden pieces, as I do the flooring, some furniture, and other wooden construction etc. in/around the house myself. Screws, nuts, and bolts. Used IKEA curtain rod brackets. And little rollers – I simply forgot why I bought them – maybe they just looked … handy, one day. Ah, yes and LEGOssss  of course. Particularly these large curved gear racks and worm drives. So here’s the plan I made before firing up the power tools (I do everything in PowerPoint/MLCad/c/p, so forgive me for the crappy "plan"):

 * This view is with the top removed; the LEGO gear racks attach to the top though and are just shown for alignment purposes, see below. On the right are these mini "rollers" I bought some day for no apparent reason.

*Two rollers are not shown, because I so not know how to do that in PowerPoint. And, these were my simply my blueprints. There seem to be cold, riveted girders, nobody uses anymore ... who you gonna call? 

 

Lastly, here is a very brief, very crappy video. I will do that again, with more finesse , leading to a just crappy video. I am simply not good at this, nor do I have the appropriate gear. Good excuses, aren’t they?

https://uni-wuppertal.sciebo.de/s/6ZmttgTE7igfGQR

All the best,
Thorsten