"Big Wheels Keep On Turning" -- Size Matters

[dhc6twinotter]

  On 5/6/2012 at 9:44 PM, DLuders said:

@ Omikron: You could try the technique that gor ipsa/ iipsa used to make a large, all-Lego tire profile -- see this Eurobricks post. dhc6twinotter employed that technique on one of his MOCs:

Thanks for the reference to my work, however I would like to mention that my design is pretty different from Igor's wheel design. Igor uses a couple of xpod lids to sandwich a power puller tire, with a threaded 10L axle to keep everything together. I think his newer design uses 10x10 dishes instead, and I believe he found a way to build it without the threaded axles. His design is very nice and seems to work very well. I tried using his design for my backhoe, but the stretched pp wheels were way too small, and I ended up using the design posted above. It's much larger than the stretched power puller tires.

Anyways, I thought I would clarify that. Thanks again for referencing my work.

[Burf2000]

  On 5/6/2012 at 3:17 PM, DLuders said:

On his Flickr photoset, Adam_Kehoe posted two pictures of a large Hailfire Droid-type Lego Mindstorms creation (seen at AFOLCON & The Lego Show, held in Manchester, UK May 5-7, 2012):

These pictures are of robots made by Eric Steenstra and Martyn Boogaarts (incase anyone wanted to know). My display was next to them. They are truly epic builders!

[pluto7443]

I saw this topic and I immediately thought of this: (The pic's the attachment since I don't have flickr or anything) The inner track is just wrapped tightly around the tire.

Edited May 8, 2012 by pluto7443

[timslegos]

@pluto7443

Interesting idea. How does it handle weight?

tim

[pluto7443]

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:49 PM, timr said:

@pluto7443

Interesting idea. How does it handle weight?

tim

Well, I revised it slightly (used a larger motorcycle wheel and more supports) and it seems to handle weight surprisingly well. However, I think it would lack traction.

[Burf2000]

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:57 PM, pluto7443 said:

Well, I revised it slightly (used a larger motorcycle wheel and more supports) and it seems to handle weight surprisingly well. However, I think it would lack traction.

Very clever idea! We need more wheel idea's!

[DLuders]

On his Flickr photostream, V&A Steamworks posted this picture on his "Penny Farthing" bicycle. Note his use of (diassembled) Lego Technic Universal Joints to attach onto the Hailfire Droid wheel:

From the "comment" boxes that people posted on the Flickr photo, V&A Steamworks (Guy H.) wrote,

"YEP, the big droid wheel is 'tensioned' by the outward squeeze of all ( 8 ) spokes. The two spoke sets are offset at the middle pivot to also create some left/right tension and hold the whole connection true. It took a while to debug ( I tried a couple of other approaches that I wasn't happy with ). The final one shown here works like ACES. The U-Joints are a bit of a pain to disassemble...."

The 10288 Connector could be used for a "bicycle wheel" or "Ferris Wheel"-type setup, where stacks of the 10288 Connectors could be rotated SLIGHTLY to allow numerous spokes to go outwards from a common center:

Edited June 2, 2012 by DLuders

[timslegos]

I feel the pain for those u-joints . Interesting idea though.

tim

[Alasdair Ryan]

  On 6/2/2012 at 5:50 PM, timr said:

I feel the pain for those u-joints . Interesting idea though.

I am still such a big girl and now i fancy myself too.

tim

I feel pain for you full stop.