MOC: Apollo Launch Tower

[NathanR]

Ok, I need help!

These last two service arms are driving me nuts!!

Firstly is the S-IVb forward arm, you can view schematics here.  The pipe along the top of the arm has to bend out slightly, then go up and over the technic connector 41678, but I can't find a way to do this with the 3mm bar with clip parts (48729, 11090, 23443).  I feel a master builder would do something very clever here, and find some unusual part or technique that would work perfectly... Any suggestions? 

Also, the pipe along the bottom of the service arm needs to have a weird up-and-down wiggle in it, the current solution works but is too compressed.  There's a combination of clip with tube, bar 3L, then another clip with tube in the middle of the pipe, but this needs to be shorter... Again, any ideas how this might be accomplished?

 

 

I also need help on the last service arm, which connected to the Apollo SM.  Again, schematics can be seen here.  The triangular boom, represented by the red horn, doesn't look terribly good.  Also, I need the empty pin hole on 42003 rotating 90 degrees so I can connect the last few cables... but there doesn't seem to be a suitable part that comes in red and will let me lock the top and bottom halves of the arm together:

 

I have a good idea how to put the crane together, so these two pesky service arms are the last little bits that need taking care of before I can call this beast finished.  Any ideas?

[Shiva]

The pipes? I might myself go with pneumatic hoses. Longer than those tho. For a future build I would have needed those in white.

[NathanR]

22 hours ago, Shiva said:

The pipes? I might myself go with pneumatic hoses. Longer than those tho. For a future build I would have needed those in white.

I did consider that, but... the hoses have never been made in red (ok, I'm being very picky), and LDD doesn't include the pneumatic hoses as flexible parts so I can't predict where to put them or where pin holes need placing to route the pipes through.  I did think of Bricksmith/LDraw, but I've never gotten LSynth to work.

[Shiva]

Can't help with the pipes.

Good that you asked Technic forum about the gears :)

[MMillere]

Nathan, Very interested in seeing this get finished :-) Just read the thread and my wife just said "how many pieces?" :-)

Mark

[NathanR]

So, the last few days have been very tough but I am finally making progress on the tower.  I got Serve Arm 8 sorted, complete with yellow access ladder and the triangular cable retraction mechanism. It is now very crowded up at the top of the tower!

 

Thanks to the folks on the technic board, I have a push-pull lever that causes the arms to rotate back. I went through several pages of trigonometry calculations looking at the pivot points and beam lengths needed to keep the arms at their current angle of 73 degrees.  I'm not sure why I bothered, because the universal joints on the main axle mean that the arms will be able to waggle a few degrees side-to-side, but hey, in principle it will all line up right.

 

Getting the mechanism into the tower was another nightmare.  I wanted it suspended from the roof of a level, but that meant losing one of the triangular support struts so the lever mechanism could swing freely. I also had trouble getting it on the floor of a level because the studs got in the way of the moving parts. I'd have needed a tile version of the 2x3 coupling plate (a rounded plated with a pin hole), which curiously does seem to exist but only as part of a keyring released some years ago.  Anyway, the current solution kind of works, but is very slightly "out of system", hopefully it won't be enough to make the mechanism seize up. 

 

On 20/05/2018 at 3:54 AM, MMillere said:

Nathan, Very interested in seeing this get finished :-) Just read the thread and my wife just said "how many pieces?" :-)

Thanks! Always nice to know other people are interested. At the moment the model has just over 6900 pieces, with an additional 500 expected if I put in the safety railings on each level.  And I haven't even started the crane yet... 

 

[Shiva]

I think you busted my parts expectation for this build :)

[MMillere]

Forgot to mention, great work so far :-) Do not know if you have seen this or how accurate it is, but from MIB 3 the cgi'd LUT

 

On 5/11/2018 at 2:27 PM, NathanR said:

I did consider that, but... the hoses have never been made in red (ok, I'm being very picky), and LDD doesn't include the pneumatic hoses as flexible parts so I can't predict where to put them or where pin holes need placing to route the pipes through.  I did think of Bricksmith/LDraw, but I've never gotten LSynth to work.

How about Hose, Rigid 3mm D., https://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=P&catString=528 Some are available in red

[NathanR]

@MMillere Thanks for the video! Fascinating to see how the movie shots were put together, but the LUT they showed isn't remotely accurate (all swing arms retract at the same moment, missing camera platforms on the LUT, vertical pillars on the first three levels).  Though to be fair, even the movie Apollo 13 has an inaccurate LUT...

 

[MMillere]

On 4/6/2018 at 5:54 PM, NathanR said:

It is possible I'm overdoing it now... 

 

I've also been working on the staircase to go up the tower!  I can't believe it took me all night to come up with this:

Of course, now I think about, there are some levels which are one plate shorter, which means this design won't fit   Any ideas for a good one-stud-wide microscale staircase?

@NathanR Thinking of trying these, they are available in red too - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3743#T=P - But I don't want to have to cut them

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by MMillere

[NathanR]

@MMillere Nice idea, I never thought of using cog teeth to represent steps.  However, my rule with all Lego design is that the parts I use must have appeared in an official set released within the last 2 years... well, 3 now, but only because I've been working on this model for so long .  

Part 3743 has never appeared in any set in red, and while some are listed for sale on bricklink, I think they must simply be from a test batch that escaped the factory.  Lego will sometimes make a batch of parts in red or trans-clear because these colours make it easier to see problems with the mould - this is why you occasionally see transparent 32x32 baseplates, or most famously, the red Darth Vader helmet.  

[NathanR]

So the crane on the top of the LUT is really hard to make in Lego.  Really, really, hard.  I could do with someone to bounce some ideas off...

The tower top features a 6x6 round plate on a 4x4 turntable plate.  Probably not the strongest connection but I'm not sure if it is practical or possible to build in a technic turntable. The counterweight is a 6x11 half-cylinder built up of 1x3 curved slopes on the sides and 1x4 curved sleds on the roof.  I don't see how to attach them to each other due to the odd length.  But the most challenging part is the crane arm itself.  LDD file here: https://www.bricksafe.com/files/NathanR/real-space/apollo-lut/CraneTopPlayground.lxf

 

I have a design that is (apparently) in system that nails the profile view of the crane.  But there's no way to put an axle along the base (I'd need an acute angle connector).  There's no way to build any of the truss structure, even the vertical struts can't fit.  I'm not too bothered about strength, since the crane is probably just for show, but it does need to be a fairly rigid/stiff structure or it will sag under it's weight. And of course, the crane was painted in a two-tone colour - (yellow for the back half and counterweight (the 25t capacity section) and red for the front half (10t lifting capacity).  There are plenty of axles in yellow but not too many connectors,,,

I'd steal...errr... borrow  the WhatsUpToday crane design but it is not strictly in system, and it relies on 4x part 2636... bricklink only lists 28 for sale across the planet.

So are there any other ways of building a truss structure, more creative ways of using system bricks or technic that I haven't thought of?

 

[MMillere]

Not my design, bu t a decent rendition using half beams :-)

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsRpjSGQAlYVg7J5C2iOtJvXsdxeOA

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsRpjSGQAlYVg7J62LngFCw3z1R_wA

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsRpjSGQAlYVg7J7UrtY-fnZC1a4uA

Found where it came from - Matthew Nolan on Facebook lego.space.history under albums

 

[NathanR]

@MMillere Thank you!!! That was exactly what I was looking for!  

I adjusted the design to use the profile shape I'd come up with, it took a lot of trial and error but I was surprised to get 5 triangular struts that are basically "in-system".  There should really be 6, but I couldn't find another one that fitted in.  With luck the crane won't sag under it's own weight, Most of the technic pin holes almost but don't quite line up so there is some tension in the system.

The grey circle on the tower top is the guide track for the crane, it should be a perfect circle and done in yellow, but Lego haven't made the quarter circle tiles in yellow yet.

You can see a 4x4 block under the crane that slides on the 1x8 plates with rails. Do any other parts work with these rails? I'm not sure how to create  a crane hook.  It's doesn't have to be functional, I'm not crazy enough to try and build in a working winch and I don't think the crane is strong enough to take any weight.

Only a few details remain - one service arm, a few small pipes running up the tower, and then a complete rebuild from the ground up to check all the parts have good connections.

Would people be interested in an instruction manual for this model?

[NathanR]

Sorry for the double post, but I am on a roll...

I finally got this nightmare service arm to work.  Well, kind of.  There are two fuel pipes, one above and one below the arm, with some pretty complex routing.  I've captured it, though I can't help feeling it looks more like a robotic claw on the side of the arm rather than fuel pipes.  Still, if not the best, it is certainly the least bad that I can come up with.

 

You can see here how the pipes should really be routed: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_13_Saturn_V_during_rollout.jpg

[MMillere]

On 6/3/2018 at 4:40 PM, NathanR said:

You can see a 4x4 block under the crane that slides on the 1x8 plates with rails. Do any other parts work with these rails? I'm not sure how to create  a crane hook.  It's doesn't have to be functional, I'm not crazy enough to try and build in a working winch and I don't think the crane is strong enough to take any weight.

Would people be interested in an instruction manual for this model?

@NathanR, Yes, instructions would be great :-) along with all sub files :-)

Your pic above came from here, not sure you have this link. 

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a13/images13.html

An idea for the hook could be 1 round tile back to back with 1  of these

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?id=189#T=P

Carefull, they are a bugger  to pull apart once connected.

 

On 2/25/2018 at 12:24 PM, NathanR said:

I've started work on the swing arms now, and a very old design decision has come back to haunt me.  I moved the Apollo rocket one stud closer to the tower, so that the base could use a a 10-wide baseplate instead of a 9-wide plate.  Unfortunately, the rocket is now too close for me to the able to use the 2x2x10 girder (95347) as the main bulk of the arm - the arm hits the rocket every time you try and move it.  So I've had to come up with a brick built version:

It's a little bit crude but I'm not sure how I could build it any better 

@NathanR, I am debating your 1 stud move since I have not started yet, thinking I would rather go 9 wide so I can use the girders

[NathanR]

Thanks for the links! I will give the crane hook idea some thought...

I wouldn't try and use the girder parts for your swing arms actually.  The part ID is 95347 and it only appeared in red in one set, the Batcave based on the 1960s Batman TV show.  Unfortunately, the set is now retired, the part is out of stock at Lego bricks and pieces, and most bricklink sellers sellers only have one or two each.  The part also has a loose grip on the axle hole if I remember right, so attaching it to the tower might be tricky.  You can see it used on the WhatsUpToday Apollo LUT model, that could be worth a look.

[NathanR]

It's been a while since I posted an update, but I think this model is basically finished!!!

I went to town on one final bit of detailing, where I tried to model the pipes suspended from the ceilings of various levels, linking the vertical pipes on the side and back of the tower to the service arms.  There was surprisingly little reference material available for this, the pipes don't seem to have been photographed and they don't show up on any of the available schematics.  I got lucky when I came across photos of a CAD model for an (apparently abandoned) photoetch model kit of the LUT and a super-detailed papercraft (?) model on a Japanese website.

The pipes are mostly built from technic, but in a few tight spots I had to switch to regular system bricks.  Some of the 90 degree axle connectors (32014) should be the new 25214 rounded corner brick, but LDD won't allow a 2L axle to slot all the way in (I assume this is possible on the real part...)

One regret is that I can't find a way to put in the safety railings on each level.  There are basically no red 3mm bars, or even 3mm hoses available. I know the new Technic Bugatti Chiron features a 23L red hose, but I'd need around 17 of them to put a bar on each side and level of the tower.  This is a problem because bricklink only has three on sale world-wide, and Lego doesn't have them in stock yet (if they ever will).  I also looked at doing a 1x2 grille tile held in a 1x1 vertical clip, but I find too many places where I would need a 1x1 grille tile to plug an unsightly gap. 

The LUT stands just shy of 8000 pieces.  I haven't worked out a cost estimate yet using bricklink, I'm almost afraid to, but I'd expect somewhere around 750 to 800 GBP.  As such, this is out of my price range and so the model will be staying a purely digital creation for the foreseeable future.  

I have been playing on mecabricks, and I will leave you with the first render of the tower (higher-res version on bricksafe):

 

[jimmynick]

Looks decent! To be honest I was a bit leery of this project earlier on, from reading the first page of this thread and so on, but you've turned out something very good. I like the render!

[DanNeely]

Could you link to where you found the pipe routing and details of the service boxes?  I've been unable to find good information on them.

 

I don't know if it'd be enough to let you fit rails with all the other dodads you've got attached, but using 3839's to hang the crossbeams from the level above would cut down a lot on the clutter you'd need to build around.

It's what I'm using in my current concept for the main tower levels:

 

 

[NathanR]

22 hours ago, jamesn said:

Looks decent! To be honest I was a bit leery of this project earlier on, from reading the first page of this thread and so on, but you've turned out something very good. I like the render!

Thanks! To be honest, when I started I wasn't so sure I'd be able to pull this off.  I've never designed anything so big before...

5 hours ago, DanNeely said:

Could you link to where you found the pipe routing and details of the service boxes?  I've been unable to find good information on them.

I got the the service box details from the educraft paper model, I discovered someone had posted build photos of one of their kits on a scale model website, and used that as reference:  http://www.scalemotorcars.com/forum/large-scale-airplanes/2853-apollo-saturn-rocket-2.html

For the fuel pipe routing, I found a useful Japanese website but never actually visited it.  I couldn't translate any of the text so I couldn't figure out if it would be a safe site or not, Instead, I got the images by doing a google image search for "site:ranging.exblog.jp".  There are good pictures of a model kit build up, and one schematic diagram showing how the pipes are routed on each layer.  The Japanese model has some errors around service arms 2-4, so you will have to consult other reference photos of the launch tower.  I found various Saturn V launch photos to be quite useful, the glow from the glow from the exhaust flames of the Saturn V lights up the ceilings of various levels, which are usually hidden in shadow.  

 

Your design of the angles struts is fantastic, I wish I'd come up with that.  However, I think you may have problems with the 1x4 lattice pieces you use for the railing.  These parts haven't been made in red since 2005, so you may have trouble buying them in bulk.  Only one bricklink seller has more than 50 of them, at about 1.60 EUR each.

I'm curious, how are you doing the main lift-shaft support column? Is the opening in each floor for a working elevator, or do you plan a mass of technic bricks mounted on their side?

 

 

[DanNeely]

14 minutes ago, NathanR said:

Thanks! To be honest, when I started I wasn't so sure I'd be able to pull this off.  I've never designed anything so big before...

I got the the service box details from the educraft paper model, I discovered someone had posted build photos of one of their kits on a scale model website, and used that as reference:  http://www.scalemotorcars.com/forum/large-scale-airplanes/2853-apollo-saturn-rocket-2.html

For the fuel pipe routing, I found a useful Japanese website but never actually visited it.  I couldn't translate any of the text so I couldn't figure out if it would be a safe site or not, Instead, I got the images by doing a google image search for "site:ranging.exblog.jp".  There are good pictures of a model kit build up, and one schematic diagram showing how the pipes are routed on each layer.  The Japanese model has some errors around service arms 2-4, so you will have to consult other reference photos of the launch tower.  I found various Saturn V launch photos to be quite useful, the glow from the glow from the exhaust flames of the Saturn V lights up the ceilings of various levels, which are usually hidden in shadow.  

 

Thank you for those pointers.

 

14 minutes ago, NathanR said:

Your design of the angles struts is fantastic, I wish I'd come up with that.  However, I think you may have problems with the 1x4 lattice pieces you use for the railing.  These parts haven't been made in red since 2005, so you may have trouble buying them in bulk.  Only one bricklink seller has more than 50 of them, at about 1.60 EUR each.

The supply situation isn't quite as dire as that.  There're 2 dozen sellers with at least 25 of them for $0.20 or under, and 19 more with 20-25.  It'd be a bunch of orders instead of a one stop shop; but for as many bricks as a LUT needs not an unreasonable number overall.

It's mostly a moot point in my case.  I was originally planning to build the design I got (Bailey Fullerson's) with only minimal changes from the original design because I didn't want to spent 50-100 hours trying to rework whatsuptoday's into something that had all the needed parts buyable at all.   Based on my original plan, I ordered all of the 1x1x4 fences and other rare parts (along with enough misc additional ones to pad the orders out to reasonable sizes to avoid getting crushed by shipping) a week and a half ago. 

 

Since then I've probably put 40-70 hours in LDD split about 50/50 between redesigning everything from the taper down and trying to get a smaller footprint for the rest of it that was buildable.    *oooops*  Assuming I go with it, I'll probably end up spending most of this week redoing the arm and pipe attachments.  And then have to either build a partial S-V in LDD to check that the arms still fit, or do a partial physical build to check the same.  ('m leaning toward building as far as the first arm, from that I should know how much the others would need scaled.)

 

 

14 minutes ago, NathanR said:

I'm curious, how are you doing the main lift-shaft support column? Is the opening in each floor for a working elevator, or do you plan a mass of technic bricks mounted on their side?

Currently a solid shaft of bricks.  Opening it up to fit a single car's a possible option (the actual pair of cars is probably impossible), but if I do so, that's going to be a fairly late addition.  I want to cut the elevator machinery box down to its actual size which'd limit the amount of volume available for gearing, so I'm not sure what'd actually be doable yet.

 

[DanNeely]

I've been reading that Japanese model blog you found via Google Translate.  Unfortunately that artist wasn't able to find details on how the piping was routed either and just made something up.

[NathanR]

3 hours ago, DanNeely said:

I've been reading that Japanese model blog you found via Google Translate.  Unfortunately that artist wasn't able to find details on how the piping was routed either and just made something up.

Oh, that's a disappointment.  Though from the reference images I got, it looked like the artist was spot on for the upper levels... 

At least on the plus side, if there are no reference images, no one can say we've built it wrong! 

[NathanR]

Well, it may be a long time before I get a chance at building this model for real, but I have completed the digital design!

Some CGI renders courtesy of Mecabricks:

 

After a rebuild from the ground up, I added a few missing parts and strengthened one or two places.  I also tried to optimise the part usage.  The final model weighs in at 8123 pieces!

If anyone is interested, an LDD file can be downloaded from my bricksafe page, where you can also find some additional CGI renders from Mecabricks:

https://www.bricksafe.com/pages/NathanR/real-space/apollo-lut

 

"Houston, this is Odyssey signing off"