[TC12] Road Breaker

[Carsten Svendsen]

I've always wanted to make something different using the new yellow ring gears, and this competition sparked an idea instantly.

I won't tell you what the wacky function is just yet as it will become more apparent later on.

I started by building a set of tracked wheels. I didn't have enough of the small sprockets so I had to use the large ones.

It turned out that the individual wheels got way bigger than I anticipated so I had to install them on the outside of the ring.

The distance to the center of the ring from the 24t gears was an odd number, so I had some issues finding the right combination of gears.

Eventually I stumbled upon the old sprocket gears and they fit perfectly.

It was at this stage that I realized there were some problems making it move. I had already ensured that no gears had been clamped but it was still not moving without struggle.

After many hours I ended up finding the issue in the tracks them selves. By taking off the tracks it moved a lot better, still not smooth though. The distance between the wheel sprockets was also an odd number and I had build the main beam out of bricks like this to make it interact with the 12t bevel gears properly.

Even with a sufficient amount of bracing it still kinda came lose, but the tracks still wouldn't move so I decided to scrap them and use small wheels instead.

I don't have enough wheels in the same color so I put a yellow axle through the yellow wheels, a grey axle with the white wheels and a black axle with the black wheels.

I know it's a mismatch of colors but it could be worse

These were actually the right size to fit perfectly underneath the ring.

I was extremely lucky that the worm gears you see underneath interacted perfectly with the 24t gears even when it's all out of alignment like that.

So naturally I spent a while putting a supporting structure around it all.

This is for steering by the way. There will be an M-motor directly on to the 12t bevel gear.

In order for this to work with the drive train correctly (which is all of the red axles), The wheel units must be facing the same way or they will just drive in opposite directions, getting no where.

So now I had to install the drive train. I had already planned on using a chain for it all as it seemed robust enough to hold if wrapped around the gears properly.

So you will see that there's a 24t gear in the middle driving the chain. It turned out later that even though the chain looks tight enough, I had to put a 24t gear on each side to make it even tighter.

Bonus info: You see those two 3L half beam in the center of the 5x7 frame? Yeah those were actually quite fiddly to get in as it had to be done on the model.

For the drive train I wanted two speeds, mainly so the chain doesn't go from 0-100 instantly and gets ripped apart, since that would be almost impossible to get back together again.

I simply put a differential with a motor on either side and it works wonders. However, the XL motors take up a massive amount of space so I tried using M-motors instead.

It didn't work as one motor just spins the other one around. Only the XL motors have enough internal resistance to work like this sadly.

You will also notice that I ran an axle from the steering function to the top with a few universal joints - more on this later.

For extra stability on the M motor I put a technic brick thingy, which I never thought about using like that before.

Time to install the wacky function!

After several hours I finally found the perfect combination to make the 12t bevel gears interact on the ring gear without any strain. The answer looks obvious when you already have the solution.

On the opposite side I put another M motor with a 24t gear interacting on the ring gear. Again I used the technic brick thingy as you can never have enough stability.

Ideally I wanted the motor to extend less up, or lie it down even but the XL motors are in the way.

I could just put one XL motor on the drive train vertically which would clear up heaps of space on either side where the motors are currently.

I just don't want to lose the 2 speed functionality is all...

Now is the time to install the base of the cabin to see if it'll all fit nicely together.

This is why I needed the connection to the steering, so that the cabin is always looking in the driving direction.

I had to put a chain up here as well or I would be reversing the turning direction.

Now that that's taken care of, I can start working on the actual wacky function.

If you look below, initially I wanted the liftarm to swing out in a 45° angle when spinning for that insane road clearing, but it turns out that it doesn't spin fast enough.

I know this because it works fine if I just swing it in my hand.

Therefore I had to find another method of sweeping action.

I remembered that I had quite a few Bionicle Bohrok sets and the special pieces are big and light enough to catch air and open up when spinning on the model.

The only issue here is that they are almost all in different colors, it's gonna be a massive rainbow effect when it's spinning around.

That is all that I've been doing this weekend and I will continue the build next weekend.

Before I even started this project I thought to my self that I was going to blow the competition out of the water with this thing.

Little did I know that I didn't have enough wheels of the same color, and the size restraint of the big LEGO motors hurts quite a bit too.

I don't even know where to put the battery pack and the IR recievers. I reckon the battery will have to go on the top that spins around though the wire will get messy quite quickly.

If anything, at least I had fun and learned something, right?

[JDL1967]

Nice one. Maybe it is an idea to put two batt boxes on it that rotate also. One for the power and one as a contra weight to keep it all in balance.. you can put marbles in one to create the same weight as the box who provides the power to the pf..

[Carsten Svendsen]

I have a rechargeable PF battery so it's not going to be too heavy if that was your concern. 

My only concern is trying to make it look nice and appealing after all the bulky stuff has been installed.

[Carsten Svendsen]

I decided that the model was going to be way too bulky, so I dropped the two XL motors and put in just a single M motor for the drive train.

I also moved all of the motors to lie down as far down as possible, to make more room for other components as you will see later.

I wanted the outer destruction ring to go faster so that I can actually use the right pieces instead of random Bionicle stuff, and I tried everything with an M motor but it wouldn't fit anywhere and if it did, the gearing was too low.

So ultimately I put in a buggy motor which required quite a modification on the model to fit.

The buggy motor is driving the ring with a 16t gear for a rotation speed of 75 rpm @ 7.2v or 105 rpm @ 9v. I still don't know whether I'll use batteries or the rechargeable one.

The drive chain goes around the buggy motor nicely since it has rounded parts.

Since its direct full speed immediately I put in a clutch gear to take the initial torque spike, however, the teeth weren't long enough to engage the chain properly so I changed it back to a normal 24t gear.

Later on, I discovered that the 24t gear would have some space issues so I changed it to a 16t gear which doesn't engage the chain as well and I'm having some issues now which I'll resolve tomorrow. It's also a lot slower than it used to be.

I wanted to fit the 2 IR Receivers on  the right hand side where there's now no obstructions. I had to change the entire (grey) construction and getting the Receiver to sit flush was also a lot more difficult than anticipated.

As you will see on the picture below, the Receiver has been moved ½ a stud horizontal AND vertical to fit properly

I forgot to take a midway picture, but the drive motor has been moved to the side and in order to fir next to the knob gears, there was going to be a spacing of 4 studs

24t gears are too big to fit in a 3 stud gap so I just put 16t gears and chain on which works flawlessly. I turned the chain the right way around to make it less likely to break.

The IR Receivers has also been installed and just about fits the structure.

Next I wnated to install the destruction ring gear and I found very quickly, that with all the components installed, there's no room to fit bevel gears properly or even secure them properly.

Therefore I just made do with the current construction and used normal bricks to hold it in place.

It's quite a bit noisy but it works nicely.

After that there was only really cable management left and that was quite easy

I have ensured that the cable around the buggy motor doesn't touch the 16t gear in any circumstances as I very quickly wrecked one of my cables because of this.

Tomorrow I will be looking at fixing the drive train as it's stuck going one way for some reason.

After that, I'll be looking at installing the top control house and the destruction ring thing. 

I'm considering using different colored liftarms for the ring than yellow or black to cut the yellow color back a bit.

Tell me what you think, It was quite a challenge to put 2 M-Motors,  a buggy motor and 2 IR Receivers inside the rings while still keeping it functional.

The battery box & the rechargeable battery are both 4 studs wide, so if I lay either of them on the side it'll be the same height regardless.

The only difference is that it's going to get bulky or really bulky, so I'm wondering what will look best as it has to turn over the 20t bevel gear regardless.

[BrickbyBrickTechnic]

Have you tested the gear trains yet? If not, I advise you to do so before continuing.

[mocbuild101]

3 hours ago, Carsten Svendsen said:

I still don't know whether I'll use batteries or the rechargeable one.

I would use the rechargeable battery, as I have found that there is not much difference in speed compared to standard batteries.

[Carsten Svendsen]

The gear train has been revised and I had to reduce the gearing even more to make it move more fluidly. I changed the knob gears to 12t bevel gears as well to make it smoother

I also switched out the M-motor for an L-motor.

The gearing to the wheel is: 16t - 16t then 12t - 12t then 16t - 24t then 12t - 20t ; A total gear ratio of 2½ : 1

It's moving quite slowly, but it'll just have to do when there's so little space.

For the buggy motor driving the destruction ring I moved the output to the faster one so now it goes as fast as possible given enough power.

I already tested it with my V2 receiver and it works wonders driving the ring around. It's now fast enough to swing out the liftarms as I want it to.

I also decided to look for a proper way to hold the ring in place with gears as the other method proved to have too much friction.

It was quite difficult since I had to move the gears in place by half a studs width but I managed somehow.

Now for a way to attach everything to the ring I initially planned to use #3 connectors and #3 axles in a ring arrangement, but it didn't quite fit properly. Just barely, but there was too much friction and it was hard to move around, so I ended up just attaching everything to it in the good old fashion.

I found those red super long axle things and found that 2 fits in a perfect circle around the arrangement. So that's why I'm going to make it have a red theme to it.

I just don't know how I'm gonna do it yet but I'll get around to figuring something out.

In the following I tried using all red bricks but I think it might just be too red, what do you guys think? Also the red is really bad on this phone, I'll sort out some better photos next time.

I think it might look cool if done correctly. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of red studded bricks to make art out of that battery box with so I'll figure something out.

That's it for now, and I won't be building again until in maybe 2 weeks time, I just have too much on my hands at this moment.

[Superkoala]

Well. It's... interesting. It looks like a battlebot.

[mocbuild101]

1 hour ago, Carsten Svendsen said:

In the following I tried using all red bricks but I think it might just be too red, what do you guys think?

If you make the rest of the model mostly black, it should look really good!

[gvo25]

go for red bricks

[Carsten Svendsen]

I have barely had any time to build this for the past few weeks, so I have not had time to perfect the drive train and rotation/steering properly, but it works alright.

I just had to get it done today as I will otherwise be out of time for the contest - not that I can compete with the other entries but at least I'm in.

I extended the arms a bit further out so that they won't interfere with the wheels.

I added a pilot and the battery box plus a basic base. What you see below is the final design, which is why this won't be able to turn 360° or even 180° (because the tan bevel gear is in the way)

Originally I wanted it to just keep turning around the same way but the wires need some sort of wind up to keep them in place, and well... time restraints

What you see next is the final product and bodywork. It could've been a lot worse, but probably also a bit better.

 

 

Video will come later today.

 

[mocbuild101]

Very nice! The red looks much better now.

4 hours ago, Carsten Svendsen said:

...not that I can compete with the other entries

I think you will do quite well - that spinning arm ring is a very wacky function...

[Carsten Svendsen]

23 minutes ago, mocbuild101 said:

Very nice! The red looks much better now.

I think you will do quite well - that spinning arm ring is a very wacky function...

You haven't seen the video yet. My idea and the entire concept is spot on, I just haven't had enough time to perfect it. 

Ideally I wanted it to go fast and turn perfectly, but that's how it is.

[Carsten Svendsen]

 

 

[msk6003]

I wonder if this was came in TC11....

[trekman]

This looks really good. but I never have much confidence in those chain links!

[Carsten Svendsen]

On 17/10/2017 at 6:22 AM, msk6003 said:

I wonder if this was came in TC11....

I had a look in the index and I didn't know that there was a battle bot contest right before this one. I must say many of the entries are really great in that competition.

I build mine on a very limited time and I probably constrained my self a bit too much by using the yellow rings as a base, where as others had just used proper turntables.

[mocbuild101]

My final thoughts:

+ crazy spinning ring, great design, hanging arms look like legs.

- a bit slow. (which is bad for a race) 

Good luck!