Full Size Bugatti Chiron out of LEGO

[jono rocky]

Its simply amazing that they did this. Would be good to see all those transparent pieces be available to the public. I wonder if it was just as a scary type of drive for the test driver as the real car is going flat out? I would be thinking hmm no suspension and held together by pins, one bump in the road and......

[Jeroen Ottens]

7 hours ago, Bublehead said:

 

@Jeroen Ottens, the bricks that are scrapped during the design process, are they recycled locally at the factory or are they sent to a plastics recycling company and processed outside of TLG?

Also, did they care if designers kept any of their scrapped bricks and add them to their personal collection or was that considered a company policy no-no?

Every now and then we had a ' housecleaning day'. Which meant that almost all assembled models (which were a lot) were thrown in big bins to be recycled (as in molten and converted into big plastic boxes).

It was strictly forbidden to take parts home. Some unofficial (coloured) pieces on bricklink come from employees that sneaked some out I guess.

 

48 minutes ago, Lucio Switch said:

I think that you might have confused me with someone other. Never said that it's a waste.

Oops, sorry, my bad

[Lucio Switch]

2 hours ago, Jeroen Ottens said:

Oops, sorry, my bad

No problem at all! We are just talking!

[mortenm]

I think it's really cool - I remember they did something similar when 8880 were released.

I noticed a funny thing in one of the videos:

That's not true - I own at the least these 4 from 3800 (Ultimate Builders Set):

The gearbox appears in 25 sets, some of them are from 2018!

Edited August 31, 2018 by mortenm

[LvdH]

I thought they also had clear pieces in the BMW bike/42070. Maybe they don’t classify them as technic parts?

[braker23]

They probably mean liftarms, they are clearly NOT using the studded frames listed above. Although, some transparent liftarms were released, namely 32278 and 32009.

[Johnny1360]

1 hour ago, mortenm said:

 

The gearbox appears in 25 sets, some of them are from 2018!

Yes I did just get that gearbox as well, it came with City Cargo Terminal. First time I ever saw it, was glad to get it. I would like to see what else they have made, specifically for this build. 

[JLiu15]

In the video you can see that the interior has lots of 5x11 panels (part 64782) in the tan color. This part has never been released in this color before, so is there a chance this “unreleased” color version starts circulating on bricklink once this model is taken apart? Or is this a sign that a future set is coming with this part in tan?

[Stephan]

There was a Star Wars pod racer set which had transparent beams.

[Magical Duck]

It appears that the Chiron is 90% Legos:

Also, that drill that they use in the video is pure genius 

Edited September 1, 2018 by Magical Duck

[Rudivdk]

What technique is that for the body panelling...? Very cool shaping, and the use of actuators to actually create the curves and put the tension on the bodywork. Brilliant engineering!

And that drill is indeed genius

[Aleh]

19 hours ago, Magical Duck said:

It appears that the Chiron is 90% Legos:

Also, that drill that they use in the video is pure genius 

Yeap: frame, wheels and wheel hubs (only axle), steering rack, engine drive system.

13 hours ago, Rudivdk said:

And that drill is indeed genius

True mate! Who will recreate the one with instructions?

I wonder is the small BB is inside this drill?

[trekman]

90% or more, it still is very impressive.  I think those people have been thinking outside of the box[brick] in many of their solutions.  Full credit has to go to the human resources and training teams at Lego, as they have sourced some incredibly able builders and engineers.  I think this is a massive promotional lift for Lego Technic, and brings a dynamic form of building into the public arena.  It is a great improvement over the previously brick built life size models previously seen.

[dr_spock]

Very cool, they used polygons (triangles) to shape the body shell.  I wonder if they got that from video graphics technology.  

 

[Captainowie]

I'm hoping for some details on the "Functional speedometer built entirely from LEGO Technic elements". Did they just shove a https://brickset.com/sets/5206-1/Speed-Computer in the dashboard with a long drivetrain to the ... uh... drivetrain? I would love to see a mechanism that can compute rate of rotation, and be accurate over a wide range of angular speeds.

Owen.

[allanp]

As a pure thing of interest this is great! I love that it's powered by Lego motors! And the rear wing powered by Lego pneumatics! They have also shown how technic can be made into pretty much any shape, even the smooth curves of a Chiron. I hope this has inspired James May to FINALLY do something with Technic! 

[zux]

Very impressive model indeed. I'm still discovering features they've used in this model which I like a lot. Particularly the way they cheated here the solution using linear actuators to achieve required distance and connections points for outer shell.

Oh and yeah, I'd love to have some of those new coloured parts produced for this model, even if they are not up to usual LEGO specs.

[Seasider]

The actuators and drill to do the bodywork shaping is a stroke of genius!

[Kaero]

A friend was thinking what can be price of such full size lego bugatti. So I tried to estimate it:

According released materials, they spent 13438 manhours. Lets say the employer in Czech republic pays about ~1000 Kc/manhour, it is ~40 euro/hour (the average salary of the workers will be probably much less, but the company has to pay insurance to government). So salaries takes about 537520 euro.

Bricks: ebay sells kilogram of unsorted bricks for ~16 euro, the weight of the car is according released materials 1500 kg, so about 24000 euro (part of car is steel, however it is only estimate, price of bricks in factory will be much smaller, and anyway it seems the price for bricks is negligible compared to salaries).

Motors: 2700 PF medium motors is about 54600 euro for market prices, the factory price is smaller, however still much less than salaries.

There are steel parts, in my opinion quite negligible. Real new bugatti chiron tires costs 24000 euro, however I do not believe they used the real racing quality tires and wheels for the lego car that goes maximally about 30 km/h.

So in total the estimate can about 640 000 euro, mostly made by salary of employees.

Real chiron car costs about 2 500 000 euro, so the lego car is approximately 4-5 times cheaper. But! There was produced about 500 real chirons till now, but there is only one unique lego chiron, so in my opinion an auction price of lego chiron is totally incomparable to real chiron :)

Last thought: according video, at least half of the man hours was spent on development. Lets say such lego chiron would be produced in factory, I believe one can decrease man hours up to 1/4, and the development costs are divided between many cars, it means the price of factory produced lego chiron car could go down hopefully to 200 000 euro! Who would buy it? Maybe there is a potential for a big business! :)

[nerdsforprez]

So I have watched several videos, and read pretty much (I may have missed a comment or two) all the posts here and still have a few questions. 

Overall, I love it and am in awe with the overall project.  Not a critical piece here, but they mention it is powered by PF - got it. Some two thousand motors (large). 

However, no one ever mentioned if they used the Lego battery packs to power the motors.  If they did, I would be truly surprised. I would think there would be some form of limit, just like we see trying to have Lego fly, that limitations  Lego because the elements themselves.  Lego will never fly because to come up with sufficient power to power  a flying Lego model would only increase the weight to a degree that would prohibit its flying.  More motors = more weight; too much that would preclude flying.  Using  PF battery packs to drive an actual vehicle, seems to me anyways,  the same would apply.  To power over two thousand PF motors (large) you would need like a thousand battery packs (AA battery box), which according to Philo's page would be at least 500 lbs itself.  Over one million bricks (they can get quite heavy!), 500 lbs of Lego battery, a metal chassis, and over two thousand PF motors (again, another like 250-300 lbs) seems like a lot more in weight than they are actually quoting.  I get L motors powered the car, but I want to know their power source.  

Also, would like to know if they built in steering.  Highly doubt it, or why not show it in the video? (hopefully there is not some video out there showing it turning :)

But as I said before; overall, fantastic job!

 

 

[zux]

@nerdsforprez Some details on batteries/power can be found in fact-sheet:

Two batteries in the car are the overall power source:
    -    1x battery with 80 volts that powers the 1304 Power Function L-motors
     - LiFePo4 type, 24 Winston cells, 160Ah, max. current limited to 200A
     - Charging time – 8 hours max
     - Balancing protection circuit that control the charging and discharging process on each cell
     But how to connect a L-motor to 80 volts?
    Per motor pack there are always six motors in series and four string motors in parallels. That creates 24 motors in one chain serial parallel combination. And by adding that up to the total amount of motor packs you get 12 volts per single L motor.
     -     1x battery with 12 volts (standard car battery) that powers the power steering while also covering the power peaks by the system
     -     DC/DC 80/12V convertor that powers all the LED lights and other electronic functions
     -     DC/DC 80/24V convertor that powers the electro-magnetic clutches

[nerdsforprez]

I suspected there was another way to power the motors.  Thank you for sharing.  To me this is more an issue than the non-Lego chassis.  I am sure I carry some responsibility for not finding the information for myself, but like I said, it was not obvious by the majority of the other videos out there.  The narrative one walks away with from watching the official Lego videos on the build is that it is all powered by PF elements.  Which it is not.  Motors only.  I wish they would have been more clear on this.......

[Kaero]

nerdsforprez: You said the batteries would add another 250 kg. The car itself is 1500 kg, so I believe the metal frame could easily take another 250 kg of batteries. This is not a problem. The main issue is replacing the batteries. Try to imagine it. Try to replace 6000 AA batteries. Not only this would be extremely time consuming but I would fear about the incredible and unnecessary waste.

[Seasider]

unfortunately this wasn't on display in Lego House :(

I'm guessing its doing a marketing / motor show tour

[JimDude]

Speaking of which, did I read correctly it is supposed to be at LegoWorld '18 in the Netherlands?