frechettemj

[MOC] Liebherr Inspired Crawler Crane

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I've created a Liebherr inspired crawler crane. I designed it with more of a focus on playability, over trying to create an exact copy of any particular model. It's 5 feet tall to the tip of the jib boom, and 4 feet to the main winch. It's fully RC, powered by a combination of Control+ and Power Functions.  There's a Control+ hub in the base, and a Buwizz3 in the main body, all controlled by the BrickController2 app and a gamepad.

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The base is powered by a Control+ hub with XL motors driving the tracks and an L motor for slewing The base was built with multiple 5x7 panels stacked side by side to create a base that would be stiff enough to not flex under the weight of the crane in addition to any counterweight that I added.

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Here's the base with 10 lbs of lead weights stacked on top.  There's almost no flex across the frame.

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The tracks are detachable, and are geared down enough to allow the crane to move and turn on hard surfaces.

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The counterweights contain 1 lb lead diving weights, and more can be added if needed.

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Enjoy!

Edited by frechettemj
Clarification

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Looks fun and having two winches in the boom and counterweight on the crawler base are nice realistic touches.  The cab is nicely done and the details around the walkway.  The whole thing looks very solid.

I would consider modifying the winch rigging.  Big Liebherrs do have two or three winches in the boom but the main hook is not run off of them.  That would always be connected to one (or two redundant) winch in the main body.  I see you have a winch there but does not appear in use in the pictures.  The second winch in the main boom is for the luffing jib when installed so if you hook it up that way it will be both more realistic and more fun to play with.  The base of your main boom is an interesting design.  I've never seen a real crane use a right angle triangle like that, what drove you toward that arrangement?

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10 hours ago, TangersTechnic said:

This is amazing.

Thanks!! 

8 hours ago, mdemerchant said:

Looks fun and having two winches in the boom and counterweight on the crawler base are nice realistic touches.  The cab is nicely done and the details around the walkway.  The whole thing looks very solid.

Thanks! My plan going in was to focus primarily on playability, but I tried to make it as realistic looking as possible. I will admit that I copied the cab design from the 42042, but I added the cab tilt. 

8 hours ago, mdemerchant said:

I would consider modifying the winch rigging.  Big Liebherrs do have two or three winches in the boom but the main hook is not run off of them.  That would always be connected to one (or two redundant) winch in the main body.  I see you have a winch there but does not appear in use in the pictures.  The second winch in the main boom is for the luffing jib when installed so if you hook it up that way it will be both more realistic and more fun to play with.

I have had the main winch run off of the second winch in the body of the crane, but I've found it a whole lot easier to have the winches accessible to make it easier to rig the string for the hooks. 

8 hours ago, mdemerchant said:

The base of your main boom is an interesting design.  I've never seen a real crane use a right angle triangle like that, what drove you toward that arrangement?

The foot of the boom was originally a normal triangle, but I modified so that the boom could lower to (nearly) horizontal. It was easier to modify the boom than to redesign the area around where it attached to the main body. 

3 hours ago, Philtech said:

Wow, that's massive. Do you know how many parts it have?

I honestly have no idea. 

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Here's it in an earlier version. It's about 7 feet tall in this configuration. The version in my original post is still capable of this configuration but it's really not the most convenient way to display the model. 

The crane is able to self-erect in this configuration, with the appropriate amount of counterweight. 

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I've been tinkering with my crane over the past few nights.

 

I added back the derrick mast and suspended ballast tray. There's 3 pounds of weight in the Liebherr 9800 bucket, 2 pounds in the counterweight, and 2 more in the suspended ballast tray.

The ballast tray can be lifted off of the ground by the two long actuators  mounted on the top of the derrick mast.

 

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I redesigned the attachment of the boom hoist to make it more realistic.

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The boom foot and attachment has been modified to allow the main boom to be lowered to below horizontal, in order to add realisim.

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Added a Liebherr-style V-Frame. This allows the suspended ballast to be moved back and forth in order to move the center of gravity to compensate for changing the angle of the main boom. It allows me to move the suspended ballast back 25 studs from the fully retracted position to the fully extended position.

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I also moved the main hoist to one of the winches located in the superstructure, and correctly routed the string to more correctly reflect a real crane of this scale.

Enjoy!

This is it's current configuration.

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Hey, I am not into cranes thus I have no clue what needs to be where or how realistic this set-up is but your crane looks awesome and the size is beyond impressive! I would love to see some video of it lifting a small Lego set :)

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12 hours ago, frechettemj said:

Added a Liebherr-style V-Frame. This allows the suspended ballast to be moved back and forth in order to move the center of gravity to compensate for changing the angle of the main boom. It allows me to move the suspended ballast back 25 studs from the fully retracted position to the fully extended position.

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I had no idea they made such kind of mechanisms!

Was always wondering how they managed different compensations depending on the angle and the weight lifted, now I have my answer, thank you!

Nicely done.

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