gvo25

no, it's a non lego piece. It's a tungsten weight (2X25g) glued to the hook block with double sided tape (easily removed). It's to weigh the hook down to compensate for the 4 part string. With normal lego I cannot achieve such a weight. together with the small bearing balls in the ballast section, they are the only non lego items I find in this scale the turntable and the gearing for moving the turntable the weakest points, the main body still has to slew under load, and with a too high load the turntable is simply not strong enough and just gives too much play. In this build the upper body is supported by the liftarms just under it, and under load they give a lot of friction on the track body.

Dear all, Another year, another crane. This time it's a crane in the size range of the 42042. The crane hase the same track size and width, and shares more or less the same frame, but this time in black, also I decided for now not to motorize the tracks. The body has also more or less the same size and structure as the 42042, but I tried to make the body less wide. The crane has 4 motors, 2 L-motors for the 2 winches on top, one XL-motor for slewing and 1 angular motor for the 3rd winch. They're all housed in the body and connected to the battery box aft of the main body. The 2 ballast boxes each hold 150grams of ballast. The building showed me it's indeed difficult to make a rugged build, due to the flexing of lego parts because of sideways movement of the crane boom. this was almost complete fixed with the installation of the 2 springs and some additionals beams for support at the front of the body. For now the crane can lift 350 grams in its highest and most comfortable position. The cabin has an openable door and can be tilted upwards(not seen here) I used the good old lego metal hook with 50 g of ballast stuck to it, I didn't use a turntable this time because it would make the hook too bulky and too big Here's a view of the panels removed, you can see the placement of the motors and the winches, the winch of the hook is directly connected to the angular motor, without any gears The last photo is for scale, in it's highest position the crane reaches 1,35 m, additional sections can offcourse be added

very well suited to build a Liebherr Tower crane. The lattice pieces can be used for the main mast, and the ballast can be used partly for the main mast at the bottom and partly for the counter-ballast in the swinging part

Hello all, The more I look at the latest photos, the more I like the set, sure I don't like some design solutions but the carrier en the main body do look good, and overall the set has great mod potential, who doesn't like that in a lego technic set? As a crane enthousiast it is a must buy for me, and yes the crane will get better and higher with good stability

Any chance of instructions?

Hello everybody, I didn't notice yet any MOD page of the Volvo EW160 excavator. I find this a really good set and as I'm an excavator lover, I couldn't resist to add a few modifications. I have already done 2- 3 and I have others in my mind. Here are the first ones I took away the cab elevating mechanism. I find the excavator better proportioned this way. It looks a lot more like the real machine and IMHO also a lot nicer. The cab was in the original model too much forward and got in the way of good playability. I still have to get rid of the grey beam behind the cab. I also put a swivel and turning mechanism on the grab, which also looks better and approaches the looks of the real machine. The mods I'm planning is to arrange the hoses on the boom and add rigid hoses.

Hello all, I found the latest iteration of the material handler a bit flimsy, and esthetically not so nice and I also didn't like the wheel base. So I decided to mod the 42053 material handler to beast mode. It has the latest control+ XL-motor with the dumb battery box and one small pump. The cabin of the 42053 is reused without modifications, the grabber is reused with a bit of modifications, and the design of the aft section is also reused. For the booms I used the 42144 design. The crane uses ballast in the track section and in de crane body. The ballast are small metal bearing balls in the LBG-boxes, which are easily removable It's an 'electrical' excavator with external power supply, the cable is reeled in and out together with the movement of the tracks In total there are 6 cylinders and 1 small pump (should have been 2, but there was no room in the body) a few openable hatches I hope you like it, due to time restraints I couldn't eleborate the design more, I will make I claw grabber in due time

I have used 2 blue pumps with 2L travel together with an L-motor, all fit very nicely

Hello all, Because I'm starting on a new project I will disassemble a few models and I wanted to share them here as a summary of my builds this year. Here are the models which will be disassembled. First of all my crawler crane. I'm more or less proud of this model, as it represents very good a real crane (in my opinion) and I think it was a really good build. Second we have the unimog, it was a build that stretched over various months/years with additions along the way. The last addition was the blue knuckleboom crane. It was full pneumatic, including the outriggers. The swinging of the crane was not good due to the many hoses going through the turntable. also the crane resulted to small for the height of the unimog. But folded it looked quite good proportion wise. Next Is the batmobile, I bought the 42127 set just to build the unofficial b-model, and i must say it really looks good. The model is also a good parts pack for black components, which I'll need for my next project. My son also liked the model and he built a model of his own with system bricks. Last is a model that I will not take apart but further modify and that is the iconic lego heli set 9396. I won't bump the original MOD pages so I'll post the foto's here. I'm planning to build it like the new airbus helicopter with a AA battery box instead a AAA box, I want to make another gear box so the rotor spins faster. Maybe I put the rotorhead of the airbus in this one when I acquire the set. This MOD of the 9396 has in total 4 motors 2 L-motors for the rotor, 1 m-motor for the landing gear (including 2 mini LA's) and 1 m-motor for the whinch. The cargo ramp is omitted in my mod. Also the tail boom was revised, and some minor visual changes behind and in front of the rotor assembly. Also the nose section was revised a bit. Also the winch was revised. My next project will be a full pneumatic, non-rc material handler based on this crane I hope you liked the post, comments are always welcome

The Unimog is a MOD of the 8110 set, It's RC, with 1 XL PF motor for drive and one L PF motor for steering. It has the wheel hubs of the mercedes zetros. Actually the only thing original of the unimog is the base chassis (which is also a few studs longer due to the bigger tires) My material handler will be with tracks with the raised structure. The size of the crane body will be approx same as the 8043 excavator.

Hello, I recently bought the set second hand, and had the same problem. The build is indeed correct but the winch doesn't move by hand or with a motor. I replaced the part with an axle assembly so that it can turn without friction, and everything works fine. I found it a strange solution from lego.

I bought this set just to be able to build the B-model, thumbs up, very well done

Hello all, I think this set resembles more the 42006 model only with wheels and pneumatic actuators. I'll buy 2 copies for sure (I also bought 2 copies of the 42006, it was a great set for modding), and I allready have some mods in my head.

Dear all, While the news went out that lego was designing a new liebherr crawler crane, I decided immediately to build my own version, with 6 PU motors, 3 L ones and 3 XL's. the boom will have 9X9 dimension. The body uses the turntable of the 42082 rtc. Untill now the body is more or less finished, but it needs still tweaking and further adjusting while the build advances. Now I'm waiting for parts for the boom including some weights for the hook. Here are some photos, including 1 with the previous 42042 crawler crane This is an early work in progress, the cogs are better reinforced and everything is working smoothly now Here the main body is more or less finished, including cabin and ballast (2 times 9 big panels) Here is an image from behind, I used the linear actuators for support of the ballast, and to connect the ballast directly to the axle of the pulleys. I thought it looked very cool a construction like this. The batteries of the batterybox can be easily replaced (no screws). You can also see part of the drivetrain, maybe this has to be geared down a little bit more, the crane runs still a bit too fast. And last but not least a photo for compairison of scale. I hope you liked it for now, as always comments or questions are always welcome

So during the making of the video a few problems arose... So I reworked the undercarriage again. The driven sprocket wheels are reinforced, which result in a better drive and fluent drive motion. I also changed the gearing of the slewing motor and I added a slip gear. I also improved the reinforcements of the underside and the turntable. New tests do show a lot of improvement in drive and slewing. A foto to show the upper part of the crane has a good balance, without the base and the ballast weights. more fotos and video coming soon

The shock absorbers, do limit the movement to a certain point, but without shocks the main boom can only go to 90 degrees due to the construction of the swivelvpoint video is in the workings

Hello all, Here's a new update, I rearranged the configuration. I have now a secondary (ballast) boom. The main boom is now 15 studs longer, and is strenghtened with diagonal beams at all sides. The main hook has again 6 falls. Also a 4th winch is installed in the main boom and is powered with the main battery box. The secondary hook is not yet visible in this foto, the motor of the 4th winch is installed at the beginning of the boom The main boom can be lowered fully using the auxiliary boom. And there is enough ballast to keep everything level, and working. Hope you like it

Hello all, Another small update, On the crawler base I sacrificed 1 stud riding height and I strengthened everything, so as a result no more flex in the transversal direction, only a little bit in the longitudinal direction when there's a lot of load on the hook, or when the boom is down. I geared down the drive gears and I strenghtened everything. New ballast arrived, so I put in each ballast box, 450g of high density steel ball bearings. Now it has sufficient ballast for normal operation - still no heavy load lifting -. With the arrival of new parts I could build my luffing boom and with that I ran out of parts again. With the luffing boom in maximum position I reached a height of 2,1m, Even with the ballast of almost 900g, driving and slewing work fine. I also made a smaller block for the hook to go with the luffing boom. The block also comes with 30g of ballast (high density tungsten steel). Ballast glued with double sided tape (easy to remove) Here everything is disassembled, with the various choices of hooks. The booms are quite easy to remove into various pieces. The reason i had to disassemble everything is because I had to remove the main winch because the wire got entangled in the drive gears. but it makes for a nice foto. Next project is to make a secondary ballast boom and reinforcing the main boom for heavy loads.

Hello All, So I just finished undercarriage mk2. This time i used the medium sprocket wheels, the trackbase is longer and I redesigned the whole undercarriage. The problem with mk1 undercarriage is that it flexed a lot under the weight of the crane body. to make a sturdier undercarriage I used the design of the 42055 BWE undercarriage. the undercarriage is also 4 studs wider. The slewing ring is still the one from the 42082 RTC. The tracks are of a much simpler design, stronger and without tensioner. The drive mechanism is now with a wormwheel instead of a complicated gearbox. The whole base is 5 studs high and the clearance below the base is now 2 studs. This is the bottom view, the batterybox is mounted upside down, with the on-button facing down, but is easily removed, it 'hangs' on 4 points and is held in place with 2 levers. the undercarriage is already quite strong, but does need some more reinforcements. So this is the sideview with the new tracks, a little bit longer, not as bulky a the previous tracks. And last but not least a frontview. The tracks do flex a little bit outward, but the base is quite sturdy. The drive mechanism also needs a bit of work, because it opens up due to the high force on the gear of the sprocket wheel As always comments are appreciated

In the real cran they use rods (in the liebherr cranes anyway), my guess would be that wires would stretch too much under load, and you would have to use real big diameter cables. I think rods are lighter to use then cables. Compression is no issue because everything is under suspension.

The part is called 'Technic link 1X16' in Light bluish grey, bricklink nr. is 2637, lego technic ID is 4211556 I fear the smaller drive wheels won't fit the scale of the crane body very well, but a modification of the undercarriage is on my to do list

Hello all, So at last my bricklink orders arrived and I could finish the base crane with a slightly modified A-frame and a main boom. The A-frame is a lot stronger now with less torsion. The wire is now double reeved on the same winch to have a better distribution of the load. The main hoisting hook is reeved 3 times, and inside the main pulley block there is a ballast weight of 30g. There's also a secondary lego metal hook which is double reeved. The construction for the secondary hook can be easily dissassembled. (sorry for the blurred picture) At last a photo with the cat for scale, now the total height of the crane is 110cm with the boom on it's max position Coming soon will be a video to demonstrate all the functions Next on the list will be a luffing jib. I also will install a 4th winch situated inside the main boom. Maybe I also redesign the undercarriage because under load the undercarriage flexes a lot. Also I would like to make the tracks longer.

The track tensioning system is indeed my solution, I didn't want to use springs as I find it a very bulky and piece-heavy system. It looks like they are hydraulic shocks, the lego black shock absorbers are very good to make large rods like the ones on my crane.

It is the tensioner of the track, each track has this gear rack inside (I don't know how the part is called). so the track has the optimal tension It's to be sure that the main boom goes down when it's lifted in its highest position. The shock absorbers help gravity a little bit to lower the boom. I saw that liebherr cranes have these types of struts too, this is my version.

Yes it is exactly the height of one liftarm