howitzer

I thought I wouldn't have time to participate, but looks like I got some free time on my hands now that there's still couple of weeks left before the contest deadline. So I wanted to participate, and to build something that's a sort of unusual, but easy enough to make in the short time that's left. 3D-printing is all the rage now, and even buildings can be printed. There are many kinds of machinery for that, but to fit the contest rules I chose a type that moves on tracks and extends a printer arm for spraying the concrete in place. Something along these lines: I'm not going to attempt replicating the machine pictured above, but something similar with the same basic functionality. Here's what I've built so far: I intend to add at least outriggers and a knob for rotating the turntable. Not sure what else I can fit in, we'll see.

Yeah, but worm gear requires so much of knob-turning that I prefer something that's faster to operate. But I will think about it. Not exactly, just the tracks. They are mainly placeholders to stabilize the thing as I needed quickly something to keep the arm upright and to give a feeling of size and I happened to have assembled 42121 at and so I just took the tracks from it. I will make better ones if I have time.

It's definitely not just you.

Yeah, I haven't bought anything in flagship-scale in a very long time and the LR13000 definitely got my attention. Real shame if gets cancelled.

Many of the early years of Technic (70's and 80's) didn't have a clear flagship. 2004 also didn't seem to have had a flagship model.

Very nice and original interpretation of the contest theme!

Yeah, that's why I wanted to ask. I guess I could put it on tracks (I think that kind of printer also exists) so being self-propelled, it should count as a vehicle.

A 3D-printer that makes houses. Something along these lines:

What about my other question?

I thought I wouldn't be participating, but it appears that I suddenly have some free time after all in the coming couple of weeks, so am I correct to assume that the contest won't be closed before the end of the month? Another question: does it have to be a model of a vehicle that moves around on its own power, or could it be something that is hauled to the site by trucks (not included in the model) and is assembled there to perform its job and then disassembled and hauled away?

That's interesting indeed, if for no other reason, then that it makes the part more easily available and common, thus cheaper.

I have actually seen a flight-capable quadcopter with fuselage, propellers and motors made of Lego parts, with third-party battery, on-board microcontroller and remote controller. I think that one demonstrates nicely what's theoretically possible, but it would indeed require much better and more lightweight electronics from TLG if such a thing were ever considered for an official set.

I could also be that this will happen eventually but not immediately, as I imagine TLG has a huge number of the beveled gears stored and they would want to reduce that stash before committing fully to the replacement of them with the new spur gears. But we shall see.

There's a limit of how large they can be before becoming too unwieldy. BMW obviously didn't go over that limit, and is actually quite manageable despite it being much larger than any motorcycle before it. A helicopter with tripled or quadrupled part-count would mean something seriously dense in construction (what?) or much larger fuselage than before, and that would mean also making new rotor blades, which in turn would mean that it's almost impossible to play with or display the set properly in a normal home. But the main reason for my doubt is the identical price and part count as the Ferrari.

Same price I could believe, but there's no way those two have exact same part count too. I'd much sooner bet on a typo or similar error on the leak. My money is still on the 200€/~2000 part helicopter. 3700 part helicopter would also be absurdly huge, considering that the already quite large 9396 had just over 1000 parts.

I see no reason for TLG to introduce those new gears unless there was a plan to use them in all places where the beveled counterparts were previously used only as a spur gear. They are probably slightly less expensive to produce (simpler mould) along with the reduced friction.

No, I haven't tried those, would be interesting to do some testing. Also the possible lag aspect may be significant and warrants investigation. Too bad I don't have time for that at the moment :(

Well, I've done a bit of experimenting with this stuff and never used the PU app for anything, just the Mindstorms app, and all the motors work fine. Does the PU app offer some advantage over Mindstorms app or is there any reason why the latter couldn't be used except maybe the phone problem you mentioned?

Yes, the PU motors work fully with 51515 hub. And yeah, 51515 hub is also perfectly usable in place of the PU/C+ hub. I really don't see much reason to use the PU hub if you have/can afford the 51515 hub.

Yeah, the trans-clear, trans-orange and trans-red I can see being useful, but the other ones feel a bit odd from Technic point of view...

So it would seem. Pretty funky one, though I can't think of a good place to use one outside of something similar to this set.

No idea about the reason for its absence, but it's not uncommon to have a set be unavailable for a while and then return. Each Mindstorms iteration has a very long shelf-life (7 years or so), so it should return to shelves sooner or later. Could be that there's a relation to the global shortage of microchips or something like that. There is a bunch of them available in Bricklink, you should check those out. The price may be higher than with a normal retailer though.

Unless there's some complication I missed, it's really easy to do with PU. And yeah, definitely much easier than with PF and mechanical linkages to turn the switches.

With PF you could build a mechanical stop that is engaged when the lift reaches the end, which then switches the power off from battery box. With PU you could program the motor to stop at the correct position by setting the amount of rotations it needs to revolve to reach the end.

Interesting. It appears that while the difference is not that great, it might still be significant for larger/more complex drivetrains as the buildup of friction over many gears becomes a problem and the designer must do everything to minimize it.