howitzer

You really do have a point there, though I don't expect new, more realistic gearbox designs anytime soon (it would probably require a lot of new parts) so we're stuck with the same supercar done again and again with different exteriors. That's why I'm hoping for more machinery, even when it leaves something to be desired functions-wise, because at least they still have _some_ functions unlike fast cars. Offroaders are somewhere in between, they often have some interesting functionality, though for example the new Jeep seems pretty lazy out of the box, it could've been so much more like the improvements thread showed.

No it's not. In addition to differences in size, there's also differences in direction, type and number of connection points.

It was more than that. The large single-purpose pieces might have played a role, but there were also the unmanageable plethora of colours, many themes that were commercial failures and for example in Technic the brand seemed directionless and it appeared that nobody really knew what to do with the theme. Then of course Star Wars and Bionicle happened, and also whoever was directing Technic at the time seemed to understand that it's better to concentrate on machinery with interesting functions and builds rather than cheap gimmicks. This new part being a small connector, I'm sure it'll find many uses. I think it could've even been useful in some of my recent builds.

FYI, you can also buy new (=unused) parts in Bricklink.

For some reason I'm fond of chains, they seem kinda cool. Unfortunately there appears to be very few cases where they are actually useful, as they can't transmit much of torque and they don't work nearly as smooth as gears. So I guess the gear-based drivetrain is what we're stuck with when making tracked vehicles.

Who cares if it will be used in a Technic set or not? Just get them from Bricklink or B&P when they become available. For the record, I believe we will see it in Technic sets too, at least for me it appears to be far too useful to ignore by Technic designers, and TLG likes to reuse parts if possible.

Very nice and clean looking design. I also appreciate the use of the gear rack in the lifting mechanism, haven't seen it used much without the housing designed for it (and then almost always as an outrigger or crane boom).

Animal-themed kinetic sculptures could be conceived as a subtheme of Technic, though I'm not sure how to market them properly among machinery sets. I actually tried to build a mechanical representation of bird's wings flapping, and it was really difficult, it would be nice to see how TLG's set designers would solve the challenges. Then there were someone in this forum who created scarily accurate spider-like things with only PF components (so nothing programmable, like Boost etc.) and I see no reason why TLG couldn't take this kind of concept and adapt it to a set. Or how about something similar to the EB pullback contest winner? Really simple yet effective use of animal theme.

New connectors are always nice. I'm sure this one will be useful too, for example it appears that you can put it between two axle pins and then attach something with 0,5L offset in the middle. 0,5L offsets are currently pretty hard to make so any new part allowing them are welcome.

If you're referring to this one http://technicopedia.com/8485.html, it's definitely a T-Rex and not a dragon. And yeah, Technic needs more non-vehicles, animals would be great.

I'm sure you'll find out in Saturday or Sunday.

Well, I guess the real reason is that the parts count and cost are decided in the marketing/product strategy department and the actual set designers have to work within those constraints, and sometimes that means missing features and details that would have been really easy to add with just a little bit of more effort. This was very apparent in the Cement mixer, where just a few more parts would've made it much better looking, so I guess the Jeep is also a victim of too tightly constrained design. I wonder how much it could be improved by AFOLs with the same limit on parts count? This would still disregard the cost of individual parts (like the ball sockets) but it could still be a nice challenge for those who like to work with these kinds of things.

Only 60 parts more and SO much more functionality than the official set. Sometimes I feel like this lackluster design is deliberate, though I can't really think of a good reason for that...

Thanks for the idea, somehow I never actually thought about actually using the 12T gears in parallel to the turntables. The first version had them driving it in perpendicular, and while that was mechanically simple and easy to build, the gears ended up slipping too easily. I might have to attempt this way too. Nice robotic arm by the way!

While excavators are long-time favorite of Technic, I recently saw something new in a construction site nearby: an excavator which had a boom that telescoped and rotated around its axis, instead of articulated jib. I then learned that a company called Gradall makes those, here's an example: So I set out to build one, though I make no attempt to replicate the looks exactly as some parts of this machine are next to impossible to replicate in Lego, at least in reasonable size. The first problem was the triangular cross-section of the boom, but very soon it became clear that it's not feasible so I settled for squared cross-section. Considering the functions of axial rotation, luffing and telescoping it also became clear that the motor driving the telescoping action would have to be located on the boom, and hoses for the pneumatically operated bucket would have to run the length of the boom and exit at the back so that there would be room for extension. I wanted to extend it as much as possible, and some 11-12 studs seems to be reasonable maximum. Here's a photo of one stage: Next in line was an attempt to build a superstructure which would support the batteries, pneumatic controls and gearbox for the axial rotation and luffing. At this stage I didn't even think of full motorization or remote control, I don't have PF parts for that and it was already complex enough. I got it as far as testing the motorized boom functions which more or less of worked, but I wasn't satisfied with the performance and there was a lot of problems with the gearing anyway. Here's a photo: At this point I was at sort of a crossroads: take apart and rebuild the superstructure to fix the aforementioned problems with gearing and try to finishing the thing OR make it even more ambitious with the Mindstorms Robot Inventor set that I just recently bought. It would have 4 additional motors (to complement the two PU medium motors I already owned) and hub with 6 outputs which could be controlled much better than what PF allows, enabling perhaps full RC control with proper programming. I chose the latter so that's what I've been doing recently. And it hasn't been easy. First I needed to decide how to use my motors and how to connect them to the functions. With motorized drive (2x tracks) and slewing in addition to the boom controls (axial rotation, telescoping, luffing, bucket switch and pump) there are more functions than the hub has outputs so some sort of gearbox would be required. The 8043 Motorized Excavator acted as an inspiration with its 6 functions for 4 motors, and I decided to try similar gearbox solution where 4 two-position selectors are moved with one motor at the same time so that in one position you can drive and slew and in another position all boom functions can be operated. I also stole the coaxial drive mechanism for tracks from the same set. Here's where I'm now in photo: And in digital model: I recently realized that it's almost impossible to use the angular motors in driving the boom extension, so I ordered a C+ L motor for that purpose and I'm waiting for that now. I also ordered a new type of pneumatic switch, so that it's easier to operate with motor. Some problems at this stage: Is there any way to make the boom support narrower? The problem is the gearing for axial rotation, which seems to be pretty much impossible to fit in between the turntables in any narrower configuration than this: Another problem is the gearbox construction, how to route all the functions to their places while still having the gearbox to be properly supported and smooth so everything works fine. Especially the axial rotation seems to be hard to achieve as there is a lot of resistance in the thing. With the earlier PF iteration I tried routing the gearing to both sides so that both turntables would rotate and while it sort-of works it of course introduces a lot of gears and friction. Turning just one turntable would have the force directed through the boom to the other turntable and that requires a lot of force too so it's probably not feasible. And of course I haven't even touched the programming side of things with the RI hub yet, but I suspect that'll be much easier. Any thoughts or tips?

You must upload the photos to an external site like Imgur or Flickr, Eurobricks doesn't host your photos. After uploading them to another site, you can embed them in your post just by copying and pasting the direct link in the post.

So, I got the thing assembled enough for testing, and all the functions seemed to work fine, except the axial rotation of the boom. I could hear the gears straining and while one direction of turning worked end-to-end, the other direction didn't but the resistance got periodically too big and gears skipped. It appeared that the two sections of boom support went easily out of phase, so to speak, instead of turning together, which caused a buildup of friction. So I set out to design a new mechanism based on worm gears. The first problem was of course finding out how to actually drive the turntable with worm gears, and it appears that there's no good way of driving the 60T turntable with the old smaller radius worm gear, so the larger radius one must be used. I guess I could solve this by getting two of the old type 2 turntables, but that didn't appeal to me at this point so I started building support for the worm gear with the type 3 turntables. The half-stud distances became soon a real pain in the butt as the connectors allowing for half-stud translations are few and limited in directions. In the end I managed to make something that actually works, pictured here: The result is an ugly mess of connectors and weak connections, and I would really like to make it sturdier and cleaner but it works much, much better than the old design. There's also the problem of needing 2 worm gears to drive it and I only own three, third of which is required in the boom telescoping (note that it's missing from it's place behind the motor in this photo, I had to borrow it for testing) so I'll have to take the third one from inside the superstructure, as I've used one of these worm gears in there also. There's also other gearing corrections that have to be made, the boom raising/lowering is far too slow (geared down twice with 8:1 worm gears plus 12:60 turntable gearing). Which brings me to another matter: I began to work on the exterior and while I don't have a photo, I simply don't like it. The superstructure is too high and bulky, and I'm seriously thinking of dismantling it and rearranging the motors and gearbox so that the height of the superstructure is reduced. Here's an unfinished CAD model for how I think the design could be improved: Much of the support is of course missing, and not even all the gears are in place but you get the idea. Instead of having the pairs of selectors stacked, I planned to have them side-by-side, with motors in a row. The black double-angled beams mark the position of the old design's maximum height, with carriage and boom in the same place as in the previous version. One thing of note here is that I would drive the gear selector with a dumb motor as it's smaller and fits easily in the place, but it has the downside of not being able to be controlled for rotations, which makes it harder to use here. I might have to build some kind of limiter there too, to make sure the selectors stay in phase.

Sariel has also made an app for Android phones for gear ratio calculations, which can be found in the Play store. I haven't tested it because I try to avoid installing apps that are not absolutely necessary but unless you're an Iphone-user, you might find it interesting. I took a look at your Python and well, it does the job but there's so much more to be done to make it actually usable, like a proper interface. It should allow input of multiple consecutive gears, and preferably have pictures of officially released gears for user to easily make sure they have entered the correct gears in correct order, and it should allow editing the gear lineup etc. and all this should be happening with mouse. Custom gear teeth number might be a nice additional feature too, but I suspect vast majority of potential users will stick to just Lego gears.

This is so cool, that suspension works amazingly well on various surfaces, I'm especially impressed about the rock-crawling abilities. I just might have to get some more motors and build myself a similar one at some point...

Here's an old and thus somewhat incomplete, but otherwise nice tutorial on the basics of gears: http://sariel.pl/2009/09/gears-tutorial/ And here's a ratio calculator: http://gears.sariel.pl/

I'm guessing the main reason why C+ hub still has AA-batteries is the fact that shipping Li-ion batteries is massively painful in large scale. It's a tradeoff between user convenience and the additional cost in logistics. As I said earlier, the Mindstorms hub solves most of these issues with 6 ports, internal sensors and rechargeable battery. Of course it's still bigger than Buwizz, but if you already have 5-6 motors and the support structures for them and their functions, the size starts to become a non-issue. I'm using it for my excavator build, and all the problems so far have been mechanical, I haven't updated the topic but I recently tested the functions and mostly they worked fine, except for the boom twisting (also some of the gearing was off the mark so I'm going to rebuild those).

The part you mentioned isn't even all that obscure, according to Rebrickable it appears in 91 sets over 20 years (last in 2019) so they are easy to obtain and probably still in production too. I was talking more about parts that were produced for only a few sets decades ago and never again, like for example the steering arm of 8865 (released in total of three sets) or the fiber optics of the 8480 (released in total of four sets). The Flex system was another one that could sometimes be very useful, but the original design was prone to breaking and the upgraded parts can get somewhat expensive (most costing few euros per piece and some up to tens of euros) if you want a good collection of them for wider use.

Yeah, some kind of extensible solution for lights would be nice. Adding many lights with the PF solution of course would require towers of stacked connectors, though you could conceivably divide them with extension cables. PU lights are principally the same, except without connector stacking so each pair of lights eats one port from the hub, so for anything more heavy on functions you'll end up having to choose between motors and lights. Two motors could be used in conjunction with a gearbox to drive 4 functions and that would leave enough connectors for 2 pairs of lights with the C+ hub, which isn't all that much...

Very interesting that you mention Billund. I visited there last year, and saw the miniland buildings and stuff, which were (from what I can remember) the same as those from 1987 when I visited there the first time. I also noticed on the other sculptures around the park that there was some serious weathering on many of them even if they were still instantly recognizable for what they were. So some of those builds are very old, maybe even from the time of the original opening at 1968. One thing I specifically noticed was the lack of other parts than basic bricks and plates in many builds. No slopes for roofs for example, just stacked plates to make a slope. So even as the parts selection has widened and more detailed construction has become possible, the park operators have never taken the effort to rebuild the originals for modern standards. Or maybe they have rebuilt them but with the same parts palette that was around originally, not bothering to create new models - I don't know. It could be because they want to show how the simplest of bricks can still be used to produce complex and detailed builds, in the strictest spirit of purism. And yeah, there of course was some parts that are decidedly non-Lego, like the tracks and wheels you mention, but those along with the glue are obviously a compromise they have to make to take the plastic bricks far outside of their intended usage conditions.

One should also note that PU is still quite a new system and hopefully it's going to receive a lot of development in the future. I'm not entirely sure how the stackable connectors of PF even help with the limitations in practice. Sure, you can connect huge number of motors into the battery box, but you can't run them all due to the capabilities of the power supply. I guess you could have a need for many motors where only one or few are running at any given time, but that would still imply a huge build, where adding another battery box would probably not be big a problem anyway. And how many people (even among AFOLs) are ever going to build any such thing? As kbalage said above, TLG's focus is on selling sets (mainly for kids, too) and the new system has been designed with that in mind, the dozen-motor-huge-MOC-builders are a really small segment of all TLG's customers. Between PF (which will be around for years to come), third party devices (of which there are many) and PU/Mindstorms (which will get more features in the future), builders have much wider selection of options on making motorized MOCs than ever before, you could even combine the different systems mechanically. I really see no reason to worry.