howitzer

Grohl already won that contest:

That raised my eyebrows also.

Looks good so far! The pullback-counterweight sounds awesome idea, would add nice way to demonstrate the functions without the need of constantly turning some know or whatever. It would also kind of replicate the original's motor/battery box as counterweight concept.

The only reason it could ever be cancelled is indeed a major design flaw, but as said, it's highly unlikely as it's already been delayed a lot - they either would've made sure that the design challenges are straightened out or cancelled it already long ago. And yeah, I think it will sell well enough to recoup the costs and make some profit, but it probably won't become a huge cash cow for TLG. Remains to be seen if it sells well enough that we'll be getting similar very big and expensive sets in the future.

It's true that smaller sets with interesting functions have all but disappeared except for the 10-15€ range and for small sets we're getting mostly cars, which are just repetition of the same over and over as far as functions go. Apparently there's a big market for them and they give us many new panels and recolours for making mocs, so it's not all bad. On the other hand, there's a limit of what you can do in small set (less than 100€ range) and most of the actually interesting and functional stuff start to happen at somewhat larger scale, around 150€ and up from there. Lately there have been some (but not many) sets in that range which are functionally interesting and have given as some great new parts too so can't complain too much - especially the upcoming motorcycle gearbox parts seem really awesome.

Make your purchase with a credit card, then you can ask for a refund from the credit card company if there are issues with the seller.

Another progress photo, this time with some progress on the front and some hosework added. For longer hoses I'm using 3rd party silicone hose, which I can cut into exact size and which is similar in flexibility to TLG's old style hose. I also made a mock-up of the crane to get a sense of the scale and geometry. The claw is functional with the same working principle as the original, only it's more compact. Still, it's quite big and chunky, but I can't see how it could be made smaller, while the boom and jib could perhaps be reduced slightly in size. I would also like to use large cylinder for the boom but it might be too large for this scale. The slewing works fine as it is, though there's no way to fit the hoses through the turntable so I'll have to think of a way to route them through the top of it. I also had to do some thinking to be able to build the mudguards and front grille in a way that's both sturdy and faithful enough to the original, but I think I managed. Had to resort to studful parts though.

Custom stickers also add an additional cost, as proper printers and materials are not free, nor are printing shops. Sure, you could print on office paper with standard home-inkjet and tape it onto the build, but that's going to look really bad and proper stickers with good surface can be more costly. In my opinion these contests should be about building with Lego bricks and not about photoshopping. TLG of course uses a lot of stickers in official sets, and that's fine as their goal is to sell stuff, which is why the builds must look good on photos and also have manageable production cost. From that perspective I can see why some people think stickers might be a good idea in contests too, but if customs stickers were ever to be allowed, I think it should be a requirement to also post proper photos of the unstickered build - and failure to do so would be grounds for disqualification.

Yeah, I remember that one, but I also remember it being modified significantly after I answered, so it would benefit from repeating. Some wordings in questions and answer options should also be reconsidered.

Might be interesting to do a poll of what people consider most important aspects of a Technic set (functions, realism, playability, looks, faithfulness to real life counterpart, new parts etc.)

Had a few busy days doing other stuff but now I got back to building and I have some developments. It's been an exercise of squeezing in all the functions I want and the necessary structures to support them, but I've managed so far. It's going to be a quite dense build, but I think I have the chassis mostly worked out now. I decided to use large short cylinders for the slewing for more power, but I fitted the spur gears between the turntable attachment points, with a 8T gear in between them. This means it's still weaker than the original but hopefully not too much weaker. This necessitated moving the cylinder attachment points to the outer sides of the racks as there would otherwise be no place for the pump, so I did that. The half-stud offsets make everything more difficult than they should be with the very limited selection of parts to build those with. I really hope TLG makes some more useful parts with half-stud offsets one of these days... Anyway, here's a photo: Now there's the nightmare of doing all the hosework for the functions...

A lot depends on how heavy load it must be able to lift, and also the ratio of elevation and rotation. Easiest way to build it would probably be to separate the lifting and the rotation so that there's a platform which rotates and on top where the lifting part is built on. It could be a scissor-lift driven by a linear actuator with driving axle routed through a turntable or something along those lines.

Nice to see that the Yamaha continues the tradition of Technic motorcycles with many complex non-right angles.

This would be so cool, considering the supercars in their current form are just shelf queens, the gearbox and other internal stuff go entirely unused as there's no easy way to actually show them working.

Wow, this is an ambitious project, the sort that would be amazing if it worked out but understandably is very hard to get to work, if at all possible (with Lego anyway). Still, respect for trying and sharing your results with us!

If the original has a System/Model Team approach to hood/grille/whatever, I don't see why it would be a problem for the shrunk model. After all, that's just scaling down the original style, like the contest intended. If the original is from the studful era, the question gets trickier, but in those times there weren't much in the way of decoration anyway, so for most sets it should't be that big of a problem.

The lack of innovation in the Ferrari lends me to believe that you're right in that they could've had this system in the works but it just wasn't ready yet and it was easier to basically repeat the Sian with different bodywork and hope that the new shock absorbers would be enough of technical innovation, along with the new panels.

TLG really should make a gear that has teeth number divisible by two but not by four, so we could have a pair of them mesh so that their axleholes are symmetrical relative to each other.

Omg, these are great! Even if I'm not really a gearbox builder, I can foresee a lot of possibilities with these. Someone commented in another thread (or this?) that this is a great year for parts, and it keeps giving!

Tower crane has been on my wishlist for a long time, and while it would've made one helluva boring build previously, these new parts should remedy that and allow the release of something that's never before been done properly in Technic. Yeah, there have been a B-model or two, but a tower crane should really be done properly as the main model. --- So, it just showed up on my local go-to retailer for 550€. That's quite a lot still, but less than I expected.

So, I started to make a smaller version of it, and it feels surprisingly easy. I must to switch from large pneumatic cylinders to small ones and while that allows smaller scale, I fear they are not powerful enough for the turntable but that's something I have to live with. I'm also worried about the hose routing to the crane as it'll be a very tight fit through the turntable. I managed to lower the turntable one stud by putting the rack gears between the turntable mountings but that forces usage of 8T gear, which reduces the leverage (relative to 16T gear) and the smaller pistons are of course weaker too. On the other hand, the build is stronger and much more compact now and I was able to drop the weird half-stud build for the turntable base. Here's a render:

Yeah, gotta think of how to fit it there. Perhaps it's possible. I it seemed to be fairly easy for my misscaled build, but we'll see how it goes for the correctly scaled version. Some differences in proportions are unavoidable, as there's no way to fit pneumatic hosework through the small turntable while retaining the rotation mechanism, and large turntable makes for proportionally much larger base.

So, as it happens, I made some kind of error in calculating the scales and apparently my measures were for something like 80% reduction in size. That's too small a difference for the contest, so back to the drawing board. Going to have to switch for smaller tyres too, the Model Team wheel+tyre appears to have the correct size for scale factor of 0,7 so settling for that for now. Not sure how I'm going to fit the pump as it's enormous, either it's going to stick far out or I'll have to think of some really creative solution to hide it, but we'll see...

Any idea when we can expect actual reviews?

Wow, that's true. Looks like I'm going to have to lose a few studs from the length.