Silcantar

I doubt it's possible to make an all-Lego helicopter work, but I'd bet that it wouldn't be that hard to make a fixed-wing craft. This part would make excellent wings, and with the blades Zblj has been using for this copters you could make a pretty good propeller. The tricky part would be controlling it.

Having spent a fair amount of time trying to do this myself, I would say that no, it's not really possible. The real limiting factor is the length of universal joints. You can get a bit closer to the wheel with CV joints, but you're still pretty far from the ideal pivot position, since the steering axis has to pass through the joint.

Is it a 22.5 degree angle? if so, you might be able to use a 22.5 degree connector. Otherwise, I'm going to have to agree with Zblj. I'm betting there's a simpler way to do it.

Seconded.

For $20, you can get one of the USB towers on Bricklink. On Linux, you can follow the directions on this page to install NQC and get the tower working. Of course, you can't use the RIS visual programming language, and you'll have to learn NQC.

Good news for those in the US: I ordered on the afternoon of August 2nd (US Central Time) and mine is on its way!

My favorites would have to be: 1. 8880 Super Car 2. 8455 Backhoe 3. 8070 Supercar

I was wondering if anyone has any idea what the distance (in studs) between the holes in this excavator bucket is (picture from Peeron): It appears to me to be slightly over 2.5 studs, but no bent liftarms fit nicely, either.

Yep, this has got "pony car" written all over it. Judging by Nathanael's previous MOCs, though, it won't be a model of any specific car.

Watermark says 2012, folder was created today. I'm really looking forward to this. It was Nathanael's Supercar that got me back into Technic.

A 16l thin liftarm? There's no way. That would break in two with even the slightest force.

He did make an off-road version, which you can see in his Bricklink folder. It is a substantial modification. The chassis appears to be completely different, with permanent all-wheel drive and different suspension. It looks like the bodywork is actually the most similar part between the two models. They both share the same modular philosophy, though.

Those wheels are much too small to be practical for any Technic models. If you're building a Technic model, you should probably use larger wheels that are intended for Technic models. If you want to use those wheels, you should stick with the System hubs they were designed for.

Read: "badly photoshopped." I'm pretty sure I've seen it before, too. I'm looking for it currently. It's amazing, the ends to which these kids will go...

Most bipeds (humans included) steer by turning their ankles.

As several others have already expressed, I would love to see some sort of aircraft, be it a helicopter (with a working swashplate, naturally), airplane, or space shuttle. There's lots of potential for new functions and parts there. I would also like to see some sort of animal, like the Control Center II dinosaur, possibly with real walking function.

Peter Blackert's (lego911's) design really caught my interest, so I decided to try it out myself. Although it won't work for Superkalle's MOC, it works quite elegantly at larger scales. The picture is crappy (I took it with my cell phone using ambient indoor light >_<), but it gives you an idea of what I did: The design is really very effective. In this case, it is actually possible to make the wheel arches smaller than the maximum diameter of the balloon tires. I also made a prototype of the system using multilink independent suspension. I also experimented some with camber and caster on this one. As a result, the inside wheel when turning of a car with this suspension geometry would have positive camber, while the outside wheel would have negative camber. I am looking forward to possibly implementing this suspension geometry on one of my MOCs in the near future.

If I'm not mistaken, the solar panel produces 3 volts, which would make the motor run at 1/3 normal speed (I think). Add to that 1/24 gearing. I imagine this is a rather slow-moving bug. That may be the price of solar power, though.

It may be because the Panhard rod is diagonal, which causes the axle to move sideways when the suspension is compressed. In reality, a Panhard rod would be horizontal, which makes the sideways travel negligible. Offsetting the axle when the suspension is uncompressed would make up for the sideways travel when the it is compressed. I would think that it would be preferable for the axle to be centered with the suspension uncompressed, but I didn't design the model (I would also have attempted to make the Panhard rod horizontal). Maybe it allows for better suspension travel without hitting the fenders?

Possibly the simplest solution would be to put all the motors and the NXT in the rotating top part of the tower. That would eliminate the need to transmit any rotation through the turntable. Many of the best Lego robotic arms I have seen used this solution.

New gears are generally stronger, because certain designs in the past have been prone to breakage under high torque. Lego has redesigned several gears in the past to increase their strength. If your MOC does not require large amounts of torque, it probably doesn't matter, although you may want to get the stronger gears in case you do eventually build a MOC that stresses the gears more. One gear to avoid in any circumstance is the 14-tooth bevel gear, though, as it is prone to breakage under relatively small stress.

Back in the late 70s, Lego did make a floating modular hull, like the one in 316 "Fire Fighting Launch". I could certainly see something like that coming back. That particular hull wouldn't be particularly useful for building anything but microscale ships because it's so narrow (although you can extend the length indefinitely), unless you were building a catamaran/trimaran, in which case it could be highly useful. There's also 7075 "Captain Redbeard's Pirate Ship", which appears to have a similar, but considerably larger hull design. There's also some very big floating single-unit hulls, like this one.

I wonder if a pneumatic engine (e.g. LPE Power I-3 engine) would have a high enough power/weight ratio? I'm no expert, but if my calculations are correct, it should produce about 1 lb*ft (~1.5 N*m) of torque at the max recommended operating pressure (6 bar) with a max speed of 1500rpm at 4 bar for its 240g (~.5 lb) mass. It can certainly move nicjasno's famous 5kg Mustang model with impressive acceleration, and a helicopter clearly wouldn't need nearly that much torque. You could gear it up to get sufficient velocity to produce enough lift for a helicopter.

I may be mistaken, but I believe you can use BrickX Command Center (NQC) on Windows 7. None of the original Lego RIS software will work properly on Win7. http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nqc/

Have you tested it under load? Since the load exerted by the weight of the excavator arm isn't parallel to the actuator, the additional bending could increase the friction.