Captainowie

If your creations are going to remain digital, then it really doesn't make a lot of difference (for that matter, you could probably just use 2L and 3L axles). However, if you are going to physically build it, then you'd want the friction pins everywhere that is not an active pivot point. Check out the instructions for any technic model - the friction variety is used almost exclusively unless it's a swivel point in the model. Owen.

That's a lovely pick-up motion, and nice execution overall. I might have to steal that one! :-)

Fake schmake - that lovely little engine is exactly as real as one made from the standard engine parts!

Besides, GBC is all about collaboration, rather than competition.

You might find something useful in this thread http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87967

Thanks Bryan, I can only imagine how many things you've got going on at the moment! I'm really looking forward to the event. Owen.

Really? The studless system has made many things smaller, and many things easier, but has it really made that much possible? Anyway, to answer the question: Anything that requires the bit-more-than-1-stud offset between parallel technic bricks. For example, it's very easy to mate an 8 tooth gear with a 16 tooth in a studded build, but in studless you have to muck around with half-stud offsets.

I've often thought that the UCS Sandcrawler would make a good basis for this - it's got the tracks pretty much ready-made, and plenty of brown/rust for the fuel tank.

Can I get some clarification on the competitions that will be held? There's something of a mismatch between the 'Challenges' page of the website and the shared Google Drive Directory (as advertised by email). Particularly, the dragster rules aren't in the shared drive (at least, not in the main part), and the UN-Derby rules aren't on the website (there may be other discrepancies, these are just the ones I noticed). What's the go?

Turns out Windows Media Player can do it too! So of course when I set up a video recording, it runs for a solid half-hour without missing a beat. Though I suppose I shouldn't moan - that's exactly what I want in the end anyway.

It's a passive one, taking balls from the top of a chain lift (that has now seen about four different versions, in my modules over the last few years). I've got a drop of about 20 studs from the top of the lift to the height of the input bin of the following module. The balls go into the first mechanism that collects four balls and releases them all together. They run into a second mechanism that spaces them out again, so they get passed to the next module one at a time. It's built primarily out of studless, with a few studded bits thrown in, mainly to attach it to the baseplate. I'm not really asking for help, just expressing frustration at the difficulty of diagnosing such an intermittent problem. One jam in 1200 balls @ 1 ball per second = almost running for around 20 minutes without jamming :-) I actually see small jams happening much more frequently but the vibrations from the feeder module are enough to get things moving again pretty quickly. As far as I can tell, the problem stems from my counterweight being too heavy while, at the same time but for a different reason, being too light - those balls (I'm using the white and orange Friends balls) don't weigh very much! Western Australia is probably a bit far from Southern Indiana. I appreciate the thought though :-). I think my problem with what I've tried so far is that I haven't tried analysing the video I have taken with any software that allows me to step through the video frame by frame. If I can only go back and forward to the next keyframe, it makes it a bit tough to see what's actually going on. Ha. I wish. I have ~100 balls, so when I run out of balls to feed the module, I empty the container that had been collecting the balls, and add another hundred to the count. Owen.

Nicely done - I should pop out from the Technic/Model Team forum more often so I get to see more cool stuff like this! Your biggest problem now is going to be what happens when your collection outgrows it - the more effort you put into a storage solution, the harder it is to upgrade!

That's incredible! All those linkages. Just.. wow.

I've just had a good testing session of my latest module. Balls sent through: 1200+ Balls spilled (other than due to a jam): 4 Jams that didn't clear of their own accord: 1 I can live with the spill rate, but any jam rate greater than 0 is too high. Unfortunately, it's low enough that it's incredibly difficult to troubleshoot. Anybody got a high-speed video camera I can borrow? And a tripod? And a lighting studio? :-)

While I'm certain the little red beast won't make a return, I'm equally certain there will be something to take its place, in the form of an S or XS PF motor.

This has actually been implemented by several authors. You already mention SR3DBuilder, but LDCad manages connections as well (I believe using a slightly different methodology). There are also other lesser known applications that do this. There are several threads in the LDraw forums (http://forums.ldraw.org/index.php, particularly in the Official File Specifications/Standards and LDraw Editors and Viewers subforums) that discuss this in great detail. I have not used LDD, so can't comment there.

A lot of this work has already been done for the LDraw system of tools. See http://www.ldraw.org/reference/specs/lcd/

A couple of little points: Weight of Sea Cow - probably won't be too much of an issue. To get it looking right at scale, you probably only want an amplitude of one or two studs to your mechanism, and a period of maybe a couple of seconds. A single XL motor should have no problems providing enough torque for that (bearing in mind that I don't actually know how big/heavy the Sea Cow actually is). For the things you're suggesting, the technic bits are mostly going to be hidden - and therefore it doesn't matter what colour they are. So I wouldn't for example pass up on a good deal on a mainly red set just because your other set is mainly yellow. Another thing to consider is that those kind of mechanisms tend to take relatively few technic parts - a motor geared down to the appropriate speed, and a couple of liftarms connected cleverly can do a lot of different things. On the other hand, there are few such mechanisms in modern technic instructions - be prepared to look up a couple of old-school engineering techniques like four-bar linkages etc. Alas no, they're full forward or full reverse only. Hope this helps Owen.

Alternatively, you could try setting different receivers on the same channel, and then somehow obscuring the line-of-sight to the receiver you don't want to control just now.

That's a pretty neat layout - I bet the person who organised that must be a really cool dude!

Ah, thanks. **feels slightly embarrassed about not having even done minimal research**

Hmm, interesting. Is there no capacity to make a profile local to your device? Or do you require the web app (and hence an Internet connection) to create anything? Owen.

Do you mean differential? Or is a 'diffuser' some other mechanism that I'm not familiar with?

The actuator has an internal clutch that will engage if there's too much torque applied - you won't damage the LA. I don't know what that limit is though. You could find out by trying to drive the actuator past its maximum range of travel.

This has also been used to good effect with dodgem cars here