Splat

Hi All, I've been lurking on these forums for a few months now, and have written about a dozen replies, but I thought that I should formally introduce myself. My name is Stephan, and I am an Adult Fan Of Lego (AFOL) - the first step of addiction is to admit you have a problem. I live in Melbourne Australia, and go by the aliases of Splat and slfroden at various places around the internet. Like most of you, my favourite toy growing up was Lego. Looking back on the sets that I had as a kid, it seems that most of them were 'impulse buys'. By that I mean that while shopping, my brother and I would plead for our mum to buy us some Lego, but this meant that I ended up with lots of small sets from various themes, mostly Town, but also Space and Castle, and a little bit of Technic. I remember spending hours looking through the Lego catalogues, and I still have all of my catalogues from about 1982 somewhere at home, but they aren't in the best condition. The only time that I received any of the larger sets was for my birthday or at Christmas. As well as Lego, I also had a few Transformers and Mask toys while growing up. Lego isn't as big in Australia as it is in other places around the world, so while some friends had a set or two, they definitely didn't have a 'collection'. The only other people that I knew at the time that had a decent collection were my cousins that are a few years older than me. At the beginning of high school I was mainly interested in Technic sets, and after I saved up all of my pocket money for months, I was finally able to get the 8865 Technic Test Car. It had 4 wheel independent suspension, a differential linked to a gearbox and an engine, Ackerman steering, pop-up headlights, and was easily the biggest set that I had up until that point. I loved this set, and I still have it to this day, although it has 'yellowed' a bit with age. I have taken this set apart and reassembled it more times than I can remember. Towards the end of high school, study and other interests took over, and I went into my 'dark-ages'. At uni, I was a typical struggling student, trying to make ends meet with the little money that I had, and I definitely didn't have spare money to buy Lego. At that time, I lost touch with Lego. I didn’t know what sets were available, or what changes were happening (more on that in a minute). Then it happened! I happened to pick up a Lego catalogue in a store one day, and while flicking through it, I saw the 8455 Technic Back Hoe. To me, this set provided a good balance of form and function. I had a bit of spare cash (now that I was working full-time), so I found a local supplier online and purchased it straight away. I was a bit unsure about the changes that had happened to Technic during my dark-ages, such as the move from studded beams to stud-less lift-arms, and all of the new lengths of axles and new gears, but I really enjoyed building that set, despite the fiddly pneumatic tubes going everywhere - I guess my fingers must be bigger than when I was a kid. Even though I enjoyed building this set, I told myself that I would only buy Technic sets from this point on, and only ones that I felt had a good mix of form and function. A few years later I picked up the 8421 Technic Mobile Crane, and was given the 8475 RC Race Buggy as a present, but I still consider myself to be mostly in my dark-ages during this time. Since 2010, I no longer consider myself as being in the dark-ages at all any more. It happened when I got the 8265 Technic Front Loader. I’m still trying to stick to my rule of only getting sets that are a good mix of form and function. I’m not going to collect every Technic set available (I’ll let Blakbird have that title), but somehow I think my perceptions are changing, and more and more sets are becoming appealing to me. Since 2010, so far I have purchased over dozen or so Technic sets, and have also got Series 1-4 of the Collectable Minifigures. But I think I’ve started to enter the next phase – I’ve started buying sets (and duplicates of sets), not for the official model, but for the pieces contained within them. Pieces that I think I could use in my own creations (MOCs). Some of these sets include Bionicle sets (for the Technic pieces within), as well as Town sets to help add detailing to my Technic MOCs. To be honest, this phase scares me a bit because I don’t know where this will end up... Recently I attended Brickvention, where I picked up a MISB copy of the 7471 Mars Exploration Rover that was originally released in 2003. This started me thinking about the other sets that I missed out on while I was in my dark-ages. I would love to get my hands on some of the Technic Super Cars that I missed out on. But again, this scares me a bit, as it means that I would have to pay the inflated prices on eBay or BrickLink, and the exorbitant cost to get them shipped to Australia. For now I have resisted the temptation, but I don't know how long I can hold off... I learnt how to use AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max at uni, and even modelled the 8832 Technic Roadster from scratch for a uni project. Recently I have been using LDraw and MLCad (and other applications), and while I have only started to play with these tools, I am finding that they are helping me quite a bit with my MOCs. When creating a Technic MOC with physical pieces, you have to think a few steps ahead (or a few hundred steps), and if a change is required, it could result in pulling the whole MOC apart and starting over. Whereas on the computer I just move entire sections of the model around until I get things just right, then I can pull the bricks out and put it together. As you can probably tell by now, I will be lurking in the LEGO Technic, Mindstorms & Model Team forum, and I will check in on the LEGO Digital Designer and other digital tools forum from time to time. Recently I also had a custom bag made by Crumpler. Of course I had to choose a Lego theme, and the most iconic piece of Lego has to be the Minifigure, so I chose a Classic Spaceman. You can see more details on my Flickr page. Anyway, that is just a 'little' bit about me. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. Cheers, - Stephan

I like how the Power Functions switch behind the steering wheel controls the steering, but also looks like an instrument panel. I like everything else about this too

The Australian dollar is US$1.0355 at the moment. The RRP for the 8070 Supercar looks like it will be AU$199.99 when it is released in Australia. AU$199.99 = US$207.09. The 8070 has an RRP of US$119.99 in the United States. So the Australian price is 72.6% higher than the US price. The same goes for the 8043 Excavator. Australian RRP = AU$349.99 (US$362.41). United States RRP = US$199.99. So the Australian price is 81.2% higher than the US price. Some other smaller sets also have a higher mark-up than that. For example, the 8051 Motorbike. Australian RRP = AU$79.99 (US$82.83). United States RRP = US$39.99. So the Australia price is 107.1% higher than the US price. So to all you Canadians, just be thankful you don't get the Australian prices! Even though I paid a premium for it, my 8070 Supercar is in the mail at the moment - I hope to get it either today or tomorrow. This will be my first supercar since the 8865 Test Car (just before I went into my dark-ages), so I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this.

I have only looked at LD4DStudio a little bit, but this info may help: When you first open LD4DStudio, it looks like a blank screen, but you are actually in a 'Project'. Inside the Project you can have 'Packages', so the first thing you need to do is create a new Package. To do this, on the left hand side of the screen click the '+' next to Project, and then right click on Packages and select New. By default the new Package is called '<New package>', and you can click on the + sybmol next to it to see 3 more branches in the tree - Parts, Actors and Animations. Right click on Parts, and select New. You will be prompted to select an LDraw part, and you can select either an *.DAT, *.LDR, or *.MPD file (possibly others too). Once selected, you will see your new Part in the tree. Double click on the new Part and it will open a 'Window' with the Part in it. LD4DStudio is actually quite a bit different to most other LDraw based programs, and has quite a steep learning-curve (at least I found it did). If you are familiar with Object-Oriented programming, you should pick it up fairly quickly and, if you have the time, I definitely recommend reading though the Manual (found here) as it will point out a lot of little tips that aren't obvious at first glance. The real power of this program looks like it is in it's animation possibilities, but I haven't got that far... yet.

Just thinking outside the box... I don't know what your skill are like with programming/scripting/string manipulation, but the *.L3B, *.MPD, *.LDR, and even the *.DAT files are all just simple text files. This means that you can read the files in a programming language fairly easily, and extract the information that you need. In the 'LDraw/Images_L' directory, there are images for every part which you could use, and then you could create a custom HTML file with the information that you are after. Even if you don't know any programming, you can just open the file in Notepad (or similar), and manually filter through the file to get the information that you need. You will be able to see every '0 STEP' command, and between them will be all of the references to the parts (*.DAT files).

You can use LDView to open *.LDR, *.DAT, or *.MPD files. (I believe that you can just rename a *.LP3 file to a *.MPD file - Sergio, can you confirm this?) In LDView, load your *.MPD file, then go to the Tools menu and select Parts List. Choose the settings you want, click OK, and a HTML file of the parts will be created. The HTML file uses images from Peeron. Perhaps this is what you are after? I'm not sure how you would get the parts for a specific step though. You could try deleting all other parts in SR3D and save the file (as a copy - don't overwrite your complete model file), then follow the above steps in LDView. But then you would have to repeat this for each step, and if you have lots of steps this could take a while. I hope that this helps...?

It looks like one of the finalists has been removed. There used to be 10 finalists, but now there are only 9. http://technic.lego.com/en-us/Competition/voting.aspx

If you want to know more about the inner working of the Linear Actuator, I recommend reading through these articles at TechnicBRICKS: Linear Actuators – Part I Linear Actuators – Part II The mLA under magnifying glass

Last night I was having trouble uploading my entry too, and again this morning. I tried using Firefox and Chrome. After filling in the form, I waited a few moments (uploading the image can take a little while), but then when the next page loaded it was a 'Page Not Found' error page. I sent Lego an email via their website, and got the following reply: I would suggest including the following information in the email: Lego ID Model Name Image (as attachment) Description (less than 300 characters long)

Hi Sariel, great work, and a great start to your MOCs this year. I'm glad you have been able to incorporate your Automated Trafficators System into this model, as well as the reversing lights, and of course the mesmerising set of lights on the top. I think I would have liked to see less 'extra' motors used to control the lights, and rather see more gear driven drive-trains, but I think you have done an amazing job fitting in all those functions into the size of that chassis. Your work has been an inspiration to me (just coming out of my dark ages), and I can’t wait to see what you come up with next...

Rather than looking like the Can-Am, I think this trike is based on the T-Rex by a company called Campagna - http://www.campagnamotors.com/T-REXRR/intro.html Both are trikes with two steered wheels at the front, but the Can-Am seems to have more of a motorcycle riding position, whereas the T-Rex is more of a car driving position, and for two people side-by-side. I think the Lego version that Harm Jan Technologies created looks like the real T-Rex, and it seems to go really well. Good job. Has anyone tried making a Carver One or BMW Clever out of Lego?

I get nothing if I search for my entire member number (12710). If I take the first 4 digits (1271) I get Jungle Surprise: If I take the last 4 digits (2710) I get this cool little Helicopter: Piece count : 8

Great work Grohl. I think you have captured the aesthetics of the original really well. I love the way you have coloured the bumpers, and the front seats have a great range of motion.

I noticed that when I first put together my 8043 that one of the axles wobbled a bit, causing a weird vibration when operating the bucket. One of my universal joints wasn't aligned how you suggested. Now that I think about the universal joints, and the fact that they aren't constant velocity, your solution makes perfect sense. I have now rotated the universal joint on the axle, and the vibrations are gone. Out of Sight, thanks for posting this. Lego already has CV joints (eg. used in the drive-train of 8880 and 8297), but I've only seen them used in 4WD steering.

When I ordered my 8043 Excavator from the Australian Lego S@H (in November), it had a V29 after it in the Order Summary email - and it had the new linear actuators with 36X0 stamped on them. At the same time I also ordered 8263 Snow Groomer and it also had V29. When I ordered 8258 Crane Truck it also had V29. The Power Functions items that I ordered had V22 or V46 after it. These were all ordered from the Australian Lego S@H. With a previous order from the US Lego S@H, all of the sets had V39 after them, and the Power Functions items had either V46 or V95. If you go to the Building instructions page on the Lego website, it says: I'm in Australia where we use A4 paper, so I just figured that sets ordered from the Australian Lego S@H had V29 to indicate that the instructions were printed on A4 paper. My guess is that the V## indicates the version of the set and/or instructions, and this may also be used to ship different versions of the set to different regions around the world. I don't think it has anything to do with VIP points.

I saw Technic Tractor with Trailer (8063) at Target for the standard recommended retail price of AU$129.95. I read some reviews that said that it wasn't that great (3/10), so I didn't buy it at that time. About a week later I was back at Target, and it was now reduced to AU$99.95, and there were only 3 left (2 had damaged boxes). I decided to get it this time, and when I went to pay for it, it scanned in at AU$49.95 - I didn't correct them, and ended up getting the set for about 39% of its recommended retail price. The week after that, Target had a 20% discount on Lego, so I went back, and the two remaining sets were still there, although these were the boxes that were damaged. I figured if any pieces were missing I can just contact Lego Customer Service, so I bought another set for parts. Luckily, all the pieces were in the box. This time I paid AU$39.95 - about 31% of the recommended retail price. Paying 31% for a set that scores 3/10 in a review sounds about right. I was thinking about buying the last remaining set, but I thought that I would let someone else have some good fortune too.