bonox

As a point of interest, might be worth checking whether you need an old style pump to make it work. The old one does not have a check valve, so when you pull it out (or the spring does it for you), it should create a vacuum that gets transferred to the left port. The newer style pumps do have check valves, meaning that they will only generate a positive gauge pressure. You may want to check if you need to buy an old pump as well as the distribution block. Perhaps, but there's more to it than just the second port. The original design requires only one seal and the cylinder is entirely made of plastic from the same injection molding processes as all their other bricks. The top port requires a second (shaft) seal and they introduced metal for this, which was a step outside their expertise. I think I can see why they would have taken the approach they did. If you have a collection of designers on staff, costs to come up with new parts isn't really significant over a large production run. Indeed for most manufactured plastics, it's the raw material which makes up over 3/4 and often closer to 90% of the total product cost once you get production scale wound up. (the rest is design, tooling, packaging etc). But to introduce new materials and production requirements, perhaps even outsourcing them and then having to deal with the incorporation of outside supplier parts into your own production chain may have pushed them in the direction that they did But what do I know! ;)

Good luck with it :) Make up a demo with all the parts first, before you put the hoses into your model. I may be wrong on the hose order, but you'll work it out from some old instructions like the 8040. I think part of the function of the distribution block is to stop the old style pump from sucking air out of the system when you release it. edit: here is a great demonstration http://lego.brickinstructions.com/08000/8040/002.jpg

Just quietly, it's Sheo, not Shepo, but yes, I think this is looking like a fantastic smaller pneumatic interpretation of his RH400. I wish you well in finishing it for the competition.

You can still use that distribution block to make a two port cylinder act like a single port. Could be useful in situations where you can't run a hose to the retract port. The idea is that you apply pump pressure to the centre port of the block, then run the other two block ports to the outer ports of a switch block. Then connect the centre port of the switch to one port on the cylinder (most often the bottom, but there's nothing stopping you from using either.

after reading this I started out thinking that it kind of defeats the intent of technic. But you'd start needing some very large highly likely to be single use only parts to make a boat hull, and a big moulded part like a hull gets close to being non-technic. Then again, hell with it - bring it on :)

what a wonderful photo Madoca. It represents a pretty priceless opportunity (the product of your creative endeavour and a gift from the company involved).

way to go in raising the bar for literature around here Thanks Sariel - i'm obviously going to have to build both, so I can use the BWE to pick up a mixed bowl of nuts and feed them to the separator to isolate just the ones I want. Now, how to make it take out the brown m&m's for Van Halen....

I bet the venn diagram intersection of people who ride one of them off road and also build lego models is really small!

speak for yourself!

what's two teeth between friends

that's not the adventure spec, which looks much more broad shouldered. No idea where these ideas are coming from but if that particular bike is real, i'm definately getting one to put alongside my full size example. I just need to hope there are enough blue parts available to match the BMW blue of the real one :D edit: wow - 7 replies before i could finish typing one sentence. You guys are keen!

that seems to be a fairly common Technic mantra of late.

those turbochargers illustrate the depth of your talent perfectly. Some simple pieces, elegantly put together, and the sum is much much greater than each of the parts.

Just watched the show on the link you sent and loved it. Did they need help reassembling it after painting the parts? Were you hiding out the back to help, or did they pull more skills out of the bag and might now be interested in making some lego models of their own? :)

Bricktrain - beautiful mate. But you may need to work on the wall behind your working desk ;)

wow - that's a hefty dolly Bricktrain. Is there a finished model yet or just a propotype?

I was under the impression that post #7 was "how to I make it spin freely when you aren't squeezing the trigger", and not "how do I make it work". You say the blades are never free spinning, but in post #7 I replied to, the question is "how do i make it free spinning?". In that scenario, you are actually looking for a ratchet mechanism if using a trigger style approach, otherwise you're looking for a ratchet equivalent like the centrifugal clutch you find in a lawn mower starter ring or an inertial 'bendix spring' arrangement like a car starter motor.

That's incredible. At the start of the video I thought you were showing a die-cast model!! The finish is amazing!

you're looking for ratchet type mechanisms. I think there was one recently - try to find some ideas from here: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=76983

Might just be simpler to think about the packaging and where you're going to put the linkages, dog clutch gear etc. Real vehicles go both ends as primary. I think many of the subaru cars are essentially front wheel drive with a take off for the rear. The same probably applies for any car sold as either a front drive only or all wheel drive versions, so much of the smaller VW/Audi set for example. Then you have the big boys like lambo and porsche, which aim to behave like rear wheel drive until you need the extra traction from the fronts, so they are essentially rear wheel drive with a take off for the front axle. Each of these are fancy in that they have variable torque distribution between front and rear axles, which you're not going to be able to do. For an RC car on road, you may find front wheel drive turns tighter corners (especially on slippery floors) but you might like to try drifting it, which will mean rear wheel drive. With no centre differential and sticky tyres and 'road' you might find it hard to steer or it will start chewing up some parts if you use it hard. To answer the original question though, 4wd or 4x4 are the same and probably don't have a centre differential. They were designed to operate in 2wd mode on sealed surfaces. AWD will have a centre (3rd) differential that allows slip between front and rear axles to avoid tyre scrub and poor steering on sealed surfaces.

Bought a copy of your instructions last night Lucio. Thankyou for publishing them. I really enjoyed putting your ACT together and am looking forward to this one. Your models certainly have a sense of majesty :)

that's what i said, but mine was the double negative ;) Sorry for my choice of words

one of their arguments seems to be related to getting calls for missing parts, when in fact the correct part got put in the wrong place earlier in the build and the 'left over' part doesn't fit at the later stage. That's not necessarily a reflection of TLG believing that kids are lazier/dumber etc. It's a reflection of what their support teams appear to have experience in having to resolve. If anything, it's probably worse for the BWE than the small sets. If your tiny technic set only has 3 axles in it, your chance of getting the wrong length part in place is not only low, but it's conceptually simple to find and fix. When you've got a hundred progressively buried axles, it's more of a challenge.

There has to be some tension created between rows of studs to make parts stick together. That's what clutch means. Pulling together of studs on one side will cause the part to curl in that direction - and for that part, the flange cutouts on the lower side so it will fit over studs means there is very little resistance to bending. It's moment(s) of inertia are very low. In your second case, you are isolating the tension loads along the long axis of the part to just the studs, rather than building between studs, so you don't get the curl problem. You could possibly eventually see curl about the shorter axis, but its moment is higher due to the flange at each end. for the 2x2 tiles , you may well get worse curling when using the version without the centre post. edit: speeling arrors

do your final rinse in demineralised (or distilled if you're wealthy) water instead of the stuff out of the tap. or add some water softener to a bucket of tap water - look for it where you get clothes washing detergents.