bonox

I've glued the cap to the case now, so it's not obvious. The cap with the six tangs (red arrow) that exist to stop it twisting around the shaft had a few of those tangs broken. The part was placed diagonally across a zip-loc bag. The bag was probably a bit small and when closed, squashed the end cap up against the shaft and clutch rings. I guess it moved sideways and snapped some of the thin walled tangs. I bought the two major parts seperately (one black one white). I don't know if you would get the same issue with the version that has all the parts connected. My only other comment would be that while I think it's ok as is, I would prefer to pay a little more for a doubling of the wall thickness of the extending portion of the unit (what would normally be the polished shaft attached to the piston). Given the repeated cleaning, assembling and remachining, making this bit a little more resistant to handling damage would be well worth another dollar or few.

Often the simplest way to address claims of efficiency > 100% is that you're not measuring things correctly, drawing the system boundary incorrectly or just not understanding something - for example where are the electrons in space vacuum coming from? One often cited example is people claiming heat pumps with efficiency of 200% because the heat moved is double the electrical input. The answer to that one is the efficiency of the pump is measured based on energy in/out of the pump, and nothing to do with the potential energy transported by the device. You could make the same erroneous argument of comparing engine efficiency between a car and a mining truck because of the difference in payload being carried. I also wish people would understand that applying for patents (whether they are granted or not) not not imply anything useful about the idea. All those would be good reasons for people to take a paycheque for analysing something but refusing to put their name against it. Nothing quite like 'anonymous' analysts to make you doubt claims.

if you can afford them, they both offer something significant that the others you list don't. The 41999 is almost pointless if you have the 9398, but that's obviously up to you.

update: the axle pins work very well - better in fact than notched 2L axles. Had to use two 20t bevels to drive though, or it kept skipping. Thanks efferman; it works but probably requires too much work for a large audience though.... I'd suggest making the thread tolerances quite a bit larger. I recall from one of their documents the FNS material has a 0.2mm resolution - the shrinkage is probably greater than that. The end cap that holds the planetary gears also had most of the tangs broken when mine was delivered. Perhaps a small redesign or some sprue to support them in transit?

haha - a couple of hours with some light abrasives, a toothbrush and a compressor were required to deal with lots of "fits very tight", especially in the centre three quarters of the piston thread travel. A little more lapping won't upset me :) I'll try it with the axles first though as you've suggested.

My superstructure is held in with a single removable pin. I've got a carrier axle pin next to the drive axle that I slip the 8t onto when I want it to free spin. ie the superstructure comes on and off regularly to do so. When I get keen in future I'll try to remodel the geartrain to put a selector in to disable the drive to the turntable. Another quick idea was a foldaway lower support and the red frictionless 8t gear - the support to stop it falling out in use, so you'd just shuffle the gear along the axle to engage/disengage. There's not enough room to do this on the current superstructure though. You could also use a clutch gear at the end of the train as well. I like to balance my turrent pretty well, so it doesn't take much to turn it, which shouldn't upset a clutch close to the turntable. I've also got a support rail around the rear of the carrier to ease the load on the turntable when loading the counterweight. Was thinking of designing some wheels into it, but will need to cover the drive train for the stabilisers first.

thanks - I didn't have in mind a complete digital model, only the arrangement of auxiliiary parts on the 3 x 3 inner cap. From your description of parts though I now know how it works. Do you think frictionless axle pins would be any better than 2L axles for holding the planets? Should at least keep them captive in the axial plane.

Hi efferman I'm trying how to get your current revision together. Do you have an assembly, ldd file etc of what additional parts are required and how it goes together please? The guts are a bit different to the 1.1 video. oh, and is there a lubricant suggestion?

efferman's big actuator turned up today. A few small teeth broken off some pieces, but otherwise ok. At this point i'm not sure how to put it together, but hoping to find out when I clean out the bits.

If you are willing to pull the LA apart and glue the clutch together (the white input shaft to the orange centre) then you can at least double its capacity straight up.

technic hasn't evolved away from 'system' - there are lots of hybrid or cross overbits for joining the two together, from basic pins to the technic bricks. It doesn't take much to join the two together as is evident in a lot of current non-technic sets that use the stuff as support/scafolding. And a 13L liftarm will join just fine to a 10 stud technic brick. All the gears are compatible and there are some fabulous model team style MOCs around using studless technic underneath.

Thanks, great help :)

Hi Ingmar Wondering which pair of instructions to buy - If I want to put the dolly on the 8285, then do I need the MkII trailer or the MkII 8285 trailer? Does the trailer 8285 contain both the original and mod for 8285? Is the dolly compatible with both trailer versions? Thanks

how is that different to the current one? 32054. Or do you want a single rather than double length pin? sheo uses two dozen in his front loading shovel. I've also put together quite a few MOC's where they would be better than the older version with the extra pin on the other side. I think more people have that one so it's generally used for 'parts on hand' more than anything else.

myer has a 3 for 2 deal on toys at the moment until the 12th. The machine will populate the best price of 20% of everything or 3 for 2, so you'll probably have to do seperate transactions if buying a range of different priced stuff.

i find it interesting that as I get older and wealthier (compared to relying on goodwill and pocketmoney) I aim for colour matching across my designs. But the world image of lego is still the multicolour rainbow

The quickest is probably an already low geared motor (a PF XL or a 9V mini-motor (http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=71427c01)) and put it through a worm gear on a 40tooth gear. You can then use a train speed controller to run it at it's slowest speed. If you don't want to speed control the motor, you are left with consecutive reductions like a pair of 8:24, 8:36 etc. Multiply the factors out and you'll get the total speed reduction. (a 12th in this case). oh, for calculations, a worm is a single tooth, so a worm on a 24 tooth gear would be a speed change of 1/24. You can find motor speeds (at full speed) here: http://www.philohome.com/motors/motorcomp.htm

Pete - if you go back through this thread you'll find instructions for using tools like brickstock to subtract certain sets (like a 42009) from the list of parts provided for this model. There are a few different lists though since there are a few major revisions of upper and lower structure. The 42009 will have the complete engine, but will be missing 2 wheels/tyres. You can also use two remotes if you like. Set the lower/chassis two channels same as the upper/turrent, but you'll have to leave one switched off when you don't want to use it. That's no big deal since that's how the real thing operates. If you are looking at afol1969's pdf instructions, the parts lists in those are only for a major component (upper or lower) not the complete list. One of the early ones also had double the number of lots of parts - I don't know which version you have, but there are some common markers. If you need 4 linear actuators or 24 wheels for example, you've got a problem file. word of warning for the parts list with brickstore - make sure everything is set to either new or used when you subtract, or you'll end up with results you weren't expecting.

i'm glad someone got it :)

Just can't help myself. Why is it hard to make compound slopes in lego?

I also have another plan for this thing. I don't have any GMK6400 is this country, but we do have a 6300L which is practically the same thing. We also have roads made out of cheese and the road axle load limits for the basic crane are too low. To overcome this, the boom is partly carried on a dolly that is fixed to the boom with only a couple of pins. The turrent slew is left free in transport mode, so the boom tows the dolly around and the only connection between the lower and the dolly is the electric and brake air lines. Just fiddling with an idea here..... Any thoughts? I saw this example from DJ Adair in Sydney and it looks splendid in white and purple. It'll be difficult to replicate that in natural lego colours.

just came across this little picture of a pair of keepers - might be of use to someone if building a large hook assembly. Interestingly, this one is strung with synthetic rope rather than wire.

only when my wife's not around only when my wife's not around

This already went in the specific crane thread, but works well as a collection :) And the main reason there's no longer anywhere left to sit around here

oh, and for efferman, who 10 pages ago asked for feedback on build instructions made up of incremental lxf files - fabulous idea. Works a treat!