bonox

Legoboy22 = 9v System ??

You won't find very long lengths of genuine stuff (and it's expensive anyway). I would suggest you order stuff from a dedicated supplier. I use one here www.silicone-tubing.com.au but you'd be much better off finding a local one. Search for silicone hose or tubing. I believe you're after 4mm OD with 1mm wall (ie 2mm bore size), but you may want to check that yourself. I have also seen 2.5mm neoprene fuel hose used, but it's stiffer than the silicone and therefore harder to get around corners.. Your other option is to search for Lego pneumatic hose alternatives like http://www.techbrick...matic-lego.html edit: or perhaps try reading here: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=93014

far too long and uninteresting. A W16 would be much more fun

Wow - nice idea. I take it by the cab design that it is tiltable?

at a guess, there is very limited application for 16 or 32 stud axles - it's much simpler from a production standpoint to keep the shorter axle moulds running and join them with another common piece. edit: or you could be talking about a length that is not satisfied by the existing sizes - example, they'll add up to 24 studs, which is simpler to achieve with joined existing units than making a new element. As for strength, the limiting factor is the material and minimum polar moment cross section. It doesn't matter where that section appears, that's where it'll break. As for stiffness, which is what epic above is referencing, the joiners/collars act as local stiffeners for a short distance and the more you put in, the less rotation per unit applied torque - ie higher stiffness. Note that strength and stiffness are two quite different things. Oh, and i've thought of a third one - perhaps TLG have a high return of bent axle32's in boxes. I know i've had a few new 42009 and 8285's with bent 32's.

we don't have lego retailers here like you do, only shops carrying lego as one of many product lines, which means boxes on shelves and nothing else. I have to go to copenhagen to find my first one. Wow, that was a drag.

part of where i'm going with this is that there is a great reason pressure vessels are cylindrical or spherical rather than rectangular prisms. My idea was something like this: http://www.seas.virg...VC Air Tank.pdf I've built a few of those for non-lego applications and you could work down to 1/2" pipe if you wanted to (about 3 to 4 studs once the caps go on) and gang a few together with Tee pieces if you want volume. I've never seen it, but manufacturers make pressure pipe down to 1/8" http://www.harvel.co...0-80/dimensions if it's of any use to you, but you'd have a harder time putting fittings on it. edit: hydraulics gets interesting, and you could keep using the pressure pump with air to build gas pressure over the fluid (ie as an accumulator). Just an idea, not of great use though if you're after more precision in actuation.

You've not said waht you're doing so I can only guess, but is there a reason you can't put a pressure vessel inside your model and hide it with the bricks rather than turn the bricks into a sealed pressure unit? A PVC pipe for example isn't lego, but kraggle-ing it to achieve something that can't be done traditionally isn't really lego either.

surely by that logic, since designs for 1940's jeeps exist, there is no reason for anyone to ever make something new.... Sure, the unimog might be able to do similar things, but then there'd be little use for those piles of spare tumbler wheels we've all got lying around

you need to remove the parts that don't exist from your wanted list (or the source list). There is no way around this - if no parts are available, brickficiency will stop because it can't answer your question about the cheapest way to get all the parts. You may need to extract that set of unavailable parts from BL and find them elsewhere - I often have to go to PAB or bricks n pieces to find a few things that aren't on BL. Often have to save up this list because postage from TLG is very expensive.

Been looking at BL for months; all are specced as working or unknown and priced as working. e30 or more is not what I call realistic for a known dead unit, and they're not being sold as dead - they're being sold as "it might be working". It's getting close to gluing a pully to a 2x2 brick.

Surface prep and cleaning is likely to be as big an issue as the choice of adhesive if you're taking the glue rather than cement approach. It's not hard or expensive to trial a few options though if you're not sure... As for the question on stopping hoses coming off, are you using the right sized hose and 'normal' air pressures or are you going way beyond the 40ish psi? If the latter you'll have to start working on adhesives, since i doubt you'll find a clamp that small, or mechanical backup right behind the cylinder nozzle. For example, pass the hose through a 1x2 brick with cruciform (axle) pattern in it to provide a little more grab just before it goes into the cylinder. The other alternatives are small inner diameter hoses, which are bad for the nozzles, stiffer material hoses or hoses with heavier walls. Out of curiosity though, have you cleaned any grease off the nozzle/inner side of the hose? This could be a major problem for hose slip.

the pneumatics are not intended to hold pressure for long periods. This is true in full size equipment as well for both air and liquid powered systems. Air escapes from the seals, through joints and from porous hoses over time. It's not a defect in your building technique and you've just discovered a good reason not to sleep under the raised bucket of an excavator.

precisely - I can't work out if 9V is coming from an objective position and just not getting it across well, or else not having much knowledge of the new stuff (like appearing to know nothing of 9V/PF compatibility) or perhaps just having a very dark tint on the rose coloured glasses like listening to my grand-dad talk about stuff from his past. Nevertheless, I'm still interested in why people think the way they do, hoping for objective points of comparison rather than saying the old one is better just because they made it and not because there's a limitation of the new stuff. Edit: I've got an 8480 that i've given up on getting a working micromotor for since they're so expensive, but i've decided to try and put a dead one in just to make the satellite look right and I can't even find one of those for what I would call realistic money. Anyone know of a source of dead units?

As you've said, some people make it work very well, but for me, it depends on what you're trying to represent. The brain is very good at filling in 'holes' for want of a better word. If you are modelling a curved surface, a slab of stacked beams is obviously flat and just doesn't look right. You're better off in that case putting in something lighter with gaps and then letting your brain imagine the shape in between. If you're modelling something that really is a flat plate, then the stacked beams to me become pretty much the same as a flat plane of model team style bricks. Quite a few of the bigger trucks look great using the stacked approach. Curvy cars - not so much. Like many things though, there is much skill and artistry in making something visually appealing, even if the subject is mainly mechanical.

would it me a male unicorn? do unicorns even have genders? And would they make a supplement horse carriage for the lemans car?

Wow - that's a stunning build, and the presentation in the last picture is excellent.

really? You've still not addressed the first question I put to you on post #4 - what is it that you think is so bad about the new gear that the old stuff should be brought back? The best you've come up with is longer wires (which is something you can do with PF either by chaining cables or making your own and some different form factors. The form factors have nothing to do with being "the old 9V system"; it's merely a desire to see a 2x2xsomething brick sized PF motor. Your desire to stick with the old 9V stuff because it's more reliable doesn't really hold much weight when you consider all the old 9V failures the rest of us have had, and how hard people are driving the newer PF stuff. Sure, the stuff fails, but by golly, it's a toy with movement, not a toy defined solely by its movement, or a 'run-it-around-the-clock- GBC demonstrator. Also, saying that you stick to old 9V stuff to address all the issues I and andythenorth listed above about the sillyness of expecting high performance from plastic on plastic parts gives me the impression that you really haven't nailed down how these things work and what you actually want to achieve. An axle or gear doesn't actually know whether it's being driven by an old motor or a new one. Most of us treated the old stuff the same as the new anyway in terms of final operating speeds - the PF motors just do some of the gearing down inside the motor casing so we don't have to do endless belt drive reductions like at the head of the 8480. Perhaps a bit like the old guys saying that points ignition on their bike/car was much better than the new electronic stuff and arguing all sorts of stuff about it, when what they actually wanted was the enjoyment of spending time fiddling and adjusting the old stuff rather than acknowleding that the improvement in performance, cost and reliability of the new meant they no longer had to spend time in the shed tinkering with it on wet days. At the end of the day, the points ignition achieved the same results as the CDI (at least for purposes of this discussion!).

I'm curious about people's attitude to lego RC stuff - in my mind, plastic friction locking modular parts, plastic in plastic bearings, and low modulus plastic shafts do not make for high performance. There is special single purpose RC equipment for that kind of thing - things that because of their specialised nature mean you can pretty much do only one thing with it. This is in contrast to a lego system that can be an excavator one day, a GBC the next and a house with motorised skylight the one after that. Am I weird for acknowledging and working within the limitations of the gear? Or is because i'm a mechanical engineer that I have more sympathy for the gear than most? I'm sure TLG will shout me down if i'm wrong about this, but the concept of the 8043 was to demonstrate a principle that may have also been fun to play with. It would also teach you about the importance of testing during assembly or things would bind and run slowly. What i'm sure it was never intended to do was dig rocks out of the back yard. It's one of the better examples why brute force is not a good solution to complex poorly assembled geartrains. There are improvements you can make to the design to overcome limitations like this - see any number of MOC's performing admirably (eg http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=101526), however it's not a tool for making structural and mechanical equipment. The buggy motors are also a bit different in the lineup by having a tendancy to be direct drive to a wheel, but even they don't come with long life, high load bearings in them!

or white (42025) or green (42008) or orange (2015) Since you're after a bit of everything, i'd suggest the last crane (42009). Has pretty much everything except tracks (beams/liftarms, axle joiners, axles, wheels, pins etc), which you can find in the bulldozer 42028? or the excavator/claw if you want those and is one of the lowest price per part sets (on sale around my part of the world anyway, assuming you're after a few pins).

it does look like another product of Wayne Enterprises!

The control systems 8094/8485 is equivalent to the variable speed controller 8879 plus IR receiver. The old 9V stuff is also not mountable without studded construction which is not a technic property in the current lineup. The functionality of the 9V stuff already exists in the new gear, but the new gear is lighter, cheaper and portable (battery powered as standalone or use the lipo pack with wall wart. On top of that you can run the PF gear from old boxes and old motors from new PF supplies with the adapter cables or homebuilt solutions. Combined with modern technical progress like high torque speed control (pwm), what is it that you this is so bad about the new system that they should bring back the old gear? Especially if they brought back that crappy rubber insulation Don't get me wrong, I love my 3 control centres and the code pilots, but they have their place in history. I use them because it still works with the new gear, looks cool (especially as the back of Boseman's V8) and reminds me of my childhood (because mum and dad couldn't afford it), but it's surely hard to make an objective case for bringing the stuff back! Axles - the power supply already exists (ie buy the battery pack and wall wart or else just cut up a cable and craft your own) and the SBrick is probably the only RF wireless control we'll see. Not sure though how your "wireless system of the latter - [a PF power supply that would plug into the wall]" would work. Wireless power transmission beyond milliwatts has been out of reach pretty much forever. The stuff that does exist is rather dangerous and certainly not something you'd see in kids toys outside of china.

that's a brilliant pair of pictures mate

try the straight shooters list under buy/sell/trade http://www.eurobrick...hp?showforum=16 doesn't always work, but you can try searching BL for stores having 'technic' in the name. I've had great service from one particular guy in NY ;)

Might also be worth noting that the Lego power puller is actually a real vehicle as well! The idea if not the exact implementation. Google "Tractor Pull Competition" for some wacky examples. Some other interesting examples: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2565715/Train-built-1966-using-two-jet-engines-fastest-locomotive-America.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46 http://utahrails.net/articles/up-dda40x.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H_engine (Someone like Jackie Stewart once described one of these as sounding like "four subarus in a mailbox" :))