bonox

why? The cheapest three bricklink sellers as of today have stock of 106, 458 and 653 respectively, and all are less than 34 euro cents. I'll put them next to my huge bag of 4500 of them :)

Fabulous re-creation. I always love your work in progress pictures - makes me feel like i'm not alone in trying lots of different designs before coming to the final one.

it's very impressive, but given the title "Rocket Crawler" I was really hoping to see one of these:

it's more likely a design change to reduce the chance of builders putting it in the wrong way around and ending up with parts that don't fit together

what a stunning presentation - love the 'ramp' it sits on that hides the pump and control gear

that's an impressive rack of new valves! The bonnet on the truck is fabulous and i really like the use of the gear engagement thingies as exhaust silencers as well

jaw on floor. When i bought your original instructions i was very impressed with the front wheel assembly creativity - this is equally impressive building at such a large scale

An interesting idea, but that's not how forward planning works. Most people also completely forget about tech disruptors. 20 years ago, the bluetooth protocol existed, but it wasn't really until 2004 that Nokia produced the low energy device version of it and put it into a phone and it wasn't really until three years later that someone introduced a phone/device (with the iphone) capable of running the kinds of apps and swipe control mechanism that we use to control the current range of lego devices. On that basis i'd argue that the available hardware for lego focussed apps is only 12 years old so far. While the term 'smartphone' goes back to the early 1990s, those phones were nothing like what is needed for current apps. And how many of you have an original iphone/galaxy/etc lying around that can run todays apps? And the point about tech disruptors was exactly that iphone 12 years ago. Nokia/blackberry etc never saw it coming, weren't prepared for it and went to the wall. All the 'old tech' died in a few years once the new stuff became generally affordable. Are you comfortable saying that there will be no new tech in the next decade that will make all these current devices and software properly obsolete so that you'll have to try and mothball a special one just to control your lego? Hoping in that time that the built in battery doesn't crap itself and corrode the thing from the inside out? Or will even still work 10 years later? I dug out my old nokia 3310 a little while ago and that battery, while carefully looked after during its working life, is now bulging and not something i'd trust not to catch fire or burst in the hands of my children. This is actually the same reason I still really like paper instructions. Sure it's a waste of trees, but it's just wonderful to not have to keep looking at a screen at the end of the day. oh, and final point - bluetooth is old. But the new versions are not backward compatible with the old ones. Same frequency spectrum, different channels, modulation and even frequency hopping for interference avoidance. Quite possible that your 2039 device with bluetooth won't talk to the older BT lego hardware.

The alternative? A device produced by TLG that is capable of driving the receivers in the toy. Look at PoweredUp trains for example. TLG are producing a hardware controller for it instead of forcing you to bring your own device. Now that doesn't mean you have to make the whole lot proprietary. You can still use bluetooth as a open protocol for example, and you could still produce an app for users to be able to control the thing with a tablet/phone, but at a basic level, if you make available a hardware device to control it, then you cater to the market who don't have or want to use a phone, plus it will still work in 20 years time, even when bluetooth no longer exists as a current protocol, the carrier spectrum (wifi/NFC/BT) has changed and no device or operating system exists that will run an app that hasn't been updated in 15 years. I enjoyed playing with Lego as a kid (still do actually which is why i'm discussing this now) and i'm starting to transfer the long term durable toy I had as a child to my own child. Also, my future purchasing decisions are beginning to be influenced by something it never was influenced by before - and that's the short term nature of expecting a long life product being controllable only by short design life software and hardware. I'm beginning to change my buying habits that used to be "i'll get to pass this to my grandchildren to enjoy" to "it looks good now but in a few years time it'll be a 500euro paperweight because it won't work as intended".

little bit late to the party on this one but lately i've been thinking about how much I still use my older lego. Stuff with manual switches like the 8480 is likely to last a literal lifetime. Stuff with firmware in a fixed control unit will also probably last a very long time - thinking of the code pilot here, and indeed my pair of them are still going strongly. The oriignal power functions, similarly is likely to work for a very long time with a little care. But how many of you believe that in 20 years, you'll still have a working app and a device capable of connecting to this new range of stuff? Unless you're familiar with virtual machines and are fairly handy with older hardware bridges, you're already out of luck with most (all?) of the past software and 9 pin serial connected hardware that TLG has released. Lego as a product is advertised as a long term durable product. I just don't have any faith in software and non-lego specific hardware having anything like the staying power of the stuff it's meant to control.

not sure i understand your intent. Both will rotate the same way. If you want to change direction, you'll need something like a gear pair or a twisted rubber band between two pulleys. Also the angle is a bit too much for a universal joint. That setup will probably work if you're careful and gentle with it, but if you're expecting to put load on it or run it at high speed it probably won't reward you. If it's hard to get your head around the movements, imagine it straightened out...

Well, I said a few pages ago that i'd be interested in instructions. Now you've gone and made the effort to product them for this wonder i've just put my money where my mouth is and sent you an order. Thanks once again. I look forward to building it.

i love seeing these intermediate "how it developed over time" kinds of pictures. There's certainly a lot of work involved in creating these kinds of MOCs

Thanks so much Attika/1963maniac. A lovely model and will (hopefully) form the basis of some great building time over the next few weeks with the kids. She'll do the new one, i'll do the original :)

I'm looking forward to this christmas present :) Great work fellas!

I'd suggest you find some posts by a user here called @LEGO Historian Perhaps start here: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/155776-lego-9-volume-encyclopedia

I would postulate that the mathematics behind it was to align gear teeth which always do not align two orthogonal holes - otherwise you'd need a small gear of pitch circle diameter identical to the axle on which it rides and that's not in system.

This model truely is a mechanical marvel on a large scale. Conceptually simple, but the devil is the structural detail of holding it all together and getting it to work. This model truely is a mechanical marvel on a large scale. Conceptually simple, but the devil is the structural detail of holding it all together and getting it to work. Equally as good as Dawid_Szmandra's crane in my opinion.

they do both actually, but the tech in the chinese ones isn't the same. A legacy of conditions of sale of the original company where the tech and manufacturing were to remain in japan i think.

The chinese have become known for cheap poor quality crap because that's mostly what the rest of the world asks them to produce by being customers for it. It doesn't mean that they can't produce good quality gear when required. Where do Panasonic have their eneloops made? okay, maybe a bad example... ;) Personally i'd just try to pack a pair of 18650 cells into it but 18500's is probably a better fit if you don't want to machine the box.

substitute for light green instead. It's not like exhausts don't have different colours in general. Or buy one of the extreme buggies 8465. It's not a unique rare piece. It's a rare colour only.

Yes - buy internationally. There 21 sellers as of today - the part is relatively cheap and the Germans in particular tend to have pretty low post rates. There is also one usa seller who must be pretty easy for a canadian. In light of the up coming plagiarism and commercial exploitation, I feel I should help you out bruno - I just made a purchase of this model to help support the publication of great MOCs. Thanks.

you're making great progress!

wow, it's beautiful. Reminds me a lot of Dennis Bosman's work but at Ingmar's scale.

And if you look at those relationships, while there is an unfathomable (at least to me) bigatude to the number of relationships between lego parts, looking around at people's MOCs, there seems to be a lot of similarity going on. The same collection of parts and relationships bas resulted in 20,000 cars, 200 cranes, two birds and one ship in a bottle