ludov

Thanks! I guess it's time to start on the upper structure. I initially was considering a V8 at the smaller scale, like the new Mack Anthem has. It fits, but I wasn't happy with its robustness and playability. I like how @Thirdwigg puts small 2- or 3- cylinder motors in his MOCs and took inspiration from that when I decided for a regular V4.

I'm not a fan of relying on particular molds, even though I have a lot of the older 16z gears. I'd like to think that someday I might make instructions and someone might use them and then I don't want to this very hypothetical person to have to worry about which gear to use. Hypothetically. So I solved it with a 9L axle with two half-bushes locking the 16z inside in place. The 12z on the outside has more friction and stays on even when I pull the whole thing by it. And I finished the cab! I took @Erik Leppen's advice and raised the cab two studs. The roof only one. What do you guys think? As always, feedback welcome!

Just wanted to say thanks for providing the renders and the calculations. Together the helped me finally wrap my head around how that pile of gears works Fun exercise!

The 16L axle came only in Technic set 42009 Mobile Crane MkII (5 of them), and in a few Star Wars sets: https://brickset.com/sets/containing-part-6043747 But they're readily available on Bricklink it seems: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/search.page?q=6043747&ss=NL#T=A

Very nice! I think the bull bar should extend up higher, at least protecting (part of) the grille and the headlights. Now it looks a bit like a dozer blade

Very cool! Those mechanical clocks are fascinating and since the pullback TC I wanted to build another one. Do you have a good reference on escapements, especially the Arnfield? I’ve not yet found a good one online.

Update time again. Yes, I build really slowly This it what it looks like now (note: still missing some LBG parts for the outriggers): Everything is connected now and starting to be covered up. I'm not sure yet how to finish the cabin... Not sure if I'm happy with it's size, but I'll see how it turns out when done. I'm definitely not super happy with the seats, but I don't see an alternative at this moment. The exhausts do the steering by the way, as you can see in this picture below (you can also see how uncomfortable the seats are ) The outrigger control is done by a double bevel gear on the back: Not too satisfied with it though: it sticks out from the back, and the 8L axle with stop is really easy to pull out. It's on the other side are a 16z and 8z gear, but those have really little friction for some reason. I could put a 9L with two half-bushes, but then it sticks out even more... Any ideas? Feedback and comments welcome!

I love how it's V8 powered... multiple times... Dinosaur burning dinosaur bones

Absolutely, it's just that with all-black it is difficult to capture all the shapes when making photograph. Great truck though, don't get me wrong!

I was following the WIP topic and wondering what happened with this. Very nice result! I like how nicely the crane fold up on the trailer. I agree with @Aventador2004 that the truck can use a bit of color. The black makes it difficult to see the shapes

Oh, that makes total sense in combination with @SNIPEs pictures. I lost track of the topic around page 40, so it’s good to know where to catch up, if I manage before Friday

Oh. I completely lost track of the Chiron topic - too much activity to keep up with. Can you summarize?

New orange shifter piece? What did I miss?

I considered that, but the 7M gear rack only has 3M of teeth, which allows only 2M of extension. I thought that too little. This solution uses the maximum amount of extension possible given the width of the vehicle (minus the space taken up by the outrigger mechanism, which is 1M). I tried a solution with the 13M gear rack, but it has the holes in the wrong places and I couldn't manage... A 9M or 11M intermediate size would be nice to have!

I managed. After a lot of iterations on the concept shown above, I realised I was overcomplicating it. I moved the driven gear that extends the outrigger to the other side, put a idler gear on the far outside (where the driven gear used to be), and then the synchronisation is trivial: The 3L pins are end-stop that prevent the outriggers from falling out. The total extension is a bit over 5M, including the extension of the 2nd part.: The yellow axle will linke the front outriggers with the rear ones (once the loose u-joint is connected), so in the end one control extend all four. As you can see, I also fitted an engine, and routing the outrigger link under the turntable and past the engine and past the steering (the tan gears in the top-left of the picture) was a real pain. I think the overal length is still good, but the 16z gears of the front outrigger extension will end up in the cabin... no seats, probably: I'm short of a few 5M levers in LBG (for the outriggers). Next steps: add cabin and engine cover. You can find more photo's here https://bricksafe.com/pages/ludo/small-crane. Feedback is appreciated!

For a while I thought I was looking at renders, but I was wrong. This is coming together great, really cool to see the progress!

I also think it would be nice too have an older model (eg 8880 or 8480) as well, to illustrate the history.

^^ What they said. Your builds are always very interesting to follow. Curious to see what's next!

I know that I'm a bit late with this, but it was difficult to find information on this -- apparently the LUT was not the most glamorous part of the operation After a while (long while...), I found this paper from way back and it seems that the umbilical arms were actuated by pneumatic pistons pushing the arms away from the vehicle. I think it would look really nice if the arms would fall backwards after unlocking, instead of having to rotate a knob, but indeed you'd have to tilt the axis of rotation a bit, since you don't have pneumatic pistons to push. I'm not sure how feasible tilting would be... The other solutions suggested probably have a better chance

I thought that on the real structure, the arms swing away passively, i.e. by gravity. Would that be easier to engineer? You'd need to have the axis of rotation under an angle, and then some simple lock that keeps it in place until released. Then your control needs to only release the lock.

I know. But I’m referring to the fact that with the Ackerman geometry the gear rack won’t stay parallel, so I’m wondering how that would mesh with the gear driving it. Unless it’s not a rack&pinion, but then I wonder why you used a gear rack.

How does the Ackerman geometry in de front axle work with the gear rack? The gear rack would go out of parallel as you steer, but I don’t see any room for that...?

I can't believe the size of this thing What a beauty, and so many details. Even my girlfriend loves it and wants one, and she has nothing with LEGO normally (when I told her the size and number of bricks though, she changed her mind ) The bow looks a bit "low resolution", but I guess there's no way around that at this scale By the way: is this ship based in Scheveningen by chance? Or does it have a "sister" there? It looks awfully familiar...

Very very cool! I lost track of the WIP topic, but I'm happy to see it finished! Maybe the seats could have been a different color to better distinguish it from the bodywork, but that's really a minor point. Great model

Update time! It's not that I've been sitting still... just rebuilding the chassis about a dozen times. After @LvdH's guess at how the outriggers extended, I was determined to actually incorporate at mechanism to extend all of them in unison, instead of manually as in the previous version. Of course, there was no room for that, so I soon decided to ditch the chassis. I had a couple of tries at designing new outriggers with the idea of then building a chassis around those. I finally settled on this design, which is strong enough to lift the crane up (for now at least): Internally it looks like this: The toothed bar 8M is supposed to sit on the two 1x1 round plates, but LDD won't let me due to the 3M beam that is supposed to hold it in place. This makes me doubt if it is a legal construction. In reality it fits, although if I put a 1x8 plate under the toothed bar, instead of the 2 round plates, it gets stuck. What do you guys think? Acceptable or not? Other suggestions to keep the outrigger in place (replacing the 3M beam)? The gearbox around the outriggers is fairly compact, although on this scale everything appears big: Routing the axle that is going to connect the front outriggers with the back ones (black, barely visible in the center of the turntable) was a real pain, but I managed. In order to fit the outrigger gearboxes, I had to turn the steering mechanisms around. This had all kinds of implications for the chassis, as you might see here: The core of the chassis is 3M "thick" in order to support the rather segmented lowest layer... I'm curious to hear your opinions on the outriggers!