ttoks

I'm guessing train driver!

hmm, it seam's lego is just incredibly expensive in Australia, even a cheap 8285 from EU is over $300 delivered to aus, about the same price as a new 42030

I have just gotten back into lego and i am completely hooked!, I have currently bought a 42030 (volvo front end loader) and 2 42042 (crawler crane) set's, so my part collections is still pretty small. What are some good, relitively cheaps et's to buy for parts? I plan to buy another 42030 as it has an awesome complement of power functions parts and 3 large LA's (and I am planning to build a crawler crane which will need to power functions parts)

that's right, I originally swapped the 20t and 12t gear around to give both winches more torque, however in it's current form I have added an extra L motor running in parallel with the gearing as it came standard, but the boom winch has 4 pullies on each end instead of 2 as the 42042 comes standard, with this set up it will raise the 180Cm boom with a 100 gram load from flat without to much trouble and at a reasonable speed, in fact the limiting factor for the boom winch being able to hoist the boom is that even with two full battery boxes, two IR remotes and two full soda cans as counterweight, the crane either tips over, or the turntable separates from to much weight, after my next round of mod's, it will no longer be a 42042 mod, but rather a crawler crane MOC, as the entire sub and superstructure will be redesigned to allow a large slew ring to be added around the turntable along with RC for for all functions

I bought the 42042 probably about a month ago, i quickly began modding it, this is it currently

don't be too stressed, my PC was built in 2005, she's had a good run, but is delegated to internet browsing duties now, i'm surprised it's still going.

Thank you for the positive comments! I fixed thing problem today, I reinforced the joint between each boom section, previously each section had just 4 3L beams to connects it to the next, i have used 8 7-3l beams (depending how far up the boom it is) to join each section of boom now, so the sag in the boom is now 3mm overall, where as it was around 15mm before. yes the turntable is indeed very stressed, this is my next project to fix this problem, I am looking at a few options to build a more ridged turntable, incorporating a more ridged turtable will obviously mean a complete re-design of the entire sub structure and super structure, so while I'm at it, I plan to buy 1 more L motor and another M motor and another RX/TX combo so i can convert the entire model to full RC, I plan to have 2 M motor's for driving (one for each track), and L for the main hoist, L for the boom, and an M for the luffing jib, abviously i will need to buy many more parts for this, so I need a few more sets to buy

efferman, how do you connect the ring support to the model? i dont see any mounting holes for studs ect in the ring support?

Something that I always find interesting about LEGO, is that it seems to bring people from all walk's of life together, I often wonder what other's on here do to pay for this fantastic hobby of ours, so i thought to start this topic. So I am 24 year's old and married with one beautiful daughter (13 months old) living in the state of Victoria in Australia, I've just recently gotten back into lego after about 12-13 year's. I'm a Boilermaker by trade, I started my apprenticeship at age 15, and completed iit just after my 18th birthday, around the same time i met my now wife. from that start I've progressed through to working as a coded pipe welder in the oil and gas industry, so far it's taken me far around my country, I make a good wage to support my family, but I often work very long hours in extremely unpleasant conditions, in fact in January of next year I will be starting a job near Onslow Western Australia (if anyone is familiar, it is HOT there) working a 4 to 1 fly in fly out roster, so I will spend 4 weeks living in a company supplied camp in the middle of no where, then 1 week at home with my family. Here's a few photo's of what i do for a living, some of them are of my father, as we often work together (we are both pipe welders) so what do you do for a living?

very neat looking little set, one of my favorites has always been set 9393 for it's simplicity.

This is where i do most of my building, luckily I don't have many parts (yet) so It will do for now.

i want to build one of these for my wife! she loves it!

i would pay good money for that turntable concept, it's ideal for the crane i am wanting to build. as well as the worm drive gearboxes, i like using worm drive for many things for cranes as i feel the allow for a more accurate motorization of functions.

So I have been playing around with my crane for the last few day's, I decided to abandon the luffing jib for now until i accumulate enough parts to build a more ridged boom, instead I've simply greatly increased the overall size of my model. With the new boom the major dimension's are now: Maximum radius: 160 centimeters. Overall length (including counterweight): 206 centimeters Maximum height: 164 centimeters Obviously lifting capacity is far less then it was, with the standard 42042 boom and my driving base the crane could easily lift 1.25kg, with the luffing jib at a maximum height of 99 centimeters a maximum of around 600 grams at 62 centimeters radius (far more if i stabalize the boom with my hand while lifting, now it is around 300 grams at 1 meter radius. Anyway, i hope you enjoy the pictures, please excuse the hodge podge of colour's, i don't have many parts to work with so have to use what i have.

I'm not worried about it being genuine or not, i play with lego for fun, not for purity, being that I am a welder and fabricator in the real world, one day i would love to build a working crawler crane from steel parts, but for now lego works well for me, thank you for the link cheeze!

I have just gotten back into lego, and my main interest is in crawler cranes at the moment, I have been modding my 42042, and it currently look's like this I'm wanting to do a few more things with it, but a major limiting factor for it is the turntable used by lego as a slew ring, i'd like to make a larger and more ridgid slew ring, but i have no idea where to start, at this time the only parts i have to work with are two 42042 sets, and 42030 set and some parts left over from my childhood, but i can always get more if i need it!! does anyone have any idea that will work for this?

I'm ambidextrous, I work as a welder, and was origonally right handed, but due to my line of work i had to learn to weld just as well left handed as i could right handed, as the dexterity with my left hand increased through my work, I've slowly started to do more and more things left handed, to the point that I now do most things just as well left handed as right, and many things better leftie, such as using a hammer or cordless drill.

I'm a welder, so I guess i'd probably be a blacksmith?

At this stage it seems to be motorcycles, i now have six of them, no idea why, It's like lego, I buy one, then another and another and never sell the old one, which is intersting since i havn't ridden any of them in nearly 2 years since the wife/children/career/life got in the way

thank you for all of the comments! last night i was able to lift the same 1.25 kg bottle i had the crane lift before the larger boom was built, i simply had to stablize it with my handv after taking the weight up, then lift, it is very close to falling sideways thought due to the boom's lack of ridgidity, it will lift 1.25 kg at 31cm!

honestly, I don't see why LEGO wouldn't have done something similar to this to begin with, deleting the two battery box's used as counter weight's the model i've built will still lay the boom on the ground without tipping, and it still uses just one L motor for all functions, it mostly uses alot more 15l beams, more 16t gear's and more string, so it wouldn't have been prohibitivly expensive for LEGO to bring a model similar to mind to market as it wouldn't be to expensive, i only paid $280 AUD plus a few extra bits and pieces (and with alot of pieces left over out of the two kits) to build this one.

When i was younger I played a bit with LEGO, I was given a super street sensation for christmas one year and various other set's, but since my early teen's, i have played with LEGO much. Fast forward to this year, my daughter started walking and playing with things, and it reminded me of being a kid playing with LEGO, I ended up impulse buying a 42030 front end loader as my first LEGO set in 13 year's. That was 4 months ago, two weeks ago, walking through my loca Big W store (Australian version of Walmart) doing the Christmas shopping I saw another set i desperatly wanted to buy, the 42042 crawler crane, at the rediculous price of $140 AUD, I bought it and took it home, and my Wife and I had an awesome night putting it together after the little one went to sleep, and with a bit of tinkering I got it to be able to lift about 750 grams at the closest possible radius, I swapping the 12 and 20t gear around on the claw winch to give it a greater mechanical advantage and adjusted the boom linkage to allow the boom to sit vertical. But it wasn't enough, In the interim year's I've become a pipe welder and currently work construction in the oil and gas industry, so i've seen and worked with some pretty amazing cranes, and the standard 42042 just didn't do it. So the next day I went back to Big W, and bought another 42042 set with a few idea's in mind but no real set plan, but a rough idea for what I wanted to do, I also drove to my Mother's house and picked up what was left of my LEGO from my childhood for extra bits. Firstly, I was dissapointed how the standard set didn't allow you to turn, both track's travel in the same direction, this was the first thing i set out to fix, i ended up completly re-designing to base of the crane including a reversing gearbox for each track, to drive in through worM gear's for a more realistic travel speed, and so it's not possible to push the model along, it also ended up being 6 studs wider and 6 studs longer then the standard one. with the larger base, I was able to get it to lift a massive 1.25KG!! The next thing I wanted was a movable jib, this meant I was going to need to add another winch, fortunantly due to gearbox in the substructure for driving, I no longer needed all 4 of the control's at the top of the crane, first i built the third winch into the front of the crane body, using the output that previously powered to tracks to drive the third winch, i then replaced one of the 16t freewheeling gear's in the gearbox on the idler shaft with a standard 16t and a 5l axel instead of the standard 4l, and used then to drive the shaft going into the base of the crane, this shaft now spins constantly when the motor is spinning, and selecting to drive is done by a simple linkage on the cranes base for each track. In this photo you can see the axel used to drive the third winch for the jib. from this point I got in the zone and neglected to take many picture's until near the end, but this is what I ended up with. Maximum radius is 99 centimeter's from the center of the turntable, overall length not including the extra counterweight's is 120 centimeter's, hight with the boom as high as possible is 105 centimeter's. At maximum radius with two battery boxes (with batteries) as counterweight's, it will lift about 150 grams before falling over. It will lift around 600 grams (600 ml coke bottle full of water) at a 62 centimeter radius unfortunantly around 6-700 gram's is the maxiumum it can lift as the boom isn't ridgid enough even at a smaller radius to lift any more, but I am pretty happy with it as it is, the only other thing i might like to do is find a way to use a worm gear drive for slewing to both reduce the slewing speed to be more realistic, and to allow it to slew more reliably as it tend's to slip while lifting any weight, and an XL motor would do wonder's as the L motor is pretty slow with the functions, but it does the job. And a few more picture's, just because.