Divitis

Hey @Brick900 only seeing this now. I think it's a very nice project, but maybe you went a bit too far on the texturing. The 1x1 tiles sticking out of headlight bricks, the columns build with cones, the wedge bricks with the 'cuts' underneath... all together they hide the building's main lines, which are interesting by themselves and should get the spotlight.

It's a veeery interesting look, fully smooth if not for those exposed holes. It gives off a vintage vibe to me, almost as a modern interpretation of a classic model team set, only with holes exposed instead of studs

In the real life version, there is nothing. That controls the shifting of the racks, their 'eccentricity' The input is the banana gears, which one would have to spin by hand. Not super practical but I thought it'd be enough to see if things are working before complicating things even further. Yes. My bad again. For now the simplest solution is replacing the 7L axle on which they sit for a 5L one and leave them without bracing at the top. Given things move slowly it should still work. I also noticed I only included one bracing/stopper for the 7L rack (the white 1L liftarm). Another should probably be placed on the other side of the 7L rack. Thanks! Kudos for your patience :)

Oh poop! Quite a basic case of 'building digitally where everything is stationary'! I only put them there to support the banana gears from below, so if you feel they are not needed, toss them away. Otherwise, maybe they can be moved to the last holes of the dgb flip flops maybe? Very glad to hear the progress on this. My Lego is still all in moving boxes!

I'm really sorry that's proving to be an issue, I thought 4 gears in that configuration would mesh smoothly enough, and in theory they should, no? Are they too tight?

Something I look at the price per hour of the entertainment i choose. For example, a movie night is 12€/hour with poocot A book, probaby 2€/hour With this calculation, I am never feeling guilty buying Lego

Bought this today as a parts pack but couldn't resist building it. It was a great hour and a half of meshing gears ... it's one of the sets with the most gears per parts ration, which is why I chose it in the first place. Oh, and the end result is very satisfying. Recommend!

That's great news! And nothing like an anonymous donor :) Timing works, I won't be back at my Lego desk before a month or so anyway,. Also I must confess that I'm one differential short myself .Maybe I'll decide on ordering one more dased on your feedback.

I am sorry to hear. I had no idea and apologies if my comment was inappropriate in any way. That's an interesting prototype, even though technically you're right that it's stepper operated. From what I read the problem with ratcheting CVTs is that the output isn't linear. I reckon the four arms inside a planetary gear help with that, but then they further smoothed it out with elliptical gears (not sure how that works but we don't have those in Lego anyway) So, no takers? with 4 diffs, 5 turntables and 16 banana gears laying around? ;)

I was looking for a CVT for my next project when this came up: About a year ago an Italian start-up got a patent for a gear based CVT transmission module (however there seem to be earlier implementations of ta very similar system). The video above illustrates its inner workings in detail. Obviously, I could not resist and had to recreate it. But as I'm spending summer far away from my Lego, all I could produce is the digital model, which you can download here -> https://bricksafe.com/files/divitis/miscellaneous-/CVT.io Now, do we have a volunteer with a good supply of bricks and time on their hands (I'm looking at you @Auroralampinen) who wants to build it and test it out for the community? It's a no-motor setup, meaning one has to turn the yellow banana gears by hand, but hopefully it's enough to see if and how this works out with Lego. Note: The original uses small electric motors to control the displacement of the arms attached to each of the sun gears. I devised a mechanical system to do that, and that's what the black 16t gear which sticks out is for. It controls the displacement of the upper arms through the red differentials. When the diffs are stationary, the blue 12t gear above spins at the same speed as the 28t turntable and the rack doesn't move. More info available to the brave and the curious :)

I did a cursory check and came out quite confused... probably could have been more thoroughly. Appreciate your support though. I owe you one

Hello world, Can anybody check if this ball (piece 52629) is compatible with only this socket 39370 (which it is matched to in official sets, such as the drifting Nissan) or also either of these two? 1. 44358 https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=44358&name=Cylinder Hemisphere 3 x 3 Ball Turret Socket with 2 x 2 Base&category=[Cylinder] 2. 92911 https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=92911&name=Technic, Steering Ball Joint Large Receptacle&category=[Technic, Steering] And how smooth is the rolling? I am thinking of using it for ball bearing. Thanks!

Glad to hear, and looking forward to seeing it!

They do. They did for me this very morning I tracked down the actual bus model for confirmation. Specifications PDF: Citaro PDF GPT extract:

Hello folks, instructions WIP are available here: https://bricksafe.com/files/divitis/miscellaneous-/125s-wip/ferrari 125 s - instructions test_compressed.pdf And of course the parts list for the steps covered: https://bricksafe.com/files/divitis/miscellaneous-/125s-wip/Ferrari 125 S - instructions test.csv Comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated. This is going to be a daunting task which will accompany me through the hot August nights and I don't wish do do it twice :) Does making instructions mean the car is finished? yes. I'm both having enough of it and don't know what to improve anymore. It is a bittersweet feeling. Next up: New pieces = bodywork enhancements

Your love for coaches is truly commendable. They are a tad repetitive for my taste, with all these seats, but surely come with some technical challenges. What I would try to implement, given the space, is some sort of motorized distribution gearbox, so that instead of having one motor for each function, you only need two. One to switch between functions and another to operate them. Even more, you can combine these functions so that only one motor is required. Here's an old solution I put together, which proved to work well and could even handle a good amount of torque. The input (red) connects to either of the two 8t gears depending on the rotational direction. One operates the gearbox (the yellow 'stick' is a shock absorber). The other drives it. Stud.io: https://bricksafe.com/files/divitis/miscellaneous-/motorized distribution gearbox.io The trick with the worm gear is best explained here: Careful what you wish for. Just today I discovered that buses here can lean towards one side, effectively lowering the side closer to the platform to facilitate clumsy humans with a stroller (me) hop on. I dare you replicate such a feature.

You have my top score and respect for engineering (moral?) integrity

Thanks. This bad news is provably the push I needed. I created x71 in Studio in three different shapes and it was surprisingly quick. Once I have the others done too I'll create a pack and share it.

Hello everyone, does anybody know how to include rubber belts and cables (led lights, motors) when creating instructions? They don't need to be flex pieces, just placeholders would be enough, I think. Maybe someone has a parts pack that includes them? Thanks!

I'll start with the lessons learned. When designing a parallel axis gearbox... ... the input should be on the highest gear, and then only reduced from there... ... big 'jumps' should always be avoided. By this I mean meshing gears very different in size, like a 12 and a 28... ... big gears transfer movement more smoothly than the smaller ones. Now, with the design history. The original gearbox (here the post) was going like this: Input on the 1st/2nd gear shaft where it arrived already slowed down to 0.14 : 1. Which meant the 1st gear was 0.11 to 1 and the 5th gear was then geared up to 0.51 to 1. It worked only because it run so slow, but it was massively inefficient. I learned this the hard way after implementing the first working version fitting in the new small pistons, where I kept realistic rations between gears but started from a 1:1 input on the 1st gear shaft. Weeks of digital work for something that could not be moved past second gear. Come in the ultimate (dare I say final?) design: Input (orange) on the 5th/R shaft from where it gets geared down to 0.34 : 1 for the 1st gear. (output is brown) Note the half stud offset of the engine shaft, this allows two things: Fitting in the worm screw used for steering which connects to the tan pin with axle and squeezing two 16t gears underneath. Unfortunately the newer spur version collides, so I had to use the old one. I am also happy about only using 3L rings as mode switches (on the input and output axles), as they don't need a locking system. Oh, and obtaining Reverse and the corresponding reduction by only adding one extra gear (the red 24t meshes back into the green 2ot which the 5th gear uses). Here's the final result (WIP build) The final massive headache after bracing all gears and the links was connecting the engine shaft to something.. anything really... I could not find any space to add as much as a half bush for a pulley. Until it dawned on me to simply insert a red belt between the cam piece and the 2L driving ring sitting on the output shaft. Next up: Instructions WIP Does anyone feel like reviewing what I got so far for clarity, so that I can continue with piece of mind? So far they cover the first part of the front axle and steering. Thanks in advance for the help!

Very belated update, but I was too busy building. - spent almost 3 weeks designing a smaller and more efficient gearbox, finally fitting in the Kawasaki pistons, will indulge you with that next ;) Now on the sagging of the front axle, the problem became apparent only after recording the video, which meant a lot of pushing on the hood, which wouldn't happen during normal racing. But I could not unsee it. The reason was the black pins holding the connector in place were being pulled out. In green below: force applied either on the hood or pushing the wheel up (green) and the connector being pulled out (purple). On the right the new assembly. On one side thisis firmly in place through the axle connection on one side. On the other, the 6L thin liftarm makes it so that for one connector to be pulled out, the other would have to be pulled in. Problem solved. Next up: A most efficient gearbox.

This is adorable! I love how the driver pulls and pushes those lever, it makes me forget that there are motors at all!

So here we go again. One post at a time, I'll share everything I found unsatisfactory with the "final" model (as in the video above) and the progress in improving things. First off: The real axle. The Ferrari drives noticeably slower in reverse than forward and the culprit seems to be the linking I iterated on many times. Still not that good, clearly. I managed to reintroduce the ball joint (which always felt truer to the original schematic anyway) by inclining it at the right angle to create the 1/2 stud offset that's needed to keep the car level. Kinda proud of the solution because it needs only 2 u-joints instead of 3 (before I was mentally stuck to using 2 u-joints to create the offset and one more inside the ball-joint, and there was no space for all). The grey thin 5l liftarm it rests on removes the inherent flex. As a bonus, now the switch lock for direct drive (yellow assembly with the grey 3L bar) is much more elegant and functions better; before it felt a bit fiddly. Side note: There is something very relaxing in perfecting a model. Small improvements are inherently easier to pull off and yet one leads to the next until the whole design is simply a better one. Next up: Sag in the front suspension.

The video is finally out. Also, a major mechanical design cleanup is ongoing. Will post about it soon enough.