MangaNOID

Controlling similar steering with programming would be great! But all I can do is try a workable playable manual solution with gears and levers. We shall see last physical building for some days... not just trying to re live childhood space LEGO memories but these colours are all I have enough of to build this with. gotta try some technic greebling if it’s sci-fi.

ah wow! a beautiful thing indeed.

very nice! very different from your usual. I can only comment about the physical as I know nothing about programming, but the steering is very interesting to see, especially for me right now . nice setup to get the steering and drive. plans to take the build further into something?

Its been a long week of thinking on this and LDD plus a couple hours yesterday to build the below to test. here is the prototype with the start of the chassis and input to the drive at the top and steering down the bottom with worm gear so this thing wont 'trolley' float everywhere? there are some cogs missing but i'm short of a few perpendicular cog drive elements. I had to go with Pneumatics for the lifting/lowering of the vehicle. Probably just one small pump slowly pumping so the vehicle will not lift/lower too quick as this is kind of minifig scale. I'm making this a bit like 'brutal' look with functioning elements hopefully not too hidden away. I have much more progress in LDD for design etc but I'll just show the real build progress I guess. plan is now to have one XL motor for all motorised functions, steering, drive, pneumatics and other.

good question, but the hubs allow 360 degree steering angle and one steering mode will be crab so I should be able to get the wheels 90 degree to the vehicle and when in neutral the wheels will just roll in or out as needed when operating the height adjust. there is a lot of possibilities with this setup if I can only find the right way to operate it all!

I like this challenge! its bringing out the 10yo in me and something I would never had built otherwise. I had to change my hub setup as the range of movement of the suspension was just not good enough with uni joints etc. thankfully remembering the old Randimonium from a failed TC14, I had a setup that allowed drive through multiple 90 degree bends so implemented that, on this, for betterness. ride height change of the main body of the Mars RaHT will be about 26 studs! awesome. This could allow for large cargo and large changes in terrain. an idea of were it is going to keep me excited...cargo is carried underbelly such as long thin sea space containers. Restaurant may be left off this hence name change.

just have to comment about how great this set is! love your models, this one is superb.

hello, I thought I would try to make a TC16 entry. time and parts may get the better of me but I have a small $20-30 budget to spend on bricklink (which is how most of my Lego is bought these days so its not so noticeable to the wife ) I have just about finished my recent MOC so I started thinking about this TC16 concept and liked the idea I had...Which failed immediately after building one wheel hub as it would require lots of parts and much more time than given. first of all the name RaHT WaRRR might not fly with the Captain @Jim so I will work on something more pronounceable, but it is an acronym (no way!) for Remote and Heavt Transport with a Remote Rotating Restuarant. strange combination but I thought that all things taken to Mars would be expensive so best to get multiple uses out of them It may be manual or powered/manual. Those decisions will happen as build progresses but it should have if all goes well: -8 wheels (in 4 sets of 2) -8 wheel drive -8 wheel steering with full 360 degree rotation of steering -4 steering modes -raising and lifting of main structure for ground clearance and lifting of objects -ability to lift objects. This will mostly be standardised container freight which is no doubt how it would all arrive to Mars surface of course...standardised cheapness. -restuarant on top with panoramic view of Martian landscape (rotating...sort of) -matter/antimatter collision engine... just as backup for when the power functions batteries go dead below was the first draft that failed after realising how many parts and time I needed to finish a 6-wheel-set NASA rover (next on my MOC list I think now) so I now have CLASS tyres and a diff in the hubs as I have 8sets of those tyres already. drive to the wheels is the top yellow input and steering is the bottom yellow input. a differential between the wheel ofcourse to help turning. hopefully I can get the raising and lowering of chassis at least 7 studs. suspension is still very much WIP but at least I have the philosophy to continue now.

You are right when it comes to this set indeed, as modern real large equipment would have more screen readings and controls so it suits real well with all those read outs etc, it’s very playable. The 4x4 Or other MOC’s not so of course. i got to say that it looks like it will move fairly quick despite it’s hefty size. Not a doubt it will be for me, it’s LEGO of course.

it seems the interviewer is more interested in the colour of the 4x4 instead of all those lovely new elements there is nostalgic love for the old studded stuff with gears and levers but I gotta say that this set looks awesome! the only downfall for my liking is, as said by many, the smart phone touch screen playing. But considering that, kids will LOVE this sort of thing and we AFOL's will no doubt just get used to it.

photos from the convention of your setup with that payload would be great is there the other bits of that payload at the convention too? it looks impressive! (wind turbine right?)

Actually thinking about it properly that's probably not even possible right

looks seriously awesome! but maybe missing a second and third axes of movement (loose up down and swivel) in the articulated steering to give the back that traction and freedom of movement? was this based on any real truck?

mmm, that might be right after looking closer.

not sure what its for but there seems to be another turntable at the front of the rear axle which may help the travel of the rear suspension. i think its been mentioned before in this thread about a rear axle turntable ?

just a really great tractor! does the string do anything or is just for detail?

so it's pretty accurate to real life forklifts lifting capacity (per weight of forklift) before the bending or slipping can occur?...

it was a tough call especially after its been about 7 months of very slow building time! (anyone still following is bored of these updates no doubt ) I still think this will end up better overall though with it being closer to a scale model (with the extra width of the tracks and engine) really not much to go now. I have an engine bay with chain driven engine and the radiator 'fan' should turn when everything is operating last big thing though is to see if I can make better boom arms as its looking a little...rough/un-neat. I want to try getting the main boom cylinder on top of the boom arm instead of the usual underneath, as some of these compact excavators have that setup.

Thanks for the comments people. Sorry it’s been a while to post here (but I’m sure you carried on with your normal daily business whilst waiting ) I’ve been waiting for parts and building time! More importantly I have changed how the tracks expand. This is due to changing from 2 studs expanding to 3 studs expanding each side, so 17 studs wide to 23 19 studs wide to 25 studs wide. I did this because I could barely see 2 studs difference when they expanded and after measuring them 3 studs was more accurate in scale of 1:6 compared to the real ones so I had to fix that…at a cost… I have done away with the mechanism that dropped down from the cabin. Although it worked it didn’t work that well as said before you had to be right on top for it to drop down and connect to the undercarriage part. Also after going 3 studs expand the flimsy track connections made the whole excavator wobble around a lot. It would have been great if this model just sat on a stand as a show piece, but you know… Below is the tracks at 3 studs and how flimsy the connection is. Remember the tracks are only held on by two pins either side at the extended side of the pneumatic cylinders. They take the weight of the model really well but anything off balance creates leaning issues. So now I have two pins either side at the back of the tracks (the red ones in the above gif) that you pull out and push back in to make the tracks more rigid. A little fiddly but works well especially when the front blade is on the ground! Also at the back now (below pic) is the pump for the tracks which is manual operation and under that is the now manual cog that controls the front blade up/down So not everything controlled from the cabin now which is a pity but compromises had to come. Getting rid of that stuff has allowed me to get the XL motor buried deep in the body with the 2 main pumps low down also which now allows room for a 3 cylinder engine and some small engine bay details which perhaps makes the model more complete?

nice! you found the perfect use for the forest harvester set colours. you have the movement animated very well indeed! the final result looks so good that it looks like MOC'ing this thing would have been easy, but obviously not too much the case from reading you web site a bit. well done for persevering

it would be nice to see this in action if a small vid is possible as I have never seen one of these? I'm a bit confused about the slanting office though or whatever it is that is attached to the back of the grabber?

I feel the pain! maybe a little late but you could try thick dishwashing soap or similar put thickly over each hose connection and base of the pump (see link below) to try and isolate what might be happening. a few minutes of air leaking is not normal in a good system... In the excavator I'm building the main boom will stay erect for a few days and will be a good week or two before its touching the benchtop again. That is one large cylinder of course compared to the smaller ones and I did take it apart and clean and 're-grease' the internals but goes to show that it can be better than a few minutes. a little late perhaps but were you using a small 1x6 pump? as I have cracks in most of mine that leak out air instantly. Its like a manufacturing fault or something on some pumps? Check the following out. I put very thin superglue on mine too and it helped a lot.

I only have built one crawler so not sure how good my advise is but it seems like I was trying to do similar at the time based on Unimog style. I was very determined to get soft suspension that mimicked real vehicles (where the body stays almost still and only the wheel moves going over bumps) and also large amounts of flexibility between front and rear axles and have the shocks in a somewhat realistic position and I spent a long, long...long! time stuffing around with just the placement of the springs and the spring types (hard,soft etc) compared to the weight of the vehicle and of course re designing the axles and chassis every step of the way to suit spring placements. so from my experience one needs to build a chassis then build axles to suit but also be ready to modify everything until your happy with the ride. I don’t think there is a do this or that advise? that one of madoca you listed is pretty insane flex angles but not sure it would work that well with a springs setup? That is the springs may dampen the twist factor? This was an early version but shows the travel capabilities I ended up with and ease of access to the chassis to change spring locations. so all I can contribute is ‘build, change, experiment’

I really like your MOC's you make. That boom arm stays so straight when when fully extended it looks fantastic with such minimalist design. the pneumatic switches look a little hard to get to perhaps but didn't look like too much difficulty in the Video. so many functions in the one motor is splendid. that gearbox makes my brain hurt.

well done for building something fun well done for presenting it to such a serious forum