kraai

The guys from NAG Magazine asked me to build a Batman-themed PC case entirely out of LEGO, using MSI hardware as the foundation. It started as a group project, but a few weeks ago I took the time to refresh the exterior and completely rebuild the interior. This time, I built the frame and internals freehand out of LEGO Technic for strength and structure, and I reworked everything into modular panels so the case could actually be opened and serviced by non-LEGO people. The “Batcomputer” control room and dressing room area even split neatly into two sections. I honestly don’t know how well the airflow compares to a proper case — there’s a big opening in the front, which isn’t ideal, but it runs smoothly and doesn’t seem to struggle with heat. The build is heavy but manageable, and sturdy enough to hold real hardware without feeling like it’s going to collapse. And yes, there’s a little Easter egg: Homer Simpson IS Batman! For anyone who ever suspected Homer might be the real Dark Knight, this build confirms it. Specs: CPU: Intel Core i5-13600KF Motherboard: MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK WIFI (MS-7D91) RAM: 32GB Geil RAM Storage: 2TB MSI M480 Graphics: MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Liquid Cooler: MSI MAG CORELIQUID C360 Chassis: Custom LEGO Batcave After finishing it, the case went back to NAG, and I believe they’ll be giving it away in a competition. Happy to answer questions about the design, or share more detail shots if people want to see the modular system, Batcave interior, or the Homer-as-Batman Easter egg.

I built a set of Lego headphones and vacuum tube amplifier as a qualifier entry into our LUG's annual Luminary Brick Builder competition - a very similar tournament as Iron Builder. Our seed part for the qualifier was "any rubber Lego tyre". The amp is loosely based on xDuoo TA-26 Tube Headphone Amplifier, the headphones are my own design.

Haha thanks! We're not submitting the claim to any governing body like Guiness, none of us like that level of admin or paperwork. It was really just something fun to do on a Sunday morning :)

Not gonna lie - the Technic guys have a lot of fun together. The event before this was to build a car and drag race against each other on a minifigure scale quarter mile - think it was around 21m, but no great footage exists, Are you part of a LUG? Do you guys do collaborative stuff?

Thank you for your kind words. Something I should have added is that the project lead created a very cool cart/ trailer which will work with most Technic wheels. This helped especially the newer Technic builders to be part of the project. Here's a PDF of the instructions of the trailer we used, my tractor had a similar steering system to this. https://www.zalug.co.za/site/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Tri-Axle-Trailer-v1.1.pdf Our LUG has a culture of collaborative builds and activities, so this was one of the fun things we got to do. Also, it finally gave a lot of Technic fans something to do with crates and crates of otherwise useless wheels, haha! We have a great relationship with this regional mall, having exhibited as their guests every year since 2017 (aside from the two years of C19). It was a two-day event over a weekend, we assembled the 'strings' of trailers the Saturday before and kicked off at 06:00 on Sunday morning, before the shops opened and public arrived, so there was little to no impact on the mall staff, stores or shoppers. The Technic SIG members built four tractors, and only one really needed to steer as the others were designed as followers, mechanically steering their front and rear wheels based on the direction of the tractor in front of it (I think it's called double axle pivot steering). The lead vehicle, which was a superb model of Big Bud 747 - photo below- had mechanical failure so we ended up using only three tractors with a very rudimentary build at the front which provided steering. My tractor (the third one in the image below) used 4 XL motors with two battery boxes and a truss design to keep it light but still strong. The motors and battery boxes counterbalanced each other over the axle. The second/ middle tractor was pretty close in design to mine, had more of less the same gearing but used four battery boxes and had a lot more traction. Our largest challenge on the day was the highly polished floor tiles, which didn't provided a lot of grip for the tyres, but the tractors did pull the entire length of the train, and then some. Control was via standard Lego PF IR controllers, we used train remotes to sync speed. There was no hard and fast specification for gearing, but we were all kinda aligned in the overall direction we went in. As icm pointed out, it was a bit of fun and not intended to be any official record, certainly not to the point to get Guiness or any other certification bodies involved. We took the "what cannot be measured cannot be improved" approach, and I thought I'd share the interesting numbers that came with this project, as someone would inevitably ask about it. Take solace that you're not wrong in anything you said. As Toastie did, I too quote a scene from one of my favourite movies-

On the morning of 23 August, the Technic Special Interest Group of the South African Lego User Group (zaLUG) succeeded in using remote controlled LEGO-motorised vehicles to pull a trailer train of 78 metres in length which comprised an astounding 2,114 LEGO rubber wheels. The "snake" achieved an estimated stately pace of 0.125 kilometres per hour. We've searched and could not find anything with more wheels or longer in length, so for now we're claiming the record :)

Not gonna lie, when they approached our LUG to host us for a display event, I was a bit skeptical as it's way different than the normal places we exhibit. We got to meet a tonne of cool people, many of which just stopped by on the way to catch a flight or a taxi home. With that said, it was really a spectacular event.

Our LUG, zaLUG, was delighted to be invited by Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) to exhibit at Africa's largest and busiest airport, OR Tambo International, on 25 and 26 March 2023. OR Tambo handles around 19 million passengers a year and is one of only four airports in the world that fly scheduled non-stop services to all five continents. Making a reappearance since their last public outing at Brickfair in 2019 was the Micropolis (SIG) which consists of a highly detailed cityscape on a micro-scale. This saw contributions from 14 zaLUG members. More photos (with a bit more detail) at https://www.zalug.co.za/zalug-display-event-at-or-tambo-international-airport/.

I wasn't planning on building a Liebherr excavator in a rainbow colour scheme (really wanted to do the Sian instead), but got a donor set at the end of last year for a pretty good deal, so could not say no. I started at the beginning of the December holidays disassembling the Land Rover and some other models to have enough parts to build this behemoth, which was finished this week (yay!). The build was amazing - even with the frustration of rebuilding sub-assemblies multiple times to make the colours work. As always, I tried to stay away from grey and black where possible, and not let any identical colours be adjacent to each other. For a bit of added details, I chose printed tiles for all tiles up to 2x2 in size. The front bucket is really boring in one solid piece of grey, so I will display it holding some Bionicle Zamor spheres to add a bit of colour. Shot on an iPhone X in the park outside my house, it's just too big to photograph it with my regular white backdrop.

I see no difference honestly... I try to keep white Lego out of the sun as a rule. I should! The stand is for my 32x32 QR code, I was too lazy to build a stand for this. I'm thinking of building a 50cm heigh Technic easel to display it on, maybe with a paintbrush :-) No paint! If you look at the red parts carefully, you will see the red 8tooth and the worm gears are a slightly different shade of red.

Thank you all for your kind words, so glad the community reacted positively to it.

Want to share a build I finished last night. It’s my interpretation of Piet Mondrian’s "Composition with Red Blue and Yellow". It's around half the size of the original painting, and I aside from a LOT of 1x1 round plates, I tried using only Technic pieces for the detail.

Great modification!

Two or so years ago, LEGO made instructions available for a 40th anniversary model of the iconic 8860. They took three 2017 sets and combined them into a unique 3-in-1 build, which was a pretty neat version of the car considering they used only the parts in the box. This is my actual model, on display at an event we had at Clearwater Mall in Johannesburg in 2017. I displayed the original 8860, with the LEGO 40th Anniversary version, Crowkillers' revival model, a small System version and an amended version of the LEGO 40th Anniversary model. Over a number of weeks, I slowly stretched the Anniversary model, changed the steering, made adjustable seats and other changes to get closer in scale and design to the original version. I needed the parts and took all my 8860 models apart tonight. Before I did, I thought I'd take some photos.

Thank you all for your kind words. I know, I know. When you work with Lego to create any MOC, your limitation is first and foremost physical, in other words: what will fit, does Lego make a suitable element in the correct colour, do I have the parts in stock, etc. I know that the rainbow, or output part of the prism should bend more down but the blue liftarm pushes against the purple one, leaving me with this limitation in angle. I could probably have overcome this problem with more complicated studded parts, but I wanted to keep it as Technic as I could. We're going to have to agree to disagree about Roger Waters being a prat though. He will forever be known a founding member of one of the commercially most successful and influential groups in music history. In addition to being a superb musician, he's quite the philanthropist and from what I can tell an all round nice guy. I have fond memories of his visit to South Africa in the mid-1990s, giving a free guitar master class to young musicians. I'm sorry he hurt you. I build the black greebling in sections about as large as the one in the photo. The sections clutch on to plates or jumper plates stuck to a 32x32 baseplate.