Moz

The correct imperial unit is the furlong. The two systems are the mks (metre-kilogram-second) and ffh (furlong-fortnight-hundredweight). The latter commonly called imperial because it's based on the size of your king. I think 10k studs is a decent volume, small but not so small that it's unreasonable, and it avoids the "mine is bigger than yours" problem.

- It was also available at a decent discount for a while, I bought 4 copies from a German Bricklink seller for a lot less than they were retailing here, helped by the 50E/30kg shipping that German post offers (and, conveniently, the $AUS was up against the euro too). It's also a nice set purely as parts, although I also bought a bunch of 8043 because you couldn't beat that set for power functions. Then I built a ridiculous road train :)

Cybermasters was my first thought too. But the zero expandability seems really weird, it's not as if arduinos are limited to two outputs. I was expecting/hoping for some kind of RJ11 expansion bus so it was compatible with Mindstorms. It's less "expanding Lego" and more "cheaper but not as capable as Mindstorms". I'm not sure how much of a market there is, but I suspect if you're buying by the classroom-ful one per student with less functionality might beat one Mindstorms between three.

9: 10 15: 6 4: 4 1: 3 12:2 5:1

I really doubt we'll get a tracked discharge because steering them is tricky. Real ones presumably have a limited amount of lateral sliding as well as steering, but even so steering is complex and I expect the machines are never maneuvered by a single operator. Expecting one child to do it is pushing things. What I expect is a free-end delivery conveyor hanging out the side of the machine. Or possibly just a chute.

This is a report from "Photos of your Technic collection / setup" because it seems more relevant here. I have finally got my new build area built! And organised, but I don't have new photos. It's a wardrobe-sized box that opens out and has a build area in the gap. It's about 1900x780x1200, but once opened it's bigger. And of course the wooden floor in our house is not flat or level, so once I got it inside I had to move the blocks that hold up the build area so that at least is level. But when "closed" you can see just how warps the floor it's sitting on is - on the concrete floor of my workshop it was almost perfect. I might have to get a sheet of 25mm plywood or something to put under it, because it's at the foot of my bed and that gap is going to annoy me. (thumbs should be clickable) The build platform is removable, and the shelves are slightly narrower than the space so there's a gap up the middle to put it in when it's closed up.

That's very cool. I like the turntable support, and the counterweight. Very ingenious.

Because Lego is mostly ABS, and it's straightforward to remake ABS into filament for a 3D printer. So the contest would devolve to "who can 3D print the coolest thing".

I like it. Good parts use and an unusual model choice. I especially like the pulley arrangements.

12. The answer is always 12. I don't really build for speed, and often have to force myself to follow the instructions. I like to read ahead and work out what things are for, then tweak the design. Like the friction pins in the Unimog steering, which appear to have been a complete thinko by the designer. I used non-friction pins there and haven't tried it the other way. I just got the crane and Arocs, and the crane I managed to build it almost exactly except for some extra boom sections. But the Arocs I'm struggling with, I just don't really like the build. It may go into the parts bins without being completed, as I'm finding the crane much more interesting.

I think Lego could fly at least as well as that basketball... not quite straight down, and with a fairly low terminal velocity. Some of the pieces might even be reusable after "landing" :) That Kress dumper looks interesting. It would be interesting to see someone provide turn and drive though a pivoting axle like that. Luckily it looks as though the back wheels don't steer.

Have you tried using tyres for the friction rollers instead of plastic drums? You might also be able to use string for positioning and wheels on the ground for drive - doesn't Mindstorms have rotation counters? Again, use tyres for better friction and calculate your position that way. Finally, I'd be very tempted to hang the thing from a ceiling or frame so you're using cheap string for the structure instead of expensive Lego. I've only built CNC mahines but we gained a lot of precision on a bit router by making our effective beam depth 1.2m instead of the 100mm extrusions everyone else uses. Mechanically somewhat more complex, but very effective (in our case a carbon fibre tubing frame attached to the sliding cross beam - it only weighed about 1kg)

I'm going to answer for myself rather than for some imagined "consumers". The materials must be entirely renewable, and ideally produced and processed using renewable energy and materials. This is not merely about avoiding fossil fuels, also about toxic materials both as inputs and outputs. I would expect a documented chain of production, starting with 100% post-consumer recycled or organically farmed inputs, and going through to how the packaging is recycled (hint: in Australia it isn't. The plastic bags are not accepted by many/most recycling stations, and TLG here will not accept returned packaging and is not interested in assisting people to recycle it). Ideally Lego retailers would have a box to deposit packaging in, and there would be evidence that what goes into the box is reused in some way rather than burnt or sent to landfill. This bothers me a lot, since I regularly buy multiple Lego sets and am left with a giant pile of cardboard boxes and plastic bags, and my local council cannot recycle the bags. Not to mention the duplicate sets of instructions, and in many ways the instructions full stop, as I'm quite happy to build using a (solar-powered!) computer. But being able to buy Lego sets without instructions and boxes would be a very nice thing, it would make the Lego online shops worthwhile (currently I buy either from Bricklink or bricks and mortar stores because the Lego online shop is expensive and slow) For me, I enjoy building things with my hands. Lego offers the thought-free version of that, I can just follow the instructions and end up with something interesting. But I can (and do!) also make MOCs and build small tools and assemblies for myself. From Eurobricks an example would be the camera dolly thread (I have built them, but that's not my MOC). I don't understand how this differs from question 1. "Sustainable materials" is not a binary choice, it's a continuum. At one end is, say, burning fossil chemical feedstocks to get heat, at the other is photosynthesising. I don't expect TLG to do either. Seeing TLG become more sustainable would be a very good thing. I suspect that the actual ABS plastic TLG uses is a tiny part of its material use, and relatively unimportant when other consumables are included. TLG could probably reduce its fossil fuel use tenfold while using 100% virgin ABS for the actual Lego pieces. So I would be more interested to see sustainable materials produced sustainably than a focus on the advertising-friendly "now made with sustainable plastic". Unless they're proposing to replace the existing cardboard and plastic packaging with a new edible bio-plastic, which would be very cool and I'd be excited. I'd like to see all TLG offices and factories using 100% renewable electricity, for example, rather than coal or nuclear energy.

That looks pretty impressive, I can't wait to see what the molds and part look like. And thanks for the photo/build sequence and comments, I'm always interested to see the handcrafting process.

And by itself that's not a fractal. At best it's an approximation of a small part of a fractal. No-one is making, say, a "mosaic printer" that puts one tile onto a background and stops. That wouldn't be a mosaic printer. In the same way a "fractal drawer" that draws one element of a tiled fractal and stops, isn't a "fractal drawer". That's why I suggested penrose tiling, because there are smaller, simpler penrose tiles so it'd be more likely you could actually draw enough of them to demonstrate tiling. But at the same time, saying "this draws one penrose tile" would be more accurate than "this draws a fractal", simply because you can have one penrose tile, where you can't have a bounded "one fractal". It's exactly like "one infinity", in common language infinity is unbounded. And even to the transfinite mathematicians, a bounded infinity is a pretty special case. And this definitely is not a bounded infinity (like, say, a mandelbrot set is).

I must admit that I can't see the "self-similar across different scales" in the picture that machine draws. It would be as (in)accurate to say it draws Mandelbrot plots. I don't "obviously the builder set out to do something impossible and did something completely different" as grounds to put the model in the hall of fame. Yes, it's complex, and yes it does something interesting. No, it's not amazing. If it was called "semi-programmable line drawing robot" would you still ant in the the hall of fame?

A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales.

I reckon you could do a 3 part moving mold if you drilled the holes afterwards by making the base thicker (or extend the teeth back) so you don't have that lower concave space. Or cheat and make the roof thicker too so you only need two parts. For a short run that's pretty do-able, and no-one is going to be putting pins in there so the exact size is not too critical. I'd be tempted to make a jig and move the part rather than the drill, but whatever works. If you went four+ part and molded the holes maybe add reinforcing rings around them at least on the outside surfaces? The mold cost is still going to hurt though. FWIW this does look like a part I'd buy (if it was molded rather than printed).

Generally the "magic hour" around dawn and dusk when you have soft light (there are actually two but most people never see the first one). Direct light gives harsh shadows and huge contrast between light and shadow, often more than the camera can resolve. So you either shoot HDR or use reflectors (either works, but are a hassle). Looking at your shots, the lack of shadow detail in your shots is pretty obvious. A modern DSLR will give you 10 or 11 stops of dynamic range (film might give you 7), but you have more than that in the shot. If you used lighter background (concrete or white pebble piles, say) that would help with that issue (by reflecting light up onto the model) but probably compromised your composition. Really, you needed a couple of reflectors (and people to hold them). Reflectors are pretty affordable, or you can DIY - a sheet of white corrugated plastic for example. A fill flash will also help, but you need a decent one to work in direct sunlight. The issue with HDR, even with a tripod, is that you really want +/- 3 stops or more, sometimes 5 or 6 (dark things in shadow with light things in direct sun), so you end up with 5 or more shots per final image and inevitably the auto merge tools need tweaking to get the right output. I have never actually managed to get a +/- 5 stop shot to work properly, but I shoot a lot of live models who breathe and wiggle so the fussy factor is probably higher. Even at 10fps 7 shots is over half a second and it's hard to stay absolutely still for that long (and I get 5fps on a good day). With daylight model shoots, we typically use a longer lens (150-300mm on full frame) and multiple reflectors as well as a fill flash. That means we have the model plus their staff (that you don't need), a photographer, their assistant, and two or three people holding reflectors. We can skimp and use one reflector plus the assistant holding a flash and a small reflector (you could use a tripod), but the shots are not as good. You really want light from the sun plus fill from both sides of the shot. I'd still use the long lens for Lego, but probably more at the 100-200mm range. Luckily for this sort of high-DoF work you can use cheap, slow lenses rather than having to shell out for the 200/1.8 and 300/2.8 type toys. For Lego I just use coreflute signs from elections (because they get left up after the election and I help take them down rather than see candidates convicted for not doing that promptly). They're white, flat and reasonably robust as well as easy to clean. They make good backdrops as well (although they tend to fold rather than bend). But your reflector should be at least half the size of the model, preferably the same size. For a 1.5m tall human model we'll often use 1.2-1.8m diameter reflectors, so 1m diameter for most Lego models would be fine. (I just realised that my avatar photo actually has my tripod sort of visible and a bag of camera gear behind the seat. IIRC taken with a Canon 30D and 24-70/2.8. Yes, I cycle tour with 10kg of camera gear)

While I think it's an interesting model the builder doesn't seem to understand what fractals are. That means the model can't draw them and thus doesn't perform even the one function it's supposed to. It just draws one fixed pattern and (within Lego accuracy limits) repeatedly draws over the top of the same path. I'd rate it "could do better". I suspect it could be made to draw a psuedo-Penrose tile, for example, which is a more likely ambition than a semi-fractal design.

I'm exactly the opposite, and I suspect that's why I can afford to be a colour purist. I have a lot of little compartments, each holding only one or two different parts (and when it's two they're very different parts so it's easy to tell). Thanks to everything being organised I can find stuff very quickly, even the "I have about four of that weird part" ones. I collect black, odd-length axles and black pins so I can build models that have reasonably sane colour schemes.

To me "fundamentally wrong" is often as much about the description as the model. Someone who posts a "supercar" model of a VW Beetle, a "microscale" Technic anything, or a "lathe" that's actually a milling machine. Those are all fundamentally wrong. Even more wrong are the "Technic model that actually flies (for real)" and other similar fantasies. But I normally just ignore those threads and models. If we had a downvote option or a "this person is not helpful" marker I'd use it, but we don't and I'm not going to campaign for that just so I can downvote things I currently ignore. And using Lego to join a bunch of 3D printed parts and random other junk together is not a "Technic MOC", it's a mockery of Technic. By the criteria those people use we already have working Lego spacecraft that have gone into earth orbit. I like the range of MOCs we see here, from Technic models that look amazingly realistic considering the number of functions, to model team stuff that works amazingly well given how realistic it is. I'm kinda freaking out at the bicycle models in the last couple of days, for example. So simple yet so plausible. But we can't upvote and I'm not into "me too" comments, even though that's the preferred thing here I just can't make myself do it.

ok, time to wind it up for 2016! I'm starting on my wish list... A floating Technic boat hull, or at least a bigger one. Ideally an extendible one, the old style bow/stern/middle stuff was great. Probably not PF because water+TLG official models is not going to work. Maybe a floating crane? I think it's time for another "pick up the thing" truck, like 8868 and 42024 (Container Truck). Either a front bin using forks or a side-loading rubbish truck with a grab. For bigger model, a self-loading container truck, or a straddle carrier. a motorised skid-steer model that doesn't use tracks. Possibly a ride-on lawnmower to avoid problems with rubber tyres gripping shiny floors too hard and making the model problematic for some kids. Another forklift. The longer pneumatics mean we could get decent lift out of a realistic mechanism on this one. a pull-back kit that's not a vehicle. Not sure they've done one ever, but there's got to be something. Even a rotor-launching toy ("Lego you can put an eye out with" has been a thing for while now). Or a roller coaster. A fairground ride. Roller coaster might have to be a major model, but I think a carousel could be done in small or mid scale. Something with lights. Or glow in the dark. Or both. A ghost train wouldn't really fit Technic as a theme, but a Mad Max style "Ghost Rider" car could be fun. A walker. Ideally a pentaped or something tricky, but even a simple 2+2 or 3+3 walker would be cool. 2+2+2 would be cooler.

I buy mostly for parts, but also to experience the new build techniques and because some models are cool as is (flagships, mostly). During the GFC the Australian dollar was very high against the Euro, so I bought a great deal of Lego - multiple copies of 8043 and 8528, plus a bunch of other stuff. I decided it was worth it because the currency swing made everything about 30% cheaper, plus there were some good end-of-line sales on those two models in particular. 8043 was ~$Oz250 here, I was paying about $120-$150 including postage. My guilty pleasure is buying unusual coloured gears and axles so I can have consistent colouring in models. When I'm buying parts from Bricklink I'll also buy 3 long pin with friction in black, 2-long and odd-length axles in black, and generally any rare or unusual gears and axles (recently a bunch of 8T and 20T gears in white, for example). The rare colours I mostly use for exhibitions where I will build split-out sections of the model to show how it works, and try to build each part of the drivetrain in a different colour to make it easier to follow (like people do when posting LDraw drivetrain pics here). Some visitors love that, others seem oblivious to it. One day I want to try motorising the split out sections and having those controllable by the audience. I think that would be very cool... also a lot of work.

I didn't think they were particularly expensive? I bought one off bricklink a couple of years ago... but prices seem to have gone up. Maybe during the GFC was a particularly good time for that sort of shopping. The Arocs video review was great, BTW. It's nice to see the little criticisms live in action. I'm actually kinda happy to see a model that doesn't have trial truck suspension because building street-only models around huge suspension travel annoys me. Admittedly with truck models scale sometimes suggests less than a stud of travel. Next I want to see decent steering lock (it's rare to see truck front wheels that can't turn at least 45 degrees each way).