Moz

We do seem to be getting some excellent B models. Maybe TLG have worked out that the collectors will buy two copies if the B model is good?

I find that most of my Lego shots work just as well with my Note4 phone (12MP?) as with the Canon 6D. At times the smaller sensor is an advantage, the extra depth of field is handy. I take most of my shots just on my Lego desk using the pair of 20W LED floods I use as work lights while I'm building. I've glued a 1/4" nut into a bit of wood so I can fit my phone onto the ridiculous video tripod my partner uses for the 6D. That combo means I can shoot 4k video or take macro shots with low noise and impressive depth of field. Now all I need is a bit of time to actually build/ I might have to quit my job :(

If you don't have a tripod but the camera has a delayed shutter mode you could make a technic platform for the camera and use the delayed shutter to reduce shake. Platform to let you angle the camera for the shot, then push the button, take your hand off, camera will stop wobbling, then it fires. That way you can use long exposures/low ISO even without huge amounts of light. Cycle touring I often strap the camera to something for this reason (shooting landscapes without a proper tripod - I carry a DSLR and a mini tripod that can just barely support the camera, mostly so I have the adjustable ball head (I should just take a proper ball head)

For my commissioned stuff I used to just charge minimum wage plus parts because that was a compromise between expectations and reality. That wouldn't work in the US because the minimum is so low, but in most countries it means it's a worthwhile hobby. These days it would also encourage buyers to see whether there are MOC plans they can buy instead...

Something like this? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1205277475/loopwheels-for-a-smoother-more-comfortable-bicycle

You can find Win95/Win98 virtual machine images if you're really keen to actually run it. It might even be worth making one with the CD and zipping it up so people can download and know that it will work. VMware at least are pretty good with backward compatibility (I still have VMware 3 images that will load and update). And it might run under older WINE versions, which would be even better (because minimal Ubuntu+WINE is smaller and more portable than Win95.

IIRC the software was the awful computer building instructions, I loaded it once, swore at the Win95-ness of it and decided that building the model using only the pictures on the box would be better. It did come with paper instructions. There may have been an animated "movie" featuring the sub demonstrating its various movements. But unfortunately I spent an hour making the software go then 10 minutes wondering why I bothered, about 20 years ago. The intro is on youtube:

Are you at least going to start with a scale model? 1:4 or something while you work the bugs out?

I'd definitely favour the skel over non-Lego, coz I'm a bit like that. The model so far looks good, don't spoil it by turning it into "Lego and some other stuff".

It's a separate piece, as it's wider than the fixed part of the wardrobe. There are small blocks holding it up and pins on the front corners to lock the hinged sections in place. That way I can have them open slightly past 90° as well. That one piece of 600x1800 gluelam timber (ie, made from small bits glued together) was the single most expensive part of the build - even the 2440x1220x6mm sheet of marine ply that's the backplane was cheaper. A big hint if you ever build stuff like this is to build it around the 1200x2400 dimensions of plywood sheets.I normally do, except that years ago when I made the wooden trays they were 610mm long for some important reason, I suspect I was bridging a 600mm gap. Now, of course, two of them fitting into a (1200mm less two 12mm side walls) gap is important, but cutting the ends off and re-gluing everyting is something I'm not sure I'm ready to do yet, as it would make the end compartments of both trays unusably tiny (in one case the compartment is exactly a 10-axle wide, so "10 axle less 20mm" would not work). Also, the first cuts on a 2400x1220 sheet of 3mm plywood were hard, and harder because my toy-size Proxxon tablesaw is completely not designed for that :) Yep, Fischer. Bunnings sell cheaper containers that look similar but are very slightly smaller on the inside... so the compartments are nearly 16 studs long and nearly 6 studs wide. Which is very annoying. So I sold those cheap so someone who didn't care, and pay the slight premium for the Fischer ones (that are also made locally, which is nice). I'm well aware that no house is ever square, and I've built enough bookshelves to know that floors always slope away from walls. I'd even allowed for that, there's a separate base support (removable so if I get a concrete floor I can add 6 more castors and have the whole thing mobile), and that slopes ~3° down away from the wall. Not enough, as it turns out. And the floor itself is not a plane, it bumps in multiple directions. The good news is that I have mostly populated the wooden trays, so I can start building. Finally!

Thanks. Yes, space is an issue. Trying to build on the dining room table drove me nuts, I'd just get set up and someone would demand to use the space. And it was too small! One thing I find handy on small areas is to put a towel on the table first, so little parts don't bounce and roll.

After 5 months in the new house I have finally got my new build area built! It's not very organised, but it's ready to be. Soon I will be able to start building stuff again. And catch up on some of the "other people's models" that I want to build. 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)

I wonder which is harder... getting good performance out of Lego sails or Lego foils? I've looked at the available sails and decided that it's do-able but tricky. I haven't really looked at foils except to wonder if a putting curve on the big helicopter rotor might make it usable as a V-shaped foil. Part of the "Lego Records" is deciding just how purist we want to get. The LPE car is one end, it's a car with some Lego involved. At the other is the "only unmodified Lego elements used" (except for batteries?). Do we allow stuff like the s-brick or the various Lego-compatible accessories (thinking specifically of non-Lego tyres and various metal linear actuators). The problem is that to get something like a Lego flying machine is difficult-to-impossible but people will want to try, and use different non-Lego bits to make it work.

This! I have a small collection of odd coloured axles but mostly use them when making instructional segments (for displays I often have parts of the model rebuilt and displayed separately to show how mechanisms work). I buy the 3 long pin friction whenever a BL selling I'm buying off has them, so I'm slowly building a pile of those without paying too much. But I also paid ~0.20E each for about 20 of those axle-pin joiner parts in black, and I'd love Lego to produce those again, only more of them. If I could buy 1000 at 0.10E each or less I'd be very happy. There are hardly any available and they're ridiculously expensive. So it's not really possible to make a display model with all the joiners in black, no matter how much I'd prefer that.

For something different, an official GBC would be fun. Or some similar thing, introducing modular sets to Technic. It would be a challenge because they'd have to match scale, but I suspect they could do a couple of simple modules that would be pretty cheap, right through to a big hairy thing with 2500 parts. That would also give them the opportunity to memorialise some of the older sets - imagine a GBC featuring a simplified Air Tech Claw Rig for example. Or pick a similar but related theme for the modulars - the US-style amazing machines maybe. If they were willing to do a 41999 style pre-order set, a contest is the obvious way to get the model. It'd be tempting to up the part limit, but I suspect for Lego-ego reasons they wouldn't want it to be the biggest Technic set ever. That said, there are no doubt others who looked at 41999 and went "price premium for a tiny collection of unique colour... that would be annoying" and didn't buy it. I got burnt with the teal Technic and have not forgotten. So the set would have to be worthwhile in some other way than "contains a few parts in unique colours" top appeal outside the "build and display" collectors.. I would love to see floating Technic. It might be hard to do motors, but it would be really nice to have a larger floating hull and again, I reckon they could do several sets just based on a single hull part, or get really wild and do a three part like the really old boats (front, middle, rear) so they could do a small single hull, medium single hull and large double hull. For an AFOL-oriented set I reckon they could motorise the large model and just say "don't get the motors wet". That should also give us a decent Lego water propellor :) And maybe even reintroduce the weighted parts, desipte how hard they are to manufacture. A Technic weight would at least bypass the "it keeps falling off" problem, presumably via a tab on the weight going into a slot in the bottom of the hull, held in place by an axle through the hull. If they did the multi-part hull I would go wild. You could do stuff like a big salvage catamaran, ferries, all sorts. Or just whack a bunch of hulls side by side as a barge.

This is what I keep thinking. It's good that SBrick is rated higher than the batteries and motors, it means it's unlikely to be the limiting factor. But I worry that muppets will read the "can control all the things" and not realise that just because the SBrick can do it doesn't mean that a 6AA battery box full of cheap disposable batteries can actually power 4 RC motors. I'd be worried about the Lego power cables overheating, the conductors melting through the insulation and shorting the battery. I've seen that happen with thin wire and a 12V PbS battery and that was annoying but not especially dangerous (a couple of amps, tops). A decent LiIon pack will blow 50A into those connectors if it's allowed to, and hopefully the conductors will evaporate and leave the muppet going "oh noes!" rather than hearing the fizzy bang sound ... that I imagine you get from LiIon cells going up. Yes, imagine. Never heard it myself.

Or $2.50 if you want more than 10. a guess, I admit. I do think ~$AUS90 each for the sets is reasonable though.

Like weavil says, worth it just for the panels - 12 at $4 is $48 of the $99 set price, plus there's a 5x9 frame and some other goodies as well as the silver bits. And some 4x1 plate hinges that I always seem to end up short on when building the decorative bits on models. And a brick separator, which I am always short of because I rarely buy non-Technic models. With any luck I just got 4 of them from BrickLink for $75 each, after the seller had pulled the minifigs. It's a win-win, I don't have to try to resell the figs, they're happy to open the boxes so I don't have to pay to ship those, and with any luck I can negotiate a deal based on not getting the stickers and some of the other cruft as well. In Oz selling the minifigs is a nightmare, shipping costs and limited local demand mean it's usually not worth while. So finding people who just want the minifigs and a bit of cruft is really nice. Even at only $4/fig it's a win, in the past I've ended up selling figs that go over $20 on Bricklink for $5 because that's all the locals will pay.

There are coreless motor designs, so it's possible that someone could make an XL diameter motor that just had an axle hole right through it. Unfortunately those are all multiphase motors (like stepper motors) and driving them is more complex than "apply 9V DC". So you'd either have more cores in the "power" cable or more complex electronics in the motor (probably the latter). If cost was no object it would be a fairly straightforward build, but I suspect the motor would end up very dense due to being mostly magnet and coil with a thin skin of ABS. It would be easier if the axle hole was metal, too. Otherwise mating the plastic central insert to the metal rotor would take up even more space. Making one of those and building a planetary gearbox in the same housing would be tricky, and I suspect you'd be better off just having more poles on the motor to lower the speed. I suspect it would end up significantly more powerful than a micromotor, but 3 of them together would be significantly less powerful than an XL motor. Synchronising a bunch of those would be interesting, you might want a couple of electrical contacts on each side of the motor for comms. That way you don't have to deal with kids linking two of them and setting one to full forward and the other to full reverse... but no, you have to do that anyway because that's what (some) kids do. On that subject, what does happen if you join two XL motors with a 2L axle and set them against each other?

Add a differential to Anton's idea and it should all work. Ideally one of the old style ones with a different size gear at each end to make different ratios easier to build in.

That looks excellent. Now I'm tempted...

I thought the steering was also a problem? Viz, the steering geometry doesn't work so it needs to skid wheels whenever it turns? Working out what steering ratios are needed between the different axles and getting closer to ideal would be tedious and probably difficult, but very helpful. It could probably even be done using Lego parts, so in that sense it's more solvable than the short linear actuator problem.

Yes, but if you use the layout at the start of this thread to fix the tire-pivot offset problem you have the same issue - a 2 stud gap between the pivot axis and the universal joint. There's no way round that using the current Lego parts AFAIK. The choice is a 2-3 stud gap between the pivot and the tyre, or a 2 stud gap between the pivot and the centre of the universal. The second problem is that a bent universal joint doesn't have constant velocity, so you're marrying up the (relatively) high-torque universal to a (relatively) low-torque CV joint, then loading them up. You could wreck a lot of universal joints this way. The tyre gap just gives you bump steer, which is mostly a problem for off-road vehicles (and it makes the swing arc of the tyre bigger so mudguards have to be huge). The universal gap makes drive problematic, so motorised models will likely break diffs or CV joints. One solution is to use Efferman's high torque universals with the sliding sleeve, but that's NOT LEGO!

Yes to muted colours, but really, what's wrong with black? I buy the black 3L pins when I am ordering stuff off someone who has them, because I prefer them to blue for most things but not so much that I'm willing to pay shipping on an order just of those. I'm also collecting gears in odd colours and trans Technic beams and liftarms, because some of the "how do the gears work" stuff is fun to do with real parts rather than computer animations. Plus it freaks kids out when they see purple 40T gears and other bright colours. Interestingly 16 long axles in both white and black are becoming more common. I'm not sure why, but I appreciate it. And I admit that when I'm making "looks like Lego" models I'll often chop axles up to get the length I want in the colour I want. Or grind the ridges off pins so I can stick a 2L pin through a liftarm and have a half-width liftarm on each side of it. Effy has now made a 3D printed pin specifically for this, but I have a small collection of hand-modified ones as well.

Technic, Axle Pin with Friction Ridges Lengthwise You can get one for a low price, but sort by number available and it gets very silly.