Moz

Some of the colour variety actually stems from the variety of parts. With so many parts that are so similar to each other they're using colour to help kids tell the difference between them. Axles, for example, are (mostly) black for even number lengths and light bley for odd numbers. But as you note, the difference between the greyish colours in the instructions can be confusing. That, everyone complains about. What I complain about is the difficulty and cost of getting consistent colours, where that's even possible. You can get 3-long pin friction parts in black, or you used to be able to. Now they're reasonably readily available second hand. But black 2 long axle-pin joiners? At least 0.70 euro each in quantity, if you can find them. There are many similar issues if you're building Technic MOCs with exposed Technic elements (rather than Model Team MOCs with Technic innards) The rest, I'm afraid, is just practice and experience. Perhaps look at the "Build Area Tips" thread for some ideas (small containers or a bigger desk, basically).

I write code all day, if I want to write more code when I get home I have my phone and a couple of Arduino projects. Arduino is hard to beat, it's under $100 for most completed, working projects. For me, Lego is a physical thing that I do with my hands. It's one reason I don't do a lot of Lego CAD, it feels too much like work. So I mostly build smaller MOCs with relatively simple functions. I had the first Mindstorms version and it was ok, but it did teach me that I'm generally not in the mood for recreational coding when I get home. Making something small and definite that solves a real problem is one thing, playing with Lego code seems to be different.

Oh, definitely. I think it depends a lot on what you want to do with the set. For me, cybermaster and barcode were both big, expensive parts with limited reusability. They pushed up the cost of the set without adding a corresponding amount of value. But I used to build complex MOCs with many motors, so a $100 part that could only control 3 motors wasn't really very useful. My experiments with untethered models were limited by the cost of the batteries. We didn't have high capacity AA rechargeables, let alone LiIon batteries, back then. And designing in CAD really wasn't an option, I spent a lot of time building half a MOC, putting it on the shelf above the desk, then building the same thing again with the next bug fixed. Once it was finished I'd sometimes LDraw it. That soaked up a lot of parts, and when it meant I needed two cybermasters... expensive parts. That's CAD, circa 1995. No question that it works, but that CAD model was 50+ hours work for something that took less than half as long to build out of real Lego. It's the other way round now, because studless is so much harder to tweak. To people who build the official models and play with them, I can imagine those sets took playability to a new level. Radio controlled Lego was (and still is) very cool. Even, to some extent, primitively programmable Lego. But again, I'm firmly in the camp that regards Mindstorms as annoyingly limited and Arduino as good for the power it uses, but really a Pi is what you want. A Pi with 20+ IO channels powering servos. So I limit my programming to custom hardware, and make Lego MOCs that work with Lego as it is, not Lego as a poor cousin of modern robotic technology. I'll build a model of something, rather than try to build the real thing out of Lego.

I have to agree somewhat. If anything would give the barcode truck a run, it's Cybermaster. For me what rescued this set was the hackability, I recall hanging a breadboard off my parallel port and using the receiver as a Lego remote control. Being radio rather than IR made it very handy, and having to have a computer to make it do anything was only vaguely annoying. But it was definitely a short-term thing, I remember having it but don't remember using it in any real MOCs. Then Mindstorms arrived and took hackability to a new level and it was game over for RF Lego.

8479-1: Barcode Multi-Set it's a truck with a couple of functions and much of the cost was in the "program by scanning barcodes" gimmick. It was an experiment in programming and it sucked. A lot. By comparison the first Mindstorms kits were a revelation. Albeit nqc came out soon enough afterwards that even the kludgy PC software for Mindstorms stopped mattering after a short time. But the barcode set... I built it, played with it for a couple of hours and decided that I was going to use it as a parts pack. Second hand values on that set were very low for the first couple of years after it came out, making it not worth selling. FWIW, I like 8063 a lot more than 8284. The trailer makes it for me, where the plain tractor didn't grab me at all. I do look at anything with balloon tyres skeptically, I admit, I seem to end up with a lot of unused balloon tyres+wheels in my big box of Lego wheels. I don't use them in MOCs very often at all.

or this Sorry for the awful images, but they're crops from the edges of photos of my road train. It's very similar to Aussie BJ's one, except that's the receiver rather than the trailer (the trailer is just a liftarm, pic here http://moz.net.nz/le...isc/trailer.jpg of the arrangement I used) I made the receiver pivot up and down because it simplified the build. The receiver on truck hitches is already the mechanically complex part, and this way the pivot goes in under the trailer where it's not as obvious. I found the 3 long axles and half bushes were necessary to stop the receiver pulling apart under load. But I was hanging 3kg / pulling 20kg with it, so for less silly builds that probably isn't necessary.

This. Also, most Lego pieces are surprisingly strong. It only takes a minor defect in the wrong section of a Lego part and it'll break the first time you use it. With Technic that's more likely than with most parts, since we often stress parts more than (say) castle builders do. 3D printed parts are usually as strong in compression as the raw plastic, but weaker in tension. Technic relies on tension a lot. I've played with 3D printed parts for an unrelated task, and we really struggled to find anyone who could reliably print tension members. We ended up using plastic-coated carbon fibre matting and tape hand-laid in molds for some parts (because you can lay that up in the mold like you do with fibreglass, then add the filler plastic and heat). It's tedious, and if anyone in Oz was set up to do plastic mat rotomolding we would have gone with that, but they aren't. If you just want a plastic model to sit on a shelf I think minor reworking of 3D printed parts is viable now, mostly just pressing parts onto a hot plate to get the surface finish right. Colour matching might be your biggest remaining issue, I know TLG struggle with that and you may end up having to print all of the parts in a particular colour just to get a match (ie, if everything is the same not-quite-Lego orange it'll look fine, but one Lego orange part will stand out) Oh, and hand-finishing a 3D printed mold is definitely a superior method, but requires you to have injection molding equipment to use the mold with.

The easy addition that I find very useful is a towel laid on the work surface. It really does help to not have things bouncing and rolling everywhere. I don't really have the space for it either :) It takes a couple of hours to unpack it to that state, and the same to pack it away again afterwards. Normally that desk is covered in computer stuff (I work from home, on the computer, so have 3 monitors etc). But for holidays or when I'm in a build frenzy I use the desk for Lego and put one monitor and the computer on the dining room table. Eventually the complaints get aggrieved enough that I have to put it back. Right now the shelves are taken apart and stacked in the garage, as is most of the Lego. I'm just using a big towel on the dining table and the random big for building stuff with.

Got a response from Master Instruments who passed me to BatteryDoctor. They say: I think I will order 8 and see how I go. Looks as though the new higher capacity Eneloop XX is only available in AA at this stage though. And, of course, since they're well made the cells last for many cycles and the ones I bought 5 years ago are still going strong...

I suspect you have at least one cell that is almost-but-not-quite open circuit. Remember that the resistance of the multimeter is very, very high, so you can almost measure static electricity. I'd open the pack up and measure each cell. If you have a decent charger you could split the pack and cycle each cell to see whether they're any use at all. But the real answer is yes, you should have bought decent cells in the first place. For this you really do want the tabs. Soldering to button cells is difficult and likely to damage the cells, the the resistance of the spring contacts is so high you are probably better off soldering. When I measured for another project I was getting ~0.3 ohms per cell from a 4 cell holder with bridged cells in it. Putting al-foil in the contacts helps, but is very fiddly and tedious. Looks as though solder tabbed Eneloops are available, and one of the (rumored) suppliers is just round the corner from me so I will contact them and see what they say. For merkins it seems to be easy, but then this forum is mostly merkins so they may just have looked at local importers: http://www.candlepow...abbed-Eneloops� There is a Dutch supplier in the list, so: http://eu.nkon.nl/sa...ldeerlipje.html

Blakbird, can't you use the 5x7 rectangle part to give at least some torsional rigidity? It's not diagonally braced, but it's (IME) more rigid than a set of liftarms in the same arrangement. It would be even better if we could get 3x16 or 5x16 plates with a stud missing in the middle of each end (so they'd plug straight into the 5x7 frames). The extra weight of convertibles is somewhat notorious in the car world. It's why you get so many "oversize sunroof" semi-convertible cars, and high step-over into the doors (alternatively: doors that are very sticky to open, and cars that fall apart if you open the door while driving). Just leaving a couple of beams at the top of the car helps a lot. If you want to see lack of torsional rigidity, look for photos of trucks rolling over. Often you can see one end of a flatbed semitrailer rotated 30° or more from the other. You more rarely see that with box trailers, even though the superstructure is typically quite flimsy because it's quite high/wide compared to the chassis.

I too have a set, they're really good for the front wheels of truck models that use the 62.4 x 20 wheels for load. It's one of those things that only truck geeks will notice, and only AFOLs will really appreciate. Makes me wish I had bought another couple of 5571's when I had the chance. But now that we have unimog wheels the game has changed...

XL motors will definitely break universal joints if the angle they bend through is too great. I had that problem with my road train. Since 8043 does use the full range of movement XL motors wouldn't work, but since they seem to be right on the line for the universals, you might get away with L motors.

Practice and memory. It helps if there's a pattern to the organisation. But mostly it's just practice. It gets worse as you get more containers, but I've seen people with hundreds of compartments who can still find things very quickly.

Heh, there's a huge ongoing thread on this in the general area that has some Technic content. I have a desk for Lego (and I keep moving non-Lego off it, and one day it shall be for Lego building only!) with shelves above it to hold parts. The wooden trays for plastic Lego bemuse some people, but custom sized plastic trays are out of my price range (I have compartments 12,10,9,8 long for axles, for example)

I see a lot of MOCs displayed at exhibitions that can't be moved at all. Any attempt to pick them up causes them to fall apart, needing gentle reassembly before they are ready for (re)display. Less so with Technic, common for model team. I'm not even slightly a fan of modified parts or "... except" type rules. In Oz we seem to have a very accepting attitude to non-Lego manufacturers, modified parts, lubrication, glue, metal bits, you name it. The train kids were all excited at Brickvention about some Chinese non-Lego trains that had cool parts that I thought were single-purpose crud (Lego make similar curd, but they don't need my permission). That makes it hard for Lego purists to win any of the contests, and I suspect impossible for Technic purists. I do wonder about non-Lego string, just because longer lengths of that are basically impossible to get. "long" for Lego string is 1m, when some crane models you really want 10m.

Depends what you want to do and exactly what you're comparing it to. The Lego one will always be less capable, more fragile and less realistic. Prebuilt plastic toy. Lego doesn't have anything like that any more, and will be significantly more expensive for something worse in just about every respect. kit where you assemble the bits and there's a thriving market in both replacement parts and better/faster/stronger/prettier parts. Those more of less price match Lego, but perform much better. But what you buy is what you have. Buy a 4WD offroad car kit and you're only ever going to be able to build a 4WD offroad car with it. scratch-built. This is where Lego starts to look cheap. If you build your own metal and composite parts you can make just about anything. Scratch built models can be extremely realistic, perform really well and are really fulfilling to build. Assuming you already have a decent home workshop and have built stuff like furniture, bicycle frames/car parts and some of your own tools, it's pretty easy to crank out a scratch built model for a couple of grand. Less if you have a CNC mill or a manual mill and a lot of time. But, and this is a big but, that workshop will cost at least $20k to set up. I've scratch built wood+balsa models before (and won boat drags with them), built offroad cars (including one I could stand on and it would carry me... slowly, on a flat surface). The latter sold for ~4k in todays money. But it's an expensive hobby, not least because the models can't be repurposed, so you either run them into the ground and bin them, or sell them into a very small market. It pays well, but it can take -3 years to sell something. Being able to strip down a Lego model and build something else out of the parts is amazing. IMO it's worth the loss of functionality and spending most of your build time trying to work around the limitations of the format. But it does make me critical of the "looks like Lego" builders who modify parts, make key parts out of metal, or glue parts, because to me that defeats the point of using Lego.

Here's mine, although the shelves are much closer to full now. I also have a wheeled bin under the bed that's kinda full. And a box of wheels (now that the road train is taken apart there's a lot of wheels) (click for bigger) My web site

Talking to Ricco at Brickvention I got the impression that it's mostly about scale. Since Technic models are made to a wide range of scales the Technic figures only fit a couple of models each year (if that). Which means they're a pain for TLG to deal with. He seemed pretty definite that we wouldn't ever see them again (meaning: there would need to be a lot of change in the Technic group). I did find a random doll that fitted the Unimog quite well though. Not even slightly Lego.

D'oh. I r geeneeuz! Thanks for the link.

Cool. I was imagining it being used with the boom mower mog as a kind of secondary mower for the stuff the boom can't reach. But by itself makes just as much sense. It's likely that that mower could stand up to being rolled better than a unimog, and it's less likely to roll in the first place. So like many robots/ROVs, there are advantages both in less likely to be damaged in the first place, and cheaper to repair if they do get damaged. No more going to the hospital and saying "can you stick my mower man back together" :( This is something I would have loved to have back when I had to deal with some ugly mowing jobs. At first sight I assumed it was a flail mower but I suspect it's just a standard roller mower. But when I was a kid a remote controlled flail mower would have been my dream if such things existed (they didn't, at the time). We had a lot of steep, brush-covered hillside that I was paid pocket money for clearing with hand tools. That thing would just go "bzzzzzzt" and it'd be done. When we got a flail mower it got easier, but we couldn't use it in some places because it was too dangerous to drive on them...

It's smaller, lower, less ground pressure, lower centre of gravity. Whichever of those is more relevant to the situation. So it can mow under overhanging trees, further up steeper banks or on steep slopes with obstructions, on muddy slopes, or on smaller strips.

I've just made a new Lego sorting device that I thought I'd share with you all. Based on the Lego sifting head and Box4Blox idea, I used wood frames and nylon fishing line to make a custom set of sifters. Full description on my website. Main thing for me is that I go down to smaller holes so all my little Technic parts drop through but bricks and plates mostly get trapped one level up. That makes sorting the parts much easier. The push for this was taking apart my road train which left me with about 60 litres of parts to sort, from 6x16 plates down to thousands of Technic pins. Which proved very slow when I started. Much more interesting to go and play in the workshop for a while :) This was surprisingly easy to build, I'm inclined to say that if you occasionally find yourself with piles of unsorted Lego this is something that would be worth while having.

Much, much more expensive. When I quit I had about $10,000 worth of tools and parts just for RC, on top of a standard home workshop. By comparison, building a bicycle is trivial and cheap. Plus Lego is much cleaner and easier to tidy up from, as well as less toxic and cheaper to run. The advantages are numerous. But I would say that, since I've made to switch *to* Lego. Now that I'm building the set, does it bug anyone else that there are so many places they could have said "2x" or "4x", rather than just spamming out 10 pages of instructions twice. It looks to me as though the front and rear wheel assemblies are identical, making the second copy of those instructions a bit of a waste of my time and their paper.

You need a pair of pliers that cut in to push both tabs at the same time. If you have old-school wire strippers they should do it. Failing that, I'd use a nail in a bit of wood to push one side, and locate that by drilling a hole for a Lego axle at just the right point. Then push another nail in from the top. I have taken them apart, just not for a few years. From memory I replaced "piece of wood" with my soldering stand that has various vices and clampy things, but it was just "hold an axle here, and a nail there". The pliers I'm thinking of look like this: http://www.toolstop.co.uk/stanley-0-84-010-vde-wire-strip-plier-160mm-p22902 (image via google image search, no recommendation intended)