howitzer

Hey, you stole my idea! I'm also in the process of designing a metal lathe for this contest, but didn't post anything yet because I'm waiting for a few crucial parts to arrive in mail. Anyway, my plan is in larger scale and custom main bearing so it'll be interesting to compare your approach and mine.

- Useless machine (a machine with a switch, which upon pressing activates mechanism that turns the switch back off)

You'll need the XL motors if you're going to use the Liebherr profile in the C+ app, it recognizes which kinds of motors are connected to the hub and won't work if they are of wrong type. I don't know if the L motors are powerful enough to move the thing but if you're using them, then you'll have to create your own program as well. I guess you could test the motors' strength by building the base and then loading it with some weight to simulate the weight of the whole thing and seeing how it moves (or not).

Arocs had part count of a bit below 2800 parts, so at that scale it's entirely possible to make a large, very functional true Technic flagship set. But I'm not holding my breath, if it really is another car it'll be just a huge disappointment as I can't see them making anything interesting or new with cars.

Wtf is it doing in some star wars set anyway, doesn't look like it's absolute necessary for the design to work? Well, I guess they are making use of the new part as much as possible to get it in the market in more sets and we'll see later the set that it was designed for. Anyway, no matter, this will become a very useful part.

WOOOW

That design by Akiyki is indeed great, though unsuitable for my purposes (I need a design where there is an opening in the centre, as large as possible). Also what I need should be fully functional in any orientation. But I have an idea and now I'm waiting for the parts to arrive to test it...

Many turntables in official sets use one wheel or another, so that's indeed a possibility. Also 1x1 round plates have been used with great success, see for example

I agree. Besides, engines can be used in other applications beside vehicles, emergency generators are a well known example but they have been used in things like air raid sirens.

I was thinking of my entry for the most recent contest and realized that I need a large bearing for it and while searching for solutions I realized this isn't much talked topic in the forum so I was wondering if people could share their bearing designs for others to use. All kinds of designs would be interesting, regardless of type and purpose. So here's a one quick and dirty bearing design that would fit my purposes, except it has some slack and the GBC balls aren't perfectly round so they don't roll smoothly.

Seconded. --- As for the studful Technic, it should be allowed as long as the build follows the building principles of the studful era of Technic, meaning there's no tons of non-Technic parts added simply to make it look pretty but only used sparingly when necessary. So no exterior casings from bricks (unless they are Technic bricks) for example.

It originated as a boat weight, for example 4030 Cargo Carrier had I think 6 of those. It's not usable as any sort of connection point.

A separate animal contest would indeed be great for the future. I have one animal-idea and one non-animal idea and if animals are allowed with no actual animal-contest in the future, I'd have to choose between the two ideas for this contest, which is kinda sad :(

So are animals allowed or not?

Why not both? I mean, let's do an animal/biomechanics contest now and non-vehicle/non-animal contest next when it's time for another contest?

I can see two options here: 1) No fictional animals or animal-like things allowed, only real ones. Limiting, yes, but quite easy to decide if an entry qualifies or not. 2) Fictional animals or animal-like things are allowed. Deciding what qualifies is harder, but perhaps not impossible - though I can see lots of nitpicking and rules-lawyering ahead if this option is chosen. Personally I'd perhaps lean towards option 1) as it would make people concentrate on the simulation of biomechanics instead of finding the wackiest looking fictional animals, but I can see the appeal of option 2) as it might draw more entries to the contest.

The only problem I see with the non-vehicle contest is judging the entries: how to make a fair comparison between vastly different sort of builds? On the other hand, this is also an advantage: a contest about cars has nothing but cars and that forces all entries have almost the same features, which gets boring fast.

Full support on this.

Nice review as always! I'm not into motorcycles much but looks like this is the best of the three 1:5 scale ones, although the differences are small. The engine is definitely interesting and something new, even if it lacks the realism of old style engine. It looks good enough to me, but I'm not one to nitpick on looks anyway so others might disagree. It's nowhere near interesting enough for myself to consider buying, but that's mostly due to subject matter and not because I think it's a bad set.

Perhaps not compared to today, but compared to past: The sets in the 80's and 90's increased in complexity and flashiness constantly, until came the decline at the turn of the millennium. Then beginning in the late 00's Technic seemed to be on the road to recovery with many new and interesting and increasingly complex sets in the 10's and then stagnating again in the last few years. So I see these golden ages most importantly as ages of progress - the theme constantly moving forward with innovation, instead of stagnating and repeating the same over and over.

Dealing with hydraulic bicycle brakes is already difficult and painful enough, and that's literally the simplest possible hydraulic system there is while almost any pneumatic system TLG has produced is more complex in terms of parts and functions. I don't see hydraulic sets ever being viable official product for TLG.

It is my understanding that different colour mixtures of plastic have slightly different properties (shrinkage, cooling rate, etc.) which means that changing colours isn't trivial but requires some testing and other considerations before mass-production can be started, and sometimes this involves creating new moulds for the new colour. Of course it's still much easier than creating a whole new part and I guess that sometimes it really might be as trivial as putting in the new colour feedstock, especially with parts that are not so sensitive with tolerances, such as the aforementioned tyre part.

The golden age of Technic was probably the 90's with tons and tons of new and exciting stuff released and every flagship outdoing the previous. I think there was a sort of second golden age in the 2010's, with many great sets also released (8043, 42043, 42055, 42082 to name a few) but since then the quality of the sets has declined markedly. There's been a few nice sets here and there (42128, 42145 for example) but those seem to be few and far between. So I guess the second golden age is now over and the releases are mostly really dull for us who are interested in functions and realism. But as others have pointed out, there's many new parts released every year and apparently people are buying the shelf queens which keeps the theme going, so I'm not complaining too much. I don't have to buy any set I don't feel is worth the money and getting the new parts is easy enough in the aftermarket (or PaB) if I'm patient and can afford to wait a few months.

The 3L axle/pin connector inverted, as in O+O would be really useful, I've yearned for it so many times. All pinholes version too, but I'd rather take the one with axlehole in the middle if I could only pick one.

Illusion of perspective. The LBG parts right below the bumper are further forward than the axle which is mounted with two 3x3 T-liftarms but due to the viewing angle it appears as if the DGB T-part is actually under the LBG part.