howitzer

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.

That 20T gear really should've been recoloured for this set, and same goes for the red 16T gear. I'm usually not one to complain about these kinds of things but when such a glaringly wrong colour is clearly visible on the exterior, they really should do it properly and recolour the parts.

It doesn't fit into 3L space. Bush-like parts however can be fitted next to it, as the recess is just deep enough to allow the teeth to pass (as is with 8T gear).

You know, I'm not a part or set designer nor a design director or in any other position in TLG for that matter, so it's a bit hard for me to think of justifications for these very specific parts. All I can say is that someone inside the company needed/asked those specific parts and got what they wished while others maybe didn't. I'm not saying that TLG (or rather the people inside) works completely rationally either, there is probably some "unnecessary" part designs while other "necessary" ones get overlooked. The bottom line is that they can't and won't cater to every wish of every AFOL or anyone else, there are limits and those limits are not known to anyone outside the company. I'm only making guesses as to what common sense about this sort of manufacturing says, coupled with my knowledge of the product and its history. My guess is that they have quotas for various themes/departments and sometimes the quota in some theme is underfilled by necessary parts so they get stuff that's nice to have but not really necessary. It may also very well be that someone directing the whole process in the management gives better quota for their favourite theme while other themes get the short end of the stick - hard to say but very possible wherever there is humans making decisions. It's also very much possible that they don't coordinate much across themes, especially with Technic, as it's so different from other themes. 6L isn't really needed with the thin versions around while 4L would definitely be useful, as would the 5L and 7L links. You're right that those are not much to ask for so I hope the designers find a way to introduce them as soon as possible. I don't think bricks are that different, and plates and tiles especially not so, odd lengths would definitely be useful (and 5L plate actually was released recently so there's that) but I'm not holding my breath for them either.

I'm not so sure it would be beneficial cost-wise. For the more widely used parts they probably need more production lines anyway to keep up with the demand and the moulds will wear out and need replacing now and then, so after a certain point the economies of scale don't apply anymore for production, and storage and logistics are easier when there's a small number of different parts in large quantities rather than large number of different parts in small quantities. It's true that vast majority of TLG's sales are directed towards the non-AFOL population who don't care at all if a 5L link or 4L liftarm exists or not. This is exactly the reason why we keep seeing tons of new panels where some basic structural and functional parts remain absent. As is said many times before, the designers have to justify introducing new parts, and if there are ways to design around them as is often the case, there won't be a new part. The new panels however allow for more accurate and cool aesthetics, which is an easy selling point while unnoticeable toe-in/out in a shelf queen is completely irrelevant. Specialized one-off parts are one thing but there's surprisingly high quantity of generic and widely reusable parts as well, when you account for the variations in colour too. Not having even-length liftarms gets people used to having to deal with this limitation so they (both TLG's designers and MOC makers) try to design around those and so far it has been successful strategy for many decades. Introducing new parts to fill the even-odd gaps would effectively double the inventory of the most basic parts, which are used in very high quantity everywhere and complicate further the already-surely-very-complicated logistics of TLG. And if liftarms, then why not introduce odd-length bricks? And also plates and Technic bricks and tiles and every other category where this logic could be applied? The number of new parts would get very large very fast. There's would actually be 2+2+4 stacks of thin liftarms, and I'm sure it would look quite a bit better than the solution we got, and not very much different from normal liftarm solution. It's true that the new suspension arms must be accompanied by a correct length link if they are to use it in sets with larger suspension travel - for the McLaren there was no need. I really hope they will introduce that link in the future.