howitzer

Since the Micro Motor in the 90's there hasn't been any small motors to fit tight spaces so smaller motors are indeed something that's sorely needed in Technic. I'm a little worried about the 3D-printed axleholes for mounting, how durable they are? Also, as PF is discontinued, I'd think that new motor designs would be more useful to make PU-compatible.

Building is slow and demanding, especially Technic. Discussing is much easier, especially when it appears that someone might be wrong in the Internet :D

I don't have those parts but I think you could use worm gear to drive the 24T part and make a some sort of lifter or actuator with no backdriving out of it. Generally these kinds of parts are pretty hard to make useful though.

A cross beam would be SO GOOD! Even just a couple of different lengths, like 7 and 13L would enormously help with building possibilities. Let's hope here's indeed a cross beam and not just another frame (not that there's anything wrong with those...)

Sometimes the comment is in itself fine, but there's not much to say about it so everyone stays silent. I have also had comments that I thought would spark more commentary and replies but receive none, that probably happens to everyone, and that's just the way it is. You commented on the difficulty of posting images, which is a topic that has been discussed extensively already, but I've yet to see a good solution suggested so there's not much more to say about it. Everyone knows the problem, nobody knows the solution.

I wonder why I have never had any issues with these parts. I mean, I have broken maybe like two of these, and none from the newer Lego I've acquired since the end of my years of darkness. Even the old ones (from anywhere from 25 to 35 years ago) are still fine and perfectly usable, except those maybe two parts. I'm not saying though that changing the design wouldn't be a good idea here, but there's an advantage in the current design over the design in numbered connectors: you can use these right next to a 8 or 24T gears so that there's still enough clearance for them to rotate freely. Numbered connector style design doesn't fit, and neither does simple liftarm design.

You're right of course. Still, I think they can't be properly compared, and I don't think many buyers of the buggy will have only that buggy and no other Lego in their collection, so I think the possibilities of flexible construction are available for most buyers. The horrible overpricing of PU parts seems to be the main problem here, cut 30-50% off the price and you've got yourself a much better toy in either category, even if the proper RC stuff is still likely to offer better performance. TLG is indeed trying to stay relevant, but the jury is still very much out there on how vain their attempts are. It's true though, that screens don't lend themselves well on integration with physical toys, as they don't offer the flexibility needed nearly easily enough. Stuff like the Liebherr set are cool on their own, but it's really hard to turn them into something else, as that would require at least some programming skills. It's hard to say now how these kind of things will turn out in the future, but at least the buggy and similar simple sets should be pretty easy to turn into other kinds of cars.

I like that B-model. It shows why B-models were invented in the first place: how to take parts of one thing and turn them into something completely different. And I don't think it's bad execution at that at all.

I don't think you can really compare Lego set to an RC toy. Lego set's performance is underwhelming, sure, but you can do with it whatever you want. The RC car will never be anything else than an RC car.

They use hydraulic cylinders, which are much thinner and shorter relative to boom size than LA's would be in Lego version, and it also helps that in the real machine it's possible to choose geometry much more freely...

Damn that loader is cute! In the box-art the axle pin is blue. Bush appears to be black though.

Maybe I should try to build a prototype of this kind of model. Though I fear that it might be pretty ugly even if workable solution, and I suspect it would force the boom position too high up.

Why would it be any cheaper? The electronics are the same and contribute most to the price, other parts can't make much of a difference.

I believe you're onto something here, regarding the halo product aspect. It makes a great display in a brand store, and has slightly different angle to build up the marketing hype than the UCS MF. Beside rich hardcore AFOLs, I believe rich castle builder might also buy it as a parts pack, lots and lots of good parts here. Though the big Hogwarts set might be even better for that purpose.

This would be bad (and strange) because it is functionally different, so it allows builds that the linear clutch doesn't and vice versa.

This principle applies to almost everything: only those who are highly skilled on something can truly appreciate the best works for what they are. I'm a goldsmith and I have seen this so many times over my career, the customers who can truly appreciate good workmanship are few and far between but the actual appreciation of one's work comes from colleagues. I'm sure the same happens with for example programmers or musicians or whoever.

Yep, novel connectivity, one that's imo been missing far too long. So many times when I've wished to have a part like the pin with pinhole, except instead of the pinhole an axlehole... The new panel won't of course fill this need but is still something new connectivity-wise.

I don't think there has been much more new parts in the last few years than there were in the past. I took a look at Technicopedia's yearly summaries and for me it appears that for most of Technic's history there has been some 5-10 functionally new parts per year, sometimes less and sometimes more. I say functionally new, because stuff like wheels and tires don't really make anything possible that wasn't possible before. Majority of the new parts are of course relatively minor in functional upgrades (like different lengths of an axle or liftarm) but there are few which revolutionize design possibilities, like the pin with pinhole from 2015 or the wave selector from 2018. In any case, new parts making old designs obsolete has been part of Technic as long as it has existed.

Just a quick photo update on how the latest redesign is coming along: Right now I'm waiting for my BL order to arrive, in order to get the new pneumatic switch so I can start thinking of hose routing. I'll also have to give some thought to wire routing so that they end up placed cleanly and with minimal hassle when it's time to recharge the hub.

True, some small modifications would probably help with the readability, but the image hosting is a real problem. A general account on an image hosting site would probably require some sort of deal between EB and said hosting site, as scripted uploads from EB would generate a huge amount of traffic and since those hosting sites are generally ad-supported, hotlinking images would remove the ad revenue. I have no solution to this problem though, I generally upload my images to either Imgur or to my own website but both are a huge hassle when compared to most social media platforms. I'm ok with that but I know many people aren't.

For an old-timer like myself this current format of the forum is great, as I'd never even think of viewing it with mobile phone, but you're right in that for the younger generation mobile phone is the norm for Internet browsing so if they stumble upon Eurobricks, they will be easily turned away by the layout and poor mobile usability. I don't know what would be involved in this forum more mobile-friendly, but I can imagine it wouldn't be easy though. It's hard to imagine how long, in-depth posts with multiple photos could be easily viewable on the small screen of a phone, there's just no substitute to a large screen so I'm not sure if EB should even consider changing the layout for mobile viewing.

Eh, really? I hope that's some kind of mishap on the model used in the photosession and not something that's actually in the real model, as it would make this already in my opinion not that great car even worse. The shape is nice enough generally, but I really don't like that hexagonal pattern on the front panels and mudguards, it doesn't replicate well at all in Lego form, as it is too small to form a continuous pattern over the different parts. So it just looks like a few separate panels with separate pattern instead of how the pattern looks in the real car.

Very cool, I love both! The first one was especially great with its modular construction and ingenious solutions like the function selector and support for superstructure stability. The bucket operation would indeed be a difficult thing to achieve remotely in that one, even if the manual version leaves a lot to be desired. But yeah, my machine is of somewhat different type, though in many ways similar too. Actually, Gradall has also similar models, an excavator mounted on a truck chassis. I contemplated that too, but I believe tracked version is easier to make, so that's what I'm going to do now. Truck version would be nice future project though.

I thought about the backdriving issue, and that was the reason I originally planned to use worm gear, but in the first version I was able to balance the boom well enough that combined with the high gearing it should stay where it's put. I might be wrong though, in which case I will have to resort to worm gears after all.

I could drive the luffing of the boom easily enough, but what about the axial rotation? In my current design it works because the axle driving it is located at the center of the turntables on the sides but if I replace the bevel gear with worm gear, there's no way to route the drive there, or at least it will be very ugly and inefficient. But yeah, I'll start building in real life soon, with maybe a little more thought put into bracing in the CAD model. Besides incorrect bracing, it is very easy on computer to design structures that are impossible to build in real life.