astyanax

Well, I ordered 12 of from B&P as soon as they became available in January. About half of them don't line up with the rest. I sent a photo to Lego Service and they replied they'll pass on my feedback to the "quality department" and send replacements. That's nice -- hopefully the next batch is better. :)

As a computer scientist I can confirm @HappyAFOL's algorithmic take on the issue. What would be helpful -- and certainly possible now that BrickLink is owned by TLG -- is to have another checkbox under "Exclude", namely something like "Exclude lots over B&P price, if currently available at B&P". That would weed out a lot of ridiculous sellers!

But it's not consistent. For example, the side-facing studs on don't have this ~0.1mm offset. So 2 of those can fit under a plate with their bottoms facing each other: I had to read that a couple times, but I think you mean something like this: Yes, in this case, the white and black studs touch, but the black bracket sits flush. But I don't see why this is of concern. Now both the black and white stud are useless. If you want the black bracket to sit on a larger plate, we have a whole selection of partially studded plates like ...

Here's how it looks in reality, compared with the downward bracket: My conclusion is that the hollow stud on the bracket is not centered but very very slightly raised. I have no geometrically sensible explanation for this. Again: LDraw insists that the hollow stud is perfectly centered. Apparently LDraw isn't the ground truth, who knew.

@SteamSewnEmpire This may be a bit tedious, but what I do is, I first check Lego Bricks & Pieces and put Lego's price (if available) as max price for each part on my BrickLink list. Then in BrickLink I make sure to exclude the "Lots over max price" (unchecked in your screenshot). Then the goal is to hunt down all parts not available from Bricks & Pieces -- BrickLink will sneak in also those parts from my wishlist that are offered cheaper than at Bricks & Pieces, great. After achieving the above goal, I typically end up with a bunch of parts still on the wishlist, which I'll then just order from Bricks & Pieces. Typically this concerns very small parts like 1x1 plates or newly released molds/colors.

Just trying different SNOT building techniques. The bracket side should have size 1x1 module (2.5x2.5 plates), such that 2 of them fit under a 2M brick or plate in any orientation. But apparently the shown orientation doesn't work, which doesn't make sense to me, geometrically speaking.

Given 2 of part 36840 , I thought I could put them together like so: It works out in LDraw, but not in real life. The brackets' bottoms collide, forcing one of them to launch from the plate's bottom. Does this seem logical? Or are my brackets poorly molded?

I just noticed how they connected the A pillar to the roof in a less stressing way, seemingly using and . Great idea!

"Hey, but that should just have been the B model of set 76139! I bet you can make this Batwing design using just the parts of the big Batmobile." That was my first thought. After all this time I still haven't seen anyone else express the same idea. Weird. It seems so obvious to try and build it from the Batmobile...

I don't doubt that. But please keep in mind that the work provided so far has been very time-consuming, and free. There is no further challenge or motivation to continue separating out the mods. Perhaps you'd like to take on a little challenge yourself?

Finally I managed to try out that modification to the black 'fins' as well. I changed it slightly from my previous rendering and it's very robust now (the Bionicle tooth can't rotate anymore). Compared to TLG's solution, this mod is 1M less tall and 1M longer. I'll add instructions for it to my Rebrickable page as soon as I find the time...

I'll admit that the modded instructions will be more challenging to follow. As (co-)author I cannot objectively judge how much more challenging. For buying parts, also compare with Lego Bricks & Pieces, which has low shipping costs (at least in my country) and typically lower prices for parts that have been released recently. There are several such parts in my mods at least.

I don't recall seeing this here yet, but I just found out today this part seems to have been "reinforced". 32039 became 42135.

@ralphie Just link your photos here! It's totally normal to show off & discuss tweaks to other people's designs.

Regarding IP/brands, my first thought was Festo, to co-develop some robotic animals in technic!

A very similar discussion is now raging on Brickset. Seems like TLG wants to listen?! They published their own survey... === EDIT: ah I now see there's already a topic dedicated to that survey, can't believe I missed that... sorry for bumping it in this thread!

Looks great in reality, I think! You're very welcome.

Delightful project! @Cardboy have you considered putting two actual white air tanks on the sides? It's probably overkill, but I'd be soooo tempted to make those white cylinders actually functional!

I love it! Did you have a photo album showing the construction in detail?

Indeed that's the plan! But I need to shoot it outside, obviously. For which I need to wait for the alpine weather to improve a bit... In the mean time, the Sian has been marked for demolition, as I plan to re-use its parts to give the 488 Pista a new friend: @T Lego's Centenario, in lime haha! (Yes I have a plan for substituting some parts...)

Exciting news! Any chance of combined offers like 1x brick + 2x motor and/or 2x brick + 4x motor?

What can I say that hasn't already been said? She's a stunner, period. And FAST! With 4x PF L motors, geared UP as suggested by @brunojj1 a couple pages back. Very dangerous to drive in the home...! Built with 'real' Lego, except for the rims. As if anyone still cares though... More photos in the spoiler:

No, just hacked the Chinese, easy. ===== But we had a discussion about sharing building instructions or model many pages ago. At the time it was considered 'not done'. But now CaDA has published building instructions themselves. So one could reopen this discussion... Anyhow, the virtual model I have now is not the "original build": it contains many tweaks to suit my idiosyncratic taste. These include 4x PF L motor drive, no LEDs, brick-built alternatives to stickers, and making many connections less wobbly or less illegal. Overall shaping has barely been affected though. BTW I just finished my built -- finally! I'll post pics later today.

Bonus points for this! I ordered a couple of those 2 years ago, but I have yet to use them, even in a non-meaningful way haha!