2GodBDGlory

Impressive progress!

Looks like the sharing settings on that aren't set up properly; it's not giving me permission to view it. Here's a couple images of something that could be worth looking into: It's just using a fixed shock absorber to make it snap in and out of position. It seems to work fairly well, but I'm not sure about your specific application. If you're getting high RPM out of your vacuum engines, I wouldn't want to see this driveshaft spinning quickly, since you'd probably get wear between the driving ring and the shock absorber. It's a thought, at least!

It is a little sad to lose the option of putting grille tiles or something on top of the engine, or just something that looks like a valve cover, but there'll be plenty of the old style floating around for the foreseeable future, so it shouldn't be an issue to get a hold of them for those niche situations

Wow, very nice! The level of internal detail is very impressive, and the total look of the car manages to be both plausible and very dramatic!

I've got a bunch of pneumatics from Mould King, and in some ways they're really nice (Low friction, and metal shafts on even the smallest cylinders), but there are some other issues. For one, the cylinders seem to stick in one position when the model is sitting, and need a fair bit of pressure or manual movement to get them moving at the start of a play session. For another, the tips tend to pull out of the metal shafts, but that can be fixed with some super glue. I'm quite pleased with their value-for money overall, though!

It does look a bit nicer without studs, but I am disappointed that they didn't optimize the design much further while they had the chance. It's still got the bulky profile on the bottom that allows it to be placed on top of a plate, but that's a seriously irrelevant connection.

Very nice indeed! Such smooth paneling. That is a fun usage of the 16L axle! I'm currently living in an apartment right across the road from a GMC dealer, so when I was watching the video on YouTube last night, all I had to do was look up to see a real-world GMC Hummer EV! (Though this one was the SUV version) out the window!

Yeah, those towball parts are in the F1 cars, I believe. Those will be extremely useful! Though more so the female one. That yellow part seems like something that could be quite useful! Half stud offsets in some situations are strangely hard. I get the feeling that the other four parts are all meant to interface together. The gear with pin might go on top of the bottom right piece, and then mesh with the other gear. To me, it looks most like a heavy-duty joint for large mechs, but I guess we'll see! Was that the one used in the F1 cars?

Looks impressive! There's a lot of functions in the original set, so shrinking it must have been a challenge. It really does look like the original!

Well, I'm back, with the 2024 edition of this book! I didn't really change much other than adding the 2024 sets, but boy were there a lot of sets this year! I wrote about 28 different sets, which is double the 14 I was doing when I started doing yearly updates around 2018. I am honestly considering ending the project here, though. I don't have the same free time I did as a teenager, and it feels like I'm trying to squish an ever-increasing number of hobbies into an ever-decreasing amount of time. Unfortunately, working on this book is no longer top of my priorities, so I just mean this to be notice that there's a real chance I'll never end up writing a 2025 update. Still, that's just hypothetical at this point, and we've got a brand-new 2024 edition, so enjoy! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hB42i69V3VjkVZs4FikqIRWEA3zmdASY/view

Generally no. Some people go all-out with modification, and many will use specialist third-party parts if they fill a gap Lego can't really fill, and others use only official Lego. It's uncommon to use modified parts for basic structure. You're free to do as you wish, though!

Thanks! Probably some kind of Styrofoam type thing would work (I think I've seen it on other Lego machining projects), but I don't really have any in a suitable shape, and I don't especially want to buy any. Sorry about that! There's definitely room for two lathes with different approaches, though

I was a little hesitant to join this contest, given that I'm deep into another project at the moment, but Eurobricks contests are too good to pass up! [EDIT: Well, about that... I ended up essentially abandoning this project after seeing howitzer's Lathe project being developed. Between his more ambitious and impressive project, and the other projects that I've been working on, I decided to stop working on this and get back to my other Technic project. I did actually build a fairly complex gearbox for it before that point, which I guess I didn't ever put up progress pics for, and it is still sitting on my deck, but I don't expect to finish it. By the way, no hard feelings to howitzer! His project was awesome, and just gave me the excuse I was looking for to get back to the projects I was interested in.] The plan is to build a model of a lathe for machining metal, something like this: It's not something I've built anything like before, and there seems to be a lot of room for interesting gearing. The rough plan is to include: 6+ gears to choose from for spindle drive Universal chuck Sliding, adjustable tailstock Manual (crank), motorized (rack gear), and motorized thread-cutting (worm gear drive) carriage movement Manual crosslide Manual top slide It would be definitely cool to make it actually capable of machining something, but I don't think I have anything of softness so extreme that I could machine it with a Lego cutting element. It might be worth trying to mount a razor blade in a 3D printed part, but that's obviously outside the Lego-only stipulations for the contest rules, so that wouldn't be a part of my entry. I really have very little experience with lathes, being limited to playing with them for a few days in high school Machine Shop, and then watching a guy for maybe half an hour last summer, so hopefully I can pick up a good enough understanding of them to make a quality model. Anyways, this is the progress I've made so far, which is pretty much limited to just the chuck. It's a 4-jaw universal chuck, for gripping objects of various shapes, and like a real-world one, each jaw is manually adjusted using a screw. This requires some care to ensure that the material you're machining is properly lined up, but allows for gripping non-round shapes easily. I chose it, mainly because it seemed like the simplest one to accurately translate into Lego at a reasonable scale: The sliding jaws of the chuck are actuated using sliding worm gears, controlled by the yellow half-bushes on the outside of the ring. These worm gears engage with locked 8T gears on the main frame. To prevent the worm gear from being crooked, as they would be if both 8T gears were at right angles, one gear in each pair is locked in place via its axle, while the other one is technically free to rotate, except that a beam on its other side takes some of the space between its teeth, locking it in a position where a gap is meshing with the worm gear, rather than a tooth. I look forward to continuing this model!

That is wacky, hilarious, and awesome! I'm curious to see what ideas you have for developing it further

What a disappointment! I guess I'll be waiting a lot longer for a dedicated Eurobricks-branded web browser, or at the very least a Eurobricks-developed search engine I can select within an existing browser. Can you really call yourselves a viable forum if you don't have a branch of your company developing cutting-edge web software to compete with Google?

Lots of fun ideas! I don't think Lego has released the proper specialized parts for that build yet, but if they ever find a way to get around restrictions on radioactive materials in children's toys, it'd be an impressive choice!

That's cool! Probably stiff enough to only be necessary in extreme circumstances as a clutch, but there ought to be other uses for it as well

Yeah, I remember watching that video, but that still felt like a pretty small advantage to me, given the equivalent speed and torque values. I took advantage of the greater rarity of XL motors to sell all of mine for enough to replace them with Ls

Very nice work! The split engine with the transmission in between is quite clever, and it's impressive how you got a 4-speed into a bike this small without major compromises! So you're using a round bar as a driveshaft? That's something I'd never thought of doing, but I can see it working well in tight situations without high torque loads

That is seriously big! Impressive work

Amazing! Such a simple piece, but needed so often. Thanks Lego!

Yeah, Lego ones have variable stiffness. Brand new ones are often very stiff, but they get broken in over time. I've had good success with Mould King pneumatics in general (though you need to glue the heads onto the shafts of cylinders), but their valves were one thing I didn't need from them, so I don't know how they'd work.

Ooh, looks great as always! Good presentation as well. It's a nice combination of looks and performance, with some non-Lego parts completing the look

I don't quite understand what you're talking about in the first section, but it sounds like what you're looking for might be something like this autovalve mechanism: I'm not sure if I've built this particular one, but I know I've used similar designs, and it allows for one motor to control one cylinder in both directions. As far as force for that newer switch, I'm away from my Lego at the moment and can't test, but I'd say it's probably fairly similar, but because it's wider and better braced, it doesn't feel like it needs as much. It should be just fine for motorized switching.

These are good answers so far! Those switches you showed are very stiff, but there are ways to motorize them. Part bb0874 https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=bb0874&name=Pneumatic Switch with Pin Holes and Axle Hole&category=[Pneumatic]#T=C is a newer switch that has an axle hole, making it significantly easier to motorize.