2GodBDGlory

I recall seeing transmissions with the same working principle (fast forwards, slow backwards), but not necessarily the same execution. Your design has a pleasing simplicity, but is still a bit difficult to understand from a picture. I also found that it ran much more smoothly with the 16T clutch replaced with a normal 16T gear, and the 4x2 beam replaced with two #1 connectors and a 2L axle. Nice work!

Good choice of set and approach! This is one of the most completely functional classic Technic sets, so it should make a good model.

Thanks! You're right that the styling is sparse, but so is the real set, and the information topic tells us that "The main voting criteria is whether you have replicated the sets as close as possible!" and that "the first and most important criterium [is] True to the original," so I think I'll keep it this way. I would definitely fill it in if it were a standard MOC, though!

I haven't seen that video, but after looking closely at the image I too am convinced that it is just a bunch of standard parts put together, with the cracks between parts just being "left out" of the picture. The shape is just too odd to be a new part, in my opinion. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, though!

After building my previous mechanical calculator, which featured two sets of buttons and an adder mechanism to add two single-digit numbers, I wanted to go beyond that and create a multi-digit calculator. I eventually settled on a four-digit setup, and came up with this model here. Before I actually show it, though, I should mention that this model was functionally a failure, because it would not add or subtract with tolerable accuracy (The accuracy was about +/- 2 in each decimal place, so if the real answer was 5426, the calculator might tell you 3204, which is totally unacceptable!, and that's assuming that all the carrying was correct!) Despite that, I think it is at the least a good theoretical framework of how such a calculator can be constructed, and a good first attempt. I'm already starting to think of how accuracy could be increased, so maybe I'll have something to show in several months. Anyways, I'll now endeavor to show this machine, though my YouTube video at the bottom may end up being clearer. Overview images: So, the basic working principle is that when a number button is pushed, first a linkage moves to engage a transmission driving ring on one of the four digit axles which causes one of these dials to rotate until it strikes the axle pushed down by the particular button, allowing a button press to roughly choose 36 degree divisions of rotation. Then, the axle transmits drive through this freewheel which allows the main dial to be reset without affecting the output dials. Next, the drive moves through this carrying mechanism, which is very similar to a design Nico71 used in his mechanical calculator This is known as a sautoir mechanism, and allows for gravitational, or in my case, rubber band, energy to be gradually stored as an axle rotates, and then released all of a sudden. This is used so that as, say, the units dial rotates from zero to nine energy is gradually stored so that when the dial moves from the nine position onward to the zero position again, energy can be released to move the tens digit forward 1/10th of a rotation, effectively doing a carry from 09 to 10. This can work all the way down the line, such as in 0999+0111=1000. Each axle continues past the carrying mechanism to the forward/reverse gearboxes, which are simple, low backlash sliding gear designs, though transmission driving ring parts are used simply to slide axles forward and backwards. After this, drive is taken to these white dials. Now, in order to add numbers, it is not merely sufficient to press, say, the one button and then the two button in a single decimal place and expect it to result in a three. Rather, the axle would just continue rotating from the one to the two position without any adding. To counter this, there is a resetting mechanism that must be employed between inputting numbers. This is engaged by reversing the main drive motors, which can be done in a few ways, as I will discuss later. This causes a worm gear to slide along an axle in a direction-sensitive gearbox, activating a long axle (Sometimes the 24T gear needed a bump to engage it) When the axle rotated, it sequentially pressed down the levers activating the transmission driving rings for each number, which caused the axles to rotate backwards, one at a time, until this stop was activated and the friction clutch slipped. This had to be engaged separately to prevent the reset mechanism from stopping once the first dial reset and slipped the shared clutch. Because of the freewheel mechanism discussed earlier, resetting the input mechanism did not affect the output mechanism. The control mechanism was based on a PF switch (Actually a knock-off one, because all my Lego ones range from finicky to broken, ironically) and had several buttons, which were ON, OFF, AC, +, and -. ON just turned on the drive motor, which then stayed running until another button was pressed. OFF pressed the switch back to neutral, and held it there with friction. AC reversed the drive motor, and while + and - also reversed it, these buttons also flipped the forward/reverse gearbox in the calculator. A typical control sequence might look like ON, 5678, -, 1234, AC, OFF, with the minus being necessary for both resetting and ensuring that the gearbox is in the right position. Another mechanism was designed to sense when a negative answer was reached. Originally I had planned to make this automatic, but in the end it requires close observation, followed by a flip of a lever. The theory was that, provided that the 1000s, 100s, and 10s digits were zero, any time the 1s digit went from 0 to 9 backwards the number would be negative, while if the 1000s and 100s were zero, any time the 10s went backwards from 0 to 9 the number would be negative, while the 1s would make no difference, and so on. In the end, there were four levers with orange parts on the end that could be made visible through slits. Each digit above the ones had cams on a shaft to bump the levers to orange when the digit was at zero, and all four had ratchet-type mechanisms to bump the levers extra high, but only when travelling backwards from 0 to 9. Additionally, each lever was set up so that lifting it would lift all of the levers below it. If it were ever observed that all four slits showed orange at once, this would show that the output had become negative, and a red lever would need to be flipped, revealing a different number on each dial, which was the negative complement. For example, if the number started as 0003, and 0004 was subtracted from it, the dial would originally read 0009, which is obviously incorrect. Once the dial was flipped, though, the negative complement of 0009, namely -0001 would be revealed, which turns out to be the correct answer. Finally, I should discuss the procedure to reset the calculator after use. First, the AC button had to be pressed to reset the input half, but then the tan 20T gears visible here would have to be manually turned to reset the output dials. The big issue was that whenever the negative button was pressed the dials would get out of sync, forcing the user to flip the calculator over and disengage some 20T gears by sliding them along their axles, prior to recalibrating the zeros on the dials with the zero positions on the carrying mechanism. This is something that was quite disappointing to me, that I hope I can fix on any future iterations. Here is the video, which may be more easy to understand! My images can be found here: https://bricksafe.com/pages/2GodBDGlory/whirlwind-rescue (Yes, I put them in the wrong folder by accident. Ignore the half-built helicopters and you should be fine) Overall, this was a very interesting mechanical exercise, but was far from a working calculator, to my regret.

Sorry about that! I'm not quite sure what the 1024 is referring to, though. I'm using BrickSafe for my pictures, and I see that I can select sizes of 640x480, 800x600, and 1280x960 (pixels, I assume). If I embed the 640x480 will that be small enough, or is there something else to the image size I'm missing? Thank you

Interesting model choice! I'm curious to see how such a small model will be rendered studless!

Wait... I'm thinking that if I neutralize all electrically charged particles (ions) in my model the ABS will disintegrate. Can I get a chemist's opinion on this? Besides, how am I supposed to selectively turn off the electroweak force, one of the three fundamental forces in the universe? And what about the potential uses such technology could have for weapons of mass destruction? I'm a bit worried about the implications of such a rule!

Well, possibly, but I'm really not all that confident that my impression is correct, given the number of other interpretations floating around! I'll see if I can figure out the lower resolution images in the future. The 3/4 pins are a good idea, and I'll plan on changing that, thanks! As for the link, I'll attach a picture of what I did on the bottom, which is somewhat like your suggestion, but allowing the linkage to remain in line with the helicopter, despite the one stud difference in position. I'll try out your suggestion as well too, though.

Well, my I understanding of the contest was that it was better to keep the model as close as possible to the original's look, as in most historic studless remakes, but this is of course open to discussion. You're right about the linkage being a little ugly, and I did in fact tweak it a bit for my latest iteration, though the picture doesn't show it. Thanks for the feedback!

I've now added the winch mechanism, with nice geometry to allow the ratchet to snap into engaged and disengaged positions, as well as seats and pretty well everything else I was missing. I'm not certain if I'll be changing anything else, but this could quite possibly be the final version!

Actually, I just noticed a place where I would have liked this part! In the swashplate of my whirlwind rescue TC20 entry, I was at one point using two of the friction versions of these pins to hold on rotors, with a 3L bar between them. Essentially, I wanted both to be able to rotate independently of each other, while being fixed in a straight line by a bar. I eventually gave up on this solution because of the high friction, but this new part may have changed that! This is admittedly a very unusual scenario, though!

Probably because a 3L axle with stop can be used in almost all use cases. Of course, the almost implies that there will be some unique use cases for it, but perhaps not many.

This is a very interesting entry! Another potentially more robust way to connect the winches would be to use chain pieces, I think.

Yeah, that's about what I expected. I've got some temporary colors in my entry at this point too. Keep up the good work!

Fun! I've also built a parts-bin 911 mod, though mine was a high-powered RC mod with non-lego components, and an LBG body. It seems like the kind of project that offers a lot of fun for little effort and expense, which can be a very nice combination.

Nice! I hope you're planning on getting rid of the magenta, though!

I don't make the rules, so I don't really know the reasons for them, but a possibility is that it may not always be easy to determine whether a virtual build works in the real world. For example, it may require real-world testing to determine if a given setup of gears will mesh correctly or skip under load.

Of the 2021 summer sets seen so far: Tow Truck= Fan Favorite (functional) Zetros= Kid Favorite (Play value) CAT=Lego Favorite (Profit)

Those pics mentioned are still live on Brickset as I write this: https://brickset.com/article/59765/star-wars-technic-city-stuntz-and-marvel-advent-calendar-unveiled!

Are you thinking it is too small to model? I may be misunderstanding you, but I'd love to see this model completed, even if the interior had to be sacrificed. I think this is easily my favorite of the System sets being entered in the contest thanks to the unusual functions and 1:1 scale!

Does this imply that the sets will be revealed or at least released for sale on the 30th and 39th weeks of the year?

Here is my latest progress: Hooked up landing gear Hooked up winch boom mechanism Redesigned swashplate mechanism (lowering rotor somewhat) and hooked up joystick Made other minor changes Some colors are subject to change.

I've been doing a lot of work on rebuilding the swashplate mechanism, and one goal has been to lower the rotor to a more accurate height, so hopefully I'll have something to show soon. Thanks for the suggestion!

I suppose the question about whether that would be within the spirit of the contest comes down to interpretations of the statement quoted from memory as: "Don't add functions because more is better." It is a tough line to draw, but a piston engine isn't too unreasonable at any rate!