technicfanatic

This is really excellent. It packs a lot of functions into a neat chassis AND it is not under powered. I've seen a lot of efforts that are underpowered and need manual help in the various functions, but here everything is smooth. It does look like the height was over-ambitious, because at full extension the beams tilt, but this is a minor thing, and you can just not extend the booms so much. I also like the judicious mix of system and Technic parts. Well done!

Looking good. Fun to see a suspension based on rubber bands, rather than those (fairly expensive) spring suspension struts. It's pretty awesome that mecabricks can show the 3D model and import .io files!

It's the LEGO Helicopter Pivot sleeve, mislabeled in the official catalog as 55889 Wheel 18 x 14 smooth. It was the product of one night of searching randomly through the catalog muttering "They have a million parts, surely one of them will work."

@Pattspatt still writing it all up, still have to clean up the stud.io file but here are two videos with the mechanism visible (taken before I mounted the blades, pitch links and scissor link) Top-side view: Side view: I will make a video with the complete assembly, but you all know that part already Here's a detail view of my pivot sleeve solution. I was inordinately gleeful to have solved the puzzle this way.

@Pattspatt I have found a most marvelous solution, but the margin on this forum is too small. (You might get the Fermat reference but, truly I've found a nice combination of parts. I'll be done debugging the design the coming week and hope to post it in a new thread here.)

LOL, I was jumping in to ask how to use this magnificent software that can do linkages and then read more of this thread and found the one I started re: Stud.io. So, MLCad, eh? This will let me simulate linkages? I'll try it out. Or do I have to use LDD?

Very nice! Your note about the challenge of fitting everything into the allotted space really resonates with me! I find the art of finding the combination of components that performs a function and fits into a given space a satisfying challenge.

Looking great! The battery box looks to be riding very close to the ground.

Beautiful build. I find the shift most intriguing because you have the classic "+" shape for the shifting and not a simple linear forward and backward, and you seem to have fit it into a small space.

Most things work fine, but the offset in rotation centers between my mixing lever and the swashplate is causing my steering links to hit their limits before I want them to. Onward ...

My brain says it's done. Now I have to build it - only way to figure out where I've screwed up, because there's always a problem ...

Thank you for the pointer! Those animations are _awesome_! They make the mechanisms crystal clear. I'm awed that someone took the time to make them and then describe them.

@Pattspatt I'm so happy you read it and found it informative. I will add more photos of the Bell 206, which I found very useful to understand the mechanisms. Important insight, thanks! Yeah, the turntable's attraction is that it takes care of the plates being in the same plane, so the tilt constraint only has to be solved once. From my inspection of Sheepo's KA-32 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/zetqsu7nxiqdm4t/SG_Kamov_KA-32_Instructions.zip?dl=0&file_subpath=%2FKAMOV_KA32_Instructions.pdf) it looks like there is no collective here. Do I understand right? Tagging @Sheepo in case this is the right handle. Sorry if it is not. Thanks!

This is very excellent. Technic at its best: models that educate us about mechanical devices. If I glimpsed it correctly, you also have a "working" distributor.

Thank you! I have mixed feelings hearing this. A new Helicopter set will be cool. I don't think I'll fork over >$200 for this. I'll be a little chagrinned to find new parts that elegantly do what I have been stumbling around to do in a complicated manner. OTH I wonder if the focus will be on the cyclic rather than collective (which is not that difficult, TBH. The existing helicopter rotor parts already do that). Perhaps my thing will be done before this comes out. In any case, my focus is in making an educational model where you can see all the moving parts and trace how the thing works. Thanks.

Thanks! Hi @steph77, of course I know of your cool models! When I looked at your designs (very helpful to have clear building instructions, thanks) I could not figure out how the collective worked, because it seems to me that the ball gear can not slide up and down the mast. The control rigging (cyclic and collective sticks) and the mixing crank I have solved. I'm basing this off the Bell 206 because I find the Bell 206 mixing crank quite cool. Video. My rigging is slightly different but close enough. (https://github.com/kghose/technic-models/blob/main/helicopter-controls/archived/bell206-2022.02.17-mixer-lateral-bug.jpg) (There is a small bug in the mixing lever design which I have fixed in later iterations, and of course the swashplate is not supported properly which is the big thing I am working on.) Thanks!

I'm building an educational model of helicopter flight controls (cyclic, collective rigging and swashplate) losely based on the Bell 206 (because I find the mixing crank pretty cool). I picked the Technic turntable as the heart of the model and the design started to get really large because I needed a gimbal to constrain the motion of the plate. (A bit like @jwarner's model here.) As an exercise, I decided to make the smallest reasonably non-kludgy model I could come up with. While I'm not going to use this design for my educational helicopter flight controls model, it was interesting for me because it was the smallest, kinda working swashplate model I could come up with. As a reference, the entire gimbal frame of this model (The red frame that can move up and down) is the size of just the swashplate in my more serious WIP, which uses the Technic turntable as the heart. Video of operation. I'm posting here because members of EuroBricks have done phenomenal work on helicopters in the past, and I have referenced many of the models presented here previously, for my current work. I've been meandering through with my actual model and the current state of efforts are here. No photos yet - the model is not complete. Here is a failed attempt before I decided I need a gimbal to constrain the motion of the plate. Hope to post .io files of V1 of the model in a week or so.

Thank you all for the information! If the structure itself deforms that is interesting, because that would imply the computations necessary to show linkage movements. I'm not surprised that Studio doesn't do this, because it would require a physics engine. Studio is already so fabulous as it is!

BrickLink Studio is phenomenal! I've never seen such a well thought out CAD software released for free. It is absolutely essential for me as a studless Technic noob. I would really like to be able to articulate linkages that I build in Studio. Is there a way to do this? I have only seen ways to rotate/translate assemblies. If not, what do you all use to test out moving parts in your Technic models (short of building them, which is a completely legit and fun thing to do). For example, in the diagram below, is there a way to manipulate the red bar and see how the blue bar moves as part of the linkage? Thank you!