Stereo

A long string of them with frictionless pins would also make an interesting "rope" linkage. Not prone to twisting in the way alternating layers is. 32294 Wishbones they also make a good shorter version. Though not as aesthetic.

Is the middle of the hood using the 9x3 quarter ellipse from Sonic the Hedgehog sets? Pretty blurry picture so it's hard to see if it's multiple curved parts.

5-12-13 also works well in plate dimensions - 5 plates is 2 studs, 12 plates is 4 bricks, so if you have a 1x4 brick with 4 1x2 bricks on top, you can connect diagonally at an exact distance using a stack of 5 bricks with a plate somewhere in the middle.

Hmm, black parts pretty often look like that to me. Though not an identical pattern. Here's some on the bottom of my lime Lamborghini from a couple years ago, the 2nd from the bottom has the mold mark side up, the rest the opposite side.

Depending where you have clearance to work with there's a few ways to make a strong connection at ~4.5 length: Piece 7244 + 22961 can also work, attached together with a 4L beam, but I don't have 7244 in my Stud.io cause it's recent.

I like '93 a lot. Though part of that is cause it's the first year I got Technic sets, so certain design elements just look familiar. I think to me the Barcode Truck is the peak of studded Technic builds though. Very full of functions driven off the motor. I'm lucky enough to have that and the 8462 Tow Truck in the OP, and the Barcode Truck feels more solid. Though to be fair, it weighs so much that it cracked its wheels at some point in the last 20 years... there's a reason that wheel got redesigned. I put some 4L axles with stop in the front of mine when I noticed, to give them a fighting chance of not getting worse. I rebuilt a lot of my small to midsize 90s Technic sets lately, and was reflecting that 8417 is arguably the first large studless set. No studded building for strength, studs only appear to attach decoration. The rest of the large '98 sets used plate+stud chassis with studless bodywork.

I don't know, I'm guessing people call ~2010-2011 the peak of consistently having trucks in the lineup? 2010: 2 car/motorcycle, 3 heavy duty trucks, 4 off-road equipment (excavator/tractor), 1 helicopter 2011: 3 car/SUV, 5 heavy duty trucks, 1 off-road equipment (backhoe), 1 helicopter 2012: 2 car/quadcycle, 3 heavy duty trucks, 2 off-road equipment (tractor/crane), 2 aircraft 2013: 7 car/truck/motorcycle, 2 heavy duty trucks, 2 off-road equipment (excavator/backhoe), 1 hovercraft It's not really that favorable compared to modern era 2024: 12 car/truck/motorcycle, 2 heavy duty trucks, 6 off-road equipment (incl. space rovers), 1 aircraft, 1 boat, 1 orrery 2025: 13 car/truck/motorcycle, 1 heavy duty truck, 5 off-road equipment (excavator/loader), 1 aircraft, 1 submarine Categories aren't necessarily super well defined, I put anything that's people-transport in the first group (monster trucks, pickup trucks), anything that has functionality and can drive highway speeds in the second (mobile cranes, flatbed trucks, semi trucks), other wheeled/tracked vehicles with functions in the third (so sort of 'anything else') This year's heavy duty truck does let down the category a bit compared to 15 years ago, but last year had 42175 which I'd say is a decent member of that category... For me the wheel loader is the only 'must buy' of the year but I haven't actually picked it up yet - got a good deal on an 8865 which seemed more urgent than stuff that's still at retail sale.

Good progress on the switch, it's now feature-complete for a version that will not let you run backwards the wrong way. I designed it to use BrickTracks switch stands primarily cause I have a couple so I can measure them, but also I think they have a good feature set (works on either side of the switch as needed, low profile, simpler track piece). 6-gauge R85 switch to demonstrate something new, not just a copy of existing sizes. I was a bit conservative removing studs, so round tiles should stick to all of them, and square tiles to most. The switch mechanism's designed to assemble from the top with no tools. First you slide the tie bar (light grey) in through its slot, first through the diverging rail, then back through the straight rail to lock it in. Then use the underside features of the points to connect it: 1) Knob fits into a groove and can be slid into its place. 2) The other end of the switch has a slot for the tiebar to move it. 3) Then rotate the point into place and this ledge prevents the knob from popping out. Once the switch stand is attached to the tiebar, the range the tiebar can move is limited to where ledge #3 is always engaged, so nothing can come apart. I also have one feature that only makes sense for a 3d printed part - the straight rail is hollowed out so the point piece can slide underneath it. This stops the end of the point from lifting up, without needing a little latch around the end of the point. The groove #1 is curved away from the rail because of this - the point drops in at the loose end, but then slides under the rail. One thing I'm not really happy with is that the point piece is lower at the knob end, so it has no ideal orientation to prevent supports. The mechanism only has 1.9mm of vertical space to fit in otherwise, and I didn't want to go to <1mm thickness, so having it descend halfway into the tie keeps everything 1.6mm around there. (the tiebar ends are 0.8mm thin around the hole, but it's the easiest part to replace if broken) I have some limitations on what I can generate because of the ties - they're only coded to work as multiples of 4 - but I can still use some odd numbers. Here's a 5-gauge switch on 14 stud track spacing, making it R227.5 and 56 studs long. I'm still stress testing it by trying odd values, but I think it's pretty close to ready to share/print now. One flaw I'm aware of is that in 4-stud narrowgauge, there's no way to insert the tiebar without bending it. The simple solution is cut off the end loop on the point side - it needs to be 1 stud shorter for the insertion method to work. I'd also like to make a click-detent version of the tiebar so it's more functional without the BrickTracks switch stand, I just need to decide where along the tie to position it. Once I'm fully happy with it, I'll set up a version of the file for diverging routes that just has you pick radius and track length. Mostly a matter of going through and redoing some of the tie generation logic so it doesn't assume the two routes have near-equal track length.

On the actual car they're pistons mounted to the underside of the car that lift all 4 wheels off the ground when air is applied, then retract when air pressure is removed, it's to make pit stops quicker. For Lego it's probably linkages. "Accurate firing order" is doubtful to me, 6 cylinder boxers use 120 degree angle crank offsets and every single piston is on its own offset section of the crank, since each pair of opposed cylinders hits TDC at the same time. Would need new parts designs.

The usual construction to power it from outside the tower would be a turntable - for example Large 60 tooth is the current production piece, they've had about 5 minor variants over the last 40 years - so one motor meshes with the teeth on its perimeter, and the other runs an axle up through the center to drive functions inside the spinning pole. It depends how large you want the build to be, but 36 tooth gears could provide the linkage of the 4 arms on top - which are external to the pole on the actual one. 3 of them would be mounted exterior only, 1 would have an axle run through to the interior of the tower and connect to the axle coming up the middle.

I briefly mentioned the Pythagorean triples before but I was thinking about them again, and used them to derive the curve radius for switches, so I'll demonstrate that: The base unit "1" is how far the switch has to diverge so that a symmetric piece will meet it from a parallel track. Here it's 8 studs. Switch "size 3" is thus 24 studs long, 3*8. It creates the green triangle, whose hypotenuse is the radius of the curve, and 'base' is 3. The other edge is 1 less than the radius by geometry. So we have the Pythagorean triple r² = (r-1)² + 3². In this case it's easy to observe that it's 3-4-5, but more generally, replace 3 with x and expand: r² = r² - 2r + 1 + x² 2r = 1 + x² r = (1+x²)/2 So for 'size 5', r = (1+5²)/2 = 13. Multiply by studs per base unit 13*8 = R104. Anyway, burying the lede, I've got parameterized rail, and most of the ties sized how they should be (in this case, long enough that the 2 end studs are usable on every tie unless they overlap the one diagonal tie). The remaining gap is where the switch is operated, so it's going to be 3*8 studs with a slot in the middle. I still need to remove a bunch of studs, add a switch mechanism, and add guards for the frog area. All seems feasible with the tools I already understand though. Took a while to find a process that would let me generate variable-length ties with correct integer lengths but it appears to be operational.

I didn't take it apart myself, just got it this way (without the brick) but it should just pull out. I don't know how much force it takes. I guess the ridge clips into something. (modern wheel/tire for scale - it sticks nearly 2 studs into the brick) It slides freely through the wheel, I just put it in to show size.

Bit of a throwback question, but I've noticed that my vintage Technic has 2 sizes of part 2825 1x4 thin beam. The bigger size is 1 stud wide, the smaller one is a bit smaller, which seems to be the same size as other studless beams. Does anyone know when this changed? I would guess it's around 1995-97 when the other thin beams (1x3, 1x5) got added. The Light Bluish Gray one is from Surface Space Loader; other two are Light Gray: Also interesting to me that it's (c) 1992 on the new one, as the part was introduced in 1989 sets.

More of a test piece than broadly applicable, this is for changing which side of a larger gauge the narrower gauge rides on: In this example, it moves 4-stud narrow gauge inside 6-stud standard gauge over the course of 32 studs. It let me test several features of switch tracks - rails merging, guardrails, flat area for the flange to ride on - while being a smaller project. It's designed as a half-piece that you print 2 copies of, to cut down on the size of the printed piece. As before, it's parameterized, in this case you have 2 gauges (larger one as #Gauge, smaller as #DualGauge) and #TrackLen. There are practical problems with designing a dual-gauge switch, that are solved by having the moving point be on the shared rail, so that's one situation where you might use this. Unfortunately I don't see a good option in Onshape for creating the mirrored version of this part, so I'll probably end up creating two files, one where the narrow gauge shifts left, one where it shifts right. For now I only have this "leftward" one. I'll keep looking though, creating 2 versions of the actual switch file will be more tedious than managing it in this smaller design. The reason it's a problem is the rail end clips - if you simply mirror the whole design, they'll end up backwards. So parts have to be mirrored selectively. Another example to demonstrate parameterization - this is 5 gauge with 4 gauge inside, over 16 studs (which makes it R64 curves - don't worry, the CAD does the math for you). Sort of ends up being oddly shaped, in that the rails end right at the split between the pieces, so maybe it's worth designing a version that doesn't split there. And a 3-rail curve - the extra parameter #DualInset says how many studs from the inner curve rail the third track is. So for 4+6 stud gauges, you set it to 3 or 2, depending whether you want the narrow gauge to run on the inside or outside of the curve. Though the real point is things like this example, with 5.3 and 7 stud gauge, where there's no off the shelf piece available that does this. Less than 1 stud gap may cause collisions, and likely doesn't work with Lego train wheels anyway.

I have some Classic theme 'googly eyes' that I might swap into the Anglia, if I see it for a good deal (assuming it'll be $80+US msrp). Not sure about the mouths, maybe there's a classic 1x2 tile with smiling/frowning mouth (11031 monkey fun, but only medium nougat)? I don't actually hate the printed tiles it comes with, I just think googly eyes are funnier.

I tried rebuilding it in Studio, minus the 60 degree "K" connectors (doesn't have them yet) so I put #5s in their place but I only managed to get 82/83 parts: All the half-bushes are speculative as they're not visible, and I didn't build anything for brakelights. The quarter-ellipse is perfect for old car trunks. No new parts/colours from what Studio reports, but this is a tiny set to get the set of V-engine pieces.

I don't know a formal proof, but I'm inclined to say no, once you're past the square (integer edge length and radius to middle of an edge, using 45-45-90 triangle) either the angle or edge will be irrational. I imagine there are reasons why, but trig functions don't tend to have useful fraction values. It'd be pretty easy to build a spreadsheet to explore the series of polygons though, seeing if sin(angle) or tan(angle) are rational when the angle is 360/n, with n a multiple of 8 (4 so you can make a quarter circle, and then x2 for each face being isosceles, not right). Testing them out in Wolfram Alpha they all seem to start with 1/2 * sqrt(2*...) so there might be some half-angle thing going on that means it's always going to be a root. I don't know the angle-splitting identities that well but sin(45) = sqrt(2) is what it might come from.

I think I have an idea for one that'll work "derailing", then swap the top point piece out for a design with a rubber band. I'm thinking I'll make it a no-tools assembly, put the tie-bar in half-way, put the point on top, slide them together into place, so in normal switching actions the tie-bar doesn't move far enough to unlock the connection. No welded-on underside cover. Good info on the ties going past the frog. I suppose Lego avoided it on R40 because the diverging track is ~30 degrees different by that point. Yeah, other brands do that, it's just going to be a learning experience for me, cause I'll probably want to use a big boolean box to cut out half the part or something, and then do the usual clicky knobs + rail ends tweaks. I went back to the FXBricks blog post about switch geometry to make sure I know what the design parameters are, and sort of simplified what they said back into triangles to try to get a generative form that'll let me show the "useful" switch sizes first. First off, I figured out that the basic sequence being used is 1xN right triangles, where R40 uses N=3, R104 uses N=5 . So for a start, I can do that whole sequence - even numbers produce radii that are in between Lego's ones, odd numbers match, so you have 3:R40, 5:R104, 7:R200, 9:R328 if you want a family of grid-compatible switches that match regular curve pieces. I'll probably use these numbers as the basis for "parallel" switch setups - just select N and it'll calculate the radius, track length, etc. and produce something that goes to a track 16 studs away and parallel if you put 2 switches back to back. (this is a Pythagorean triple 3-4-5 for the R40, geometry-wise. R104 is 5-12-13, R200 is 7-24-25, R328 is 9-40-41. so they all stay on stud grid. The even numbers go to half-amounts - R68 is the N=4 switch, using 8-15-17 triangle) Once you have this number N, some other values become easier to express - the "special straight" is 8/N studs long. N=5, straight=1.6 studs. N=3, straight=2.6 repeating studs. So I can make a convenient table of "what size straight you need" for each switch. The other one that I only noticed today, is that R64P combined with 8 stud straights is just removing that same 8x40 right triangle from the middle of the circle. 64+40 = 104. Thus, if they sold 4 stud straights, they could have made an R84P curve that serves the same function. The nice thing about this relationship is that it makes it easy to analyze other sizes - when N=6, you get an R148 switch, which is 48 studs long - if you use an R136 curve, you get (12/48)*8 = 2 stud straight tracks on either end to make an identical curve. If you had an R68 switch and wanted to use an R56 return curve, (12/32)*8 = 3 stud straight tracks make the geometry match. These still need an extra ~1/3 or 4/3 length curve piece to match up the angle, so it's not a magic bullet, but it does reduce the number of radii curves you need to have around. They didn't say it explicitly but I'm guessing the reason it's not an R104P return curve is that it would be 11.31 degrees, only a tiny bit different from the 11.25 of a regular R104, and thus confusing to have both in production. Extending these charts in new directions led me to the R111, 36 stud long switch - you can use it to connect parallel L-gauge tracks with 4 studs between instead of 8. So you get a yard that's 4 studs more compact in both directions (shorter switch, closer tracks) and slightly wider radius than 104, and it happens to use 1 stud long "special straights" up the ladder, which makes it quite easy to stay on Lego's grid. 5 parallel tracks across 2 baseplates, instead of 4, and overall only 20 studs longer ladder if the shortest siding is the same length. Could be useful to someone.

Yeah, right now I foresee 3 problems - 1st, how to manage the spring that lets trains run through it the wrong way. Can it be a 3d printed leaf spring? 2nd, what pattern to put the ties in. The official track uses chevron ties, other brands do other things. I'll have to do something that's easy to manage with adjustable radii. And 3rd, splitting it into small enough parts to print. An r104 switch is 40 studs long, 32cm, and is bigger than many consumer printers, even laid diagonally, so it likely needs a midpoint split of some sort, which should fall in the middle of a tie.

Yeah, I moved the radius label to the end ties to hopefully fix that. 6-gauge 24-radius track Here's an updated link. I did another organization pass on the file to make it possible for me to manage multiple part designs. So I've got a straight track model as well, now: Track length in studs is the only new variable - with this piece design any length 2 or more will work. The reorganization does mean that LDU, Stud, Plate measurements should really not be edited, as the design is now using their values from multiple files (not sure how to avoid this, variables don't seem available to share between files, only designs).

I increased the radius of studs to match measurement (4.9mm), made the rail underside mostly solid and placed antistuds. I connected them to the edges of ties so that the first print layer would be (mostly?) continuous cause I've heard that can be a concern too: I suppose you don't need to print it to see if the software requires supports. If it still needs extensive ones I can redo it again. It's still all procedural, so no issue to take these features back out. Version 2 of standard gauge R24 1/8 circle track.

Thanks for the feedback! I didn't think to measure the studs, I just made them the same size as the underside openings, so pieces would fit without collisions. Sounds like they're usable as tracks at least. I wonder if Lego's regular antistud pattern (circles between every 4 studs) would be enough support to print without extras. Or even the full "waffle" underside. I'll do some research about that; making the ties solid underneath is also fairly easy if that's the best way to handle it. I was copying Lego's design, which is optimized for injection molding - 3d printers have different constraints because they can easily add hollow cavities with partial infill and reduce material use that way.

The narrow track radius is 24 studs, which does have a small availability on stores (eg. TrixBrix). Anyway, with the understanding that you'd be a guinea pig in the process as I've not yet tested printing these, here is a link to an STL file for an R24 curve on Google Drive. I think the most likely problem will be the clips needing tidying to work, as I've designed them at exact size, no extra tolerance added. They are as far as I can tell 4mm diameter, so it should be easy to drill them open if needed. Yeah, to get specific, the way I've modeled it, it's 37.6mm gauge (inside edges of rails). 5 studs centre to centre, and the railhead is 2.4mm wide, reducing that from 40mm. I am open to naming the gauges a different way (eg. call standard 5-stud since it's closest to correct, or 4 since that's the brick that fits between the rails), but I haven't really seen common usage, and I think this is easy to understand. As you observe, +8mm makes it 45.6 which will run 44.45 trains on it, -8mm is 29.6 which nearly matches Proto:48 at 29.9. I didn't actually mention it in the post, but it's possible for this to generate non-integer track - if you wanted exact O-gauge compatibility at 32mm, you could enter 5.3. And so on... N gauge would be 2.3 studs, which is obviously not very useful, as the railhead would be about half the height of rolling stock, but does appear printable. One problem is you end up with more gaps between the studs. And of course once you're in the weeds like that, you really depend on these files providing the entire ecosystem of tracks - which they don't, yet, only curves. The antistud portion of the ties also doesn't really handle this gracefully yet - the outer ends of the ties are usable, but the middle needs to be over tiles.

As a fun project, I decided to parameterize the Lego rail system in CAD. The main impetus was talking to a couple people modeling narrow gauge, who are aiming to replicate real yards, not stick to MILS plates, and thus have particular interests (like R200+ curves) that certainly aren't available in stores, but also might not have 3d designs to print anywhere online. I won't say that I've replicated the original rails exactly, but I hopefully have all the features to make curves compatible with original parts and the Lego system. As yet I haven't printed any parts, but I'm getting close to a design I think matches up. For most purposes, the 3 basic variables are all you would need to change: - #Gauge: Studs covered by the rails. Regular L-gauge track is 6 studs wide, of course. - #Radius: Stud radius of the track piece. Centre of track to centre of circle. Official track is R40, aftermarket usually goes up by 16s (56, 72, 88, 104, 120) - #PerCircle: Number of curves to complete a 360 degree circle. R40 track uses 16, higher tends to go to 32 above R72. (64 above R152?) But, to make it more flexible, I also have the advanced variables (I haven't tested these as much, so cautious use) - #LDU: Lego Design Unit. If you wanted 2x scaled track, you might use this? - #Stud: Width of a 1 stud brick. Probably don't touch this. - #Plate: Height of 1 plate. Also don't touch this. - #Tolerance: Tolerance around the edge of plates to make Lego easier to put together. - #TieStuds: Width of tie in studs. By default this is gauge+2, minimum would be equal to the gauge. - #TiesPerPiece: Total number of ties (ends count as half each). By default this autocalculates to space them roughly 4 studs apart, but you can pick any number 2 or more. - #ClipSpacing: Number of studs centre to centre on the end clips on the piece. This is 2 for all official tracks, but it made sense to me to make adjustable. I've split the model into 3 sections so it's also fairly easy to remove the ties if that's desired: For example, here is a narrow gauge half R40 curve with the middle ties disabled. It's also possible to turn off the end ties and get bare rails with the end profile to connect to regular tracks. You do this by right clicking the folder and choosing "Suppress". I don't know how well they would attach to track in that format. I've built this in Onshape and it's the first time I used their platform, so bear with me, but I believe you can view the 3d model at this link, and if you have an Onshape account, you can create a copy for yourself, so you can edit the parameters. Onshape Curved Track Onshape Straight Track Onshape Dual Gauge S-Curve Left Onshape Dual Gauge Curve To a reasonable degree, if you want a particular size to print, you can ask in this topic, and I'll enter the parameters, make sure nothing's too wrong with the result, and share an stl file. Though to reiterate, I haven't tested it myself, no warranty that it's useful. Other sample outputs: 8-gauge R8, 90 degree curve, with 8 stud ties. Maybe useful for a crane on rails? 5-gauge R120, 1/32 circle. 7-gauge R88, 1/32 circle, 8-stud ties. As you can see, if the ties are half-offset from the rails by mixing odd and even, it automatically removes the studs that would interfere. "UCS Hogwarts Express" curve, though the model doesn't articulate, so other changes needed.

The "stops" are being used as spacers, the worm gear is wider than the 24 tooth gear so it needs the mechanism spread out a bit. If you're using 6588 you should be fine without any. The worm gear in particular slides on its own, 24 tooth gears grip axles well enough that they don't need extra help. 3/4 pin 32002 can connect into the small holes on the side of the gearbox, to attach a brick: I haven't held one in my hands, but the XL motor seems to have a pinhole in the right spot that you can use the same to attach one directly to the end of the gearbox, pointing at the 24t gear. Which would make the full set of parts (plus a spool to wind thread on, and batteries) quite short. Lego drum piece I've used the most is 32012, I'd expect it can handle 2-4m of fine string, you might want to just wind it directly onto the axle between a pair of gears though (or with a regular thread spool pinched between the gears) so you can adjust how much space you give it.