Stereo

All genuine lego plates are the same thickness, shouldn't be hard to get them in general. The triangle piece he mentioned can be built something like this; the dark grey piece 27940 is a common technic part and the only "new" thing I'm introducing here. I used 7L axles (yellow) and a 5L with stop (brown) to make it easier to see the direction the axles are going, you could use any length 6 or more really. If you're buying parts maybe look at 6588, it's a gearbox designed to hold worm gears - you slot the worm in, 24t gear in, and any length axles to reach your other mechanisms and it'll work.

Can you tell if the smart figures have removable legs? The patent drawing looks like they don't use normal hip studs, but it's not really clear if you can switch legs between them once it's built.

I'll let you judge yourself, for context they're pieces of this set 6890 which I pulled out of a 15000+ piece bulk lot, so it's probably not all from the same original set, but is obviously Classic Space-specific parts. Certainly the helmet uses a wider font than the more modern parts, can't say if it's the same based on 3 and 4. I don't know what set the yellow helmet is from, it was in the same bulk lot without a corresponding spaceman. But it uses a 3rd different font. A 2x8 plate, which helpfully does have Lego logos on the studs, has yet another font: The nose piece 3839b, I would say matches your helmet?

They weren't as consistent with the logo back then, so probably normal. I checked mine with the thin chinstrap and a red one has "3", yellow has "04 1".

It started in the mid 90s, yeah. I think it's light sensitivity, my 8448 has some stickers that weren't on it when I had it on display for 20 years, and they still look fine. While the other ones are totally annihilated (shift pattern is the worst, most of the stickers dried up and fell off) 8479 is my first set that definitely has the problem. The older ones feel like they're paper based or a heavier clear plastic type of sticker. I stopped buying new Lego after 8448 so I can't really say when it stopped.

Smaller fake engine parts would be interesting to me, you could go down to 1.5 stud spaced cylinders while still using the current piston pieces, you'd just switch from the diagonal offset crank piece to the 2L thin beam with axle holes to make the crank 1/2 stud shorter between each pair of cylinders. I'm not sure where you would take it out of the cylinder piece, though. Maybe you could have a new offset conrod part and move the hole by 1/4 stud so it's centered in a 1.5 stud wide cylinder, and have the 2 engine banks 1/2 stud different, like they are on actual V-engines. Another change to the fake engine parts could be pistons with all 4 pins on the same side of the cylinder instead of 2 on each side - uses space more efficiently, you could put a camshaft or something in the extra space. Or just have it in a narrower car.

With how the lenticular effect works, you might get a different result by changing how far from the screen you are - more likely to overlap frames of this animation the closer you get. Since you see the top and middle of the display from different angles when you're close to it.

My most convenient to measure are as you say, 72.0 to 72.5mm, black ones in 8422, which rebrickable says "soft springs"

The axles on a train motor are 6 studs apart, so an L48 rod looks like it's the size that connects them. (a regular thin 7L technic beam will also work as its end holes are 6 studs apart). And flanged wheels with less than 3 stud radius (24mm) will fit - D11 is just barely fine, specs appear to be around 22.5mm radius including the flange. I wouldn't expect it to perform better than an L-motor though. Train motors are geared to run pretty fast, putting bigger wheels on will magnify that. Sariel's website claims 200rpm for L motor, 1250 for PU train motor, and about 10% as much torque.

Yeah, I just reuse bags from Bricklink orders, aside from the obvious categories (as you say, heads, hair, neck, ...) I have bags of partial figs and partial parts (single arms/legs, hands), so if I get most of a figure in bulk it can live there until I sort it out or want to use parts.

In my mind it's always been a premium toy, but from around 2000, they significantly expanded the selection aimed at adults. And particularly taking more advantage of the type of collector who wants everything. I guess the most obvious part is that $200 sets were the top end in 2000, now they have $1000 ones, which even compensating inflation, is 3x as much. It's not the most premium I encountered as a kid, that'd probably be Brio, but they were definitely above the typical plastic toys.

Yeah, exactly that. Should be pretty stiff, 3 with the rack on top is even better if it fits, I thought the differential was in the way.

Is there enough clearance above to replace the red connectors with a 7l beam or second gear rack? I don't know which of this space the engine occupies, but linking those side to side would reduce flex a lot. Another gear rack with 2l axles connecting them would probably be the stiffer option overall but for testing you could use a plain one (even a half thickness...)

It looks like Galileo 40595 has a unique blue piece to represent the Earth. I think that's also an Ideas GWP?

If it's a smooth curve over a large part of it, building on it will work fine. If it has a sharp crease somewhere that might cause issues.

I just stack them flat on closely spaced shelves, so none of the piles are more than 10cm high, arranged in set number order so I can find them (eg. a pile of 42000 to 42140 of all the A4 size ones). I don't have a huge amount of tiny ones but I put the quarter and eighth sheet size ones in a little tray that I can pull out of the shelf if I want to look.

I think for me, running on USB-C power/data without ever having to open it up to deal with batteries or loading files is the only 'odd' requirement; original GB used a barrel jack and if you could put it there it'd be tidy. If it could also function as a Link Cable that'd be neat but I'm not sure what emulators provide for that. If it used up the cartridge slot to make room for electronics, that wouldn't be a problem for me, with it actually working as a handheld toy, I care less what lego cartridge is in it.

3167 beam might be usable? I don't know how wide you want the gap, but two of them with a pin-pinhole-pin part connecting them (where the diff bevel gear goes) would fit compactly around the diff. [edit] oh right, the suspension arms have a 1l axle as the connection point. That's a bit awkward to work with. Maybe you could use 32054 to extend them so you have space for the diff gear, springs should be stronger than their friction.

Math-wise, you have the "bow" pieces that are 2 plates tall offset 0.5 studs back (1.25 plates) so they should be sticking 0.75 plates out from the wall. One thing that I think hits the right numbers is using another of the 2/3 snot bricks with a 2l bar with stop sticking in their side studs - that puts a 2 plate gap between the 2 snot bricks, so offsetting 1.25 plates inward leaves it 0.75 out. I haven't tested it though, so I don't know that the 2l bar can insert far enough on real bricks, it might hit the back wall of the hole first. if I had bricks on hand I might play with the 1x1 round plate with bar sticking out the side into the snot brick, I know it has a 'stop' on the bar that's gonna put the snot brick at some odd distance away as a minimum. Might cause weird vertical spacing issues too, I don't know how high the bottom of that plate is compared to the bar. A jumper with a headlight brick facing away from the wall, with a 2/3 snot brick top stud into its back antistud, should create an upward facing stud at the right distance to do the thing with 1x2 round plates. But since it connects under the 4th layer up, I guess that one needs to be a 1x3 round plate instead (available in white, but not sand green) or use 1x1 round plates for the lower part. Or else sink this construction into the base.

Tires, hoses and switches should be fine to wash the outside in soapy water, I might not submerge the switches, but only to prevent washing out any internal lubricant, they're all rubber/plastic and it's fine if they get wet. For me I just brush dust off the metal piston rods with my finger but I don't know if there are more aggressive safe options.

The only obvious confusion I see is that since a lot of accounts aren't going to have their original username, it'll be hard to tell which stores I've bought from that I trust to have nice used parts. Other than that, have to wait and see what they change.

Personally I find the yellowing has interesting stories about the origins of the part. I have a pirate where one leg is still white, the other's a bit yellow, and the hips are very yellow. Uniformly across each subpart, 3 different shades. And then other bricks where you can see the shadow of what they were built next to, and the back is still white.

If it's spherical (and not flattened out a bit, which it sort of looks like), then 24mm diameter makes it 3 studs, which might be the same as 44359.

If you had a bit of depth to work with you could combine the two, they need to be 1/2 plate different in height because the rail's 2 plates tall and the tile's 2.5 plates tall. And also a half-stud offset needs the jumpers. But it'd ensure your curve is consistent. It looks like when it's with an "outside" rail, the inner one is about 15.75 studs long for one curve. Fortunately 1x2 tiles are a tiny bit less than 2 studs long (0.1mm end tolerance) so it might actually work out that they fit together evenly. This isn't the shallowest way to build the 1/2 plate, just the easiest one for me to find parts for so I could mock it up, you can definitely do it in 2 plates height with the 3386.

I'm not sure about part 424, but the normal Lego way (sets like the Icons/Creator Expert cars) is 1x1 round plates - 6141 or 85861. You could check 10290's instructions as it uses the 3x3 dish.