Blakbird

Good point! I do have a bunch of rockets out there. I love the smell of Ammonium Perchlorate in the morning.

Too bad I've already put over 1000 pieces together! Perhaps I will put this model out in my garage for a couple of months and see if it gets better. Then it will smell like auto exhaust instead of smoke.

I just acquired a used copy of the Tower Bridge (10214) at an excellent price and am in the process of building it. Unfortunately, the moment I opened the bags I was hit with a massive stench of smoke. The parts are not discolored, but the smell is so strong that I have to have my windows open while I build. My question is, does this smell over go away (fade over time)? If not, is there anything I can do about it?

In the USA, Technic is always at the very back of the catalog if it is present at all. I was interested to see if this was different in Germany since it is so much more popular there. Nope! Still in the back. However, Technic did get 8 pages of coverage.

I have many hundreds of thousands of parts on continuous display. Studs do not lose their grip over time if they are simply displayed. There will be no permanent deformation due to the clutch force. What makes them wear out is repeated use, not static display. Very heavy cars can deform tires over time, but they will eventually resume their shape after the load is removed. The rubber seals inside pneumatic actuators will degrade over time due to thermal cycling, causing leaks. Heavily loaded Technic gears will generate "dust" due to wear and will eventually fail. Rubber bands will degrade and fail if left in the stretched state. These are all examples of actual physical wear and failure rather than just cosmetic discoloration.

Sounds like you are actually trying to attach your pictures. There is very little bandwidth for this on Eurobricks. Most people post their pictures somewhere else and then link them within a post here. Personally, I upload my pictures to Brickshelf, and then I just paste a link into my post here.

You've probably connected it right, but you'll have to use the old pumps. The new pumps will never create any suction at the port. They are specifically designed not to.

There are plenty of little apps that will resize photos for you on iPad. Here is a good one. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simple-resize/id327776379?mt=8

I think the poor quality is intentional. LEGO wants you to buy the original set from them. The downloads are only a backup if you lose your original copy. I think LEGO is concerned that good quality digital files will allow some unscrupulous nation to print their own high quality copies and then sell them, competing with LEGO.

No, no, this keeps getting mixed up. We're talking about the same thing. The Control Center came with an AC/DC transformer which is the same thing I am recommending that you use. You cannot run your Control Center directly on AC. If you try to do this it will fry immediately. Forget about anything AC. You need a transformer that produces 9-12V DC which is the same thing the batteries do and the same thing the original transformer that came in the box did. The original transformer that came in the box was not AC. I'm not sure where that idea came from. If you look closely at the label, you will see that the input is 200V AC at 50 Hz (European standard) and the output is 10V DC. The one that came in the box only supplied 0.7 Amps of current, so I'm suggesting getting a bigger one. 1.5A should do it.

I agree that this is what the word technically means, but when you go to the store to buy a "transformer", it is always an AC/DC converter. That's just the consumer use of the word. Commercial transformers such as are used by utility companies step AC voltage as you describe.

Not exactly. The old pump doesn't have a check valve so it creates suction whenever it is lifted. If you were to push it down and then connect it to something, it would suck the air out. If you want to be able to pump repeatedly, then you need to use the check valve built into the distribution block. So it is possible to do it without the block, but much easier with it. Of course, you will never be able to create a complete vacuum, but you should get close.

To clarify "~9-12V" is not AC power input. It is DC power input. You absolutely cannot connect AC power to your Control Center. That's why you need a transformer which will supply DC power converted from your AC wall plug. Notionally, you could connect a 12V DC car battery to your Control Center directly and it would run almost forever. There would be nothing wrong with doing this.

I've updated the topic title so people who do not have an Argos store in their country know this doesn't apply to them.

Transformers convert from AC to DC. AC comes out of the wall, and you want 12V DC to your Control Center. Transformers are not regulated. They supply what the load calls for, up to their capacity. Get as big a transformer as you can to make sure that your motors are limited by the Control Center and not the power supply.

I use an off-the-shelf 12V, 1000mA transformer for my Control Center. Works great. Using a larger transformer doesn't hurt anything. For example, you could use a 20Amp transformer if you could find one. The Control Center will only draw as much current as what it needs, and that need will always be regulated so you don't have to worry about burning anything out. Just don't try to use a higher voltage. The Control Center was not designed for XL motors though and my guess is that it won't power more than one at a time at full torque. I use the Control Center to power PF models at conventions pretty regularly. It can power a model all day with multiple motors. I have never attempted to find the current limit, but I think it is low.

I both agree and disagree with this. It is certainly true that Li-Po batteries are dangerous and can explode if over charged or shorted. However, as long as you are using a proper Li-Po charger and are not modifying your packs (which is the greatest possibility for shorts arises), there is really no danger. I have many dozens of Li-Po batteries in my garage for various R/C uses. They are all just thrown into a cardboard box with all my spare parts. There is absolutely no cause for concern. In my opinion, their advantages far outweigh their dangers. However, anyone who has absolutely no idea what they are doing or has no interest in taking proper care of their batteries should probably not use them.

Pneumatic actuators are not very well suited to actually lifting a heavy vehicle in a vertical orientation. When you think about it, even if they could lift the vehicle they would be useless as stabilizers because air is compressible so the vehicle would still tip as load was shifted. The best LEGO outriggers are mechanical and use an over center mechanism to lock in the deployed position at which point they can withstand and weight within the structural capabilities of ABS. If properly geared down, they can also lift vast loads. The outriggers on 8460 are a good example of this type of geometry. In terms of gearing, CP5670's annihilator uses awesome outriggers geared WAY down that lift up the vehicle. Doing separate horizontal and vertical motion is problematic with LEGO if you actually want the outriggers to support any weight, even with LAs, because the bending stiffness of beams is just not good. To get adequate stiffness from an ABS beam cantilevered way out to an end pad, you need the cross section to be much larger than scale. So either it will look wrong or not work. The benefit of the mechanical solutions is that the supports are diagonal and therefore the ABS in in compression and can support vastly more load. The horizontal member of a real crane outrigger is usually a massive steel I-beam. See above for the answer to your question. The pneumatic actuators have adequate force output to lift the load, but the supporting outrigger beam does not have adequate stiffness to transmit that motion to the body when extended. If the actuators could extend far enough, you could still lift the body but you would see a lot of curvature in the beams (and they may even fail).

There are literally hundreds of brands, sizes, and cell combinations. Just go to any R/C hobby website and pick what you like. I like to use cheapbatterypacks.com or go to a local hobby store. The specific packs I was talking about were 3 cell (11.2V) 5000 mAh packs. You can pull over 100 Amps through these. That would be nice, but I'd hardly call the R/C world standardized. Different model manufacturers have their own proprietary connectors (Traxxas, Tamiya) and there are also 3rd party connectors (Deans) that are good for high current. Many high end packs come with no connector at all because they assume the user will solder on what they like. If you don't like soldering, you can usually specify a connector and they will solder it on for you for an additional charge. Making your own R/C to PF connector would be very simple. Just watch the polarity! PF connectors are not made for high current though. No more than an amp. A very good point. In R/C use, your speed controller usually has a build in low voltage cutoff that protects the battery by shutting down the model at a predefined (or user specified) low voltage. If you were going to plug a Li-Po directly into a LEGO model, you would have to be careful not to discharge too far. If you had the initiative, you could put a low voltage cutoff in series. They are available for R/C.

While it is true that a 9V battery has a similar voltage as an 8878 battery box, it is not true that it has the same power. The problem with 9V batteries is that they have pathetic current output. If you ever take apart a 9V battery you will see that it actually has 6 tiny AAAA size 1.5V cells inside. These tiny cells just can't pass much of any current through them. This means that an unloaded M-motor will spin just as fast with a 9V battery as with 8878, but a loaded XL motor might not turn at all. For Technic models, 9V batteries are almost worthless. Jennifer Clark used them for her famous DeMag AC-50 crane for the reasons you mention (size mostly), but she had to put two in parallel to get it to move so the end result was not really a saving of overall space but rather a distribution of power from multiple smaller locations. To get more power per unit volume you need to go to a different style of battery altogether (other than alkaline). Using lithium cells works really well because they are flat and have a high power density. You can tell from the weight of 8878 that it is mostly empty. Since this battery was made for children and since lithium cells are inherently dangerous, most of the internal volume is taken up with thermal controls and charging logic circuits. To really minimize space, you should use lithium cells from R/C hobbies with no protection circuitry (protection is in the charger). I can get enough power to drive a 4 kg R/C car at 100 kph using a battery volume no bigger than 8878. Using such a battery, you would have no trouble getting the power you need and you could adapt it easily enough to PF connectors using the same methods you showed. You would, however, need to have a dedicated lithium battery charger to charge it. These are relatively inexpensive.

Probably not really possible to define that. Studless parts were introduced gradually over a period of at least 10 years. In them interim, models had both types of parts. Even now, many modern sets have a few studded parts in them, for example for the grille or mirrors.

I love those tires! I hardly ever see them used.

Completely spectacular model of my namesake airplane. I like that it is not only a model but a simulator like the 8485 heli or the plane from the 8891 Idea Book (which someone build and reviewed here). The control input is an inspired bit of design. If you go to his website, you'll see that he actually considered that feature but there was not enough space.

Oddly, the instructions for those B models are not listed at Brickset. I have PDFs of both of them. If you can't find them, send me a PM with your email address and I will get them to you. The CAD program written by LEGO is LDD (LEGO Digital Designer). The following editors use the LDraw library (user created): MLCAD, LeoCAD, SR3D, Bricksmith. I'm sure there are others.

You'll need to be specific about which models you are looking for. Instructions for currently produced models can be found on the LEGO website, even for the B-models. Out of production models are no longer on the site, but you can usually find a link the instructions on Brickset. Actually there are LOTS of CAD programs for LEGO. Which two are you referring to? For Technic I would recommend SR3D because it allows actual kinematic connections between parts.