Blakbird

I have dreamed of exactly that for many years. The shuttle is still my favorite Technic model and I'd love to "complete the set" with the tank, SRBs, and crawler.

This is a really amazing car. I love all the detail you put into the model and the presentation. My favorite is this image which looks like the work of H.R. Giger.

Mercedes CLS You are right that it is not common in the real world, but they do exist and are not exactly rare either. Your use of the word "all" forced me to reply. In fact it is precisely the fancy wheels that are more likely to be handed. I certainly agree that handed wheels and/or tires are not really appropriate for a LEGO model from a business standpoint, although they would be cool. From that point of view, a directional wheel profile is probably not a good idea. With that being said, I really like the 8448 wheels despite the reverse rotation on one side. Given that this is meant to be a model of a high performance car, I can imagine such wheels really existing on it.

Sorry, but that's just not true. Yes, cheap aftermarket wheels are the same on all 4 corners, but expensive profiled wheels are not. Same goes for tires. Every tire on my car is unique. Front and back are different sizes, and left and right are handed for precisely the reason mentioned: to have the track pattern rotating the right direction. Therefore, no tire rotation is possible.

There was a big argument about this in another thread, in which I participated. It comes to this. In my opinion, this statement is not accurate: My guess is that Mark was intentionally simplifying the matter for a simple magazine reading audience. The words "source" and "sold for" are a problem. "Source" is just the per item cost to buy something and "sold for" indicates the total retail price. There is just no way that it cost $100+ to buy (source) a light bulb in a plastic box. I would speculate that a properly specific sentence should have said: When interpreted this way, you might be comparing $250,000 in development costs over 4 sets, each with 1 unit, each of which sold 10,000 copies. This would come to ~$6 per unit in development alone and given that only a small portion of the final cost of a retail set is part cost, could exceed the cost of all the other parts in the set. This also fits better with the fact that apparently "no one actually knew". Certainly the per item cost of the element was known. The statement only makes sense if you consider that no one had bothered to amortize the development cost to figure out the total cost.

It is actually the battery box that is the limiting factor. Some people have done parallel battery boxes to get around this....

You can try it, but I had no problem with axles. In my experience, everything fits very tight so I would not assume that tan axle pins will actually rotate freely.

I don't understand. Why would that mechanism not work with studded parts? A similar linear linkage was used in 856 way back in 1979.

???? Didn't we just discuss that? Because it is a poorly integrated, power hungry monster that doesn't work properly with their current power supplies. It was made to work with the R/C controller which could handle the power, but that whole system was a cash loser for the company.

If you believe this article then those are the last parts we'll ever see again.

Torque doesn't mean much by itself because you can completely change it with gearing. What you want is the product of torque and RPM or power. Everything you'd ever want to know is on Philo's page. In short, the XL motor has 2.21W of power at 9V and the RC motor has 4.61W. So the RC motor does have more power, but only because it draws 3x more current. In fact, it draws more current than the standard power supplies can even provide.

Interesting info. Since that part was made to bind together rows of studded bricks on the diagonal, it HAD TO BE studless or it would have had corners that protruded. So in the beginning, there was good reason for those "weird" parts to exist to complement the existing parts. Apparently no one realized they would eventually supplant the whole system! By the way, who was the designer of the Space Shuttle? I will honor them forever!

Here is what it looks like with a white flex axle on the bottom of the windshield. It looks a bit odd because the rest of the window is framed in black, but not too bad. That's a good price!

Although that part doesn't have any studs on it directly, it was made specifically to work with parts which do use studs, so I'm not sure I'd call it the start of studless. Even the supercar suspension parts, while having no studs, were made to work with studded beams. Of course, they also work with studless beams. Since the transition was gradual, it is very hard to identify a start point. If I had to pick one, I'd say the triangle in 1991 is the first studless part. This part was alone until 1996 when the 6x4 bent liftarm came in, and from then on every year saw more and more studless parts.

I wouldn't call them better, no. They run faster but also consume a LOT more power. You can get the same RPM out of an XL by gearing it up.

LDD is impossible. It only has official parts. From memory, you need: 4x 2L axle and 8 tooth gears for planet gears 1x 5L axle and 8 tooth gear (with some bushings) for sun gear 2x 4L axle for affixing cap 1x 12 tooth bevel gear for input 1x 20 tooth bevel gear to drive input with any length cross axle I wouldn't recommend using ANY kind of lubricant on a 3D printed part.

A differential is neither studded or studless. You are talking about older versus newer parts, which is not the same as studded versus studless. There is no reason you can't use a new differential in a studded construction. In my opinion, the word "studless" is only relevant to beams versus liftarms. All of the other parts like connectors have no studs by definition and can be used with either system.

I think there is a big difference between part types that are out of production as opposed to rare colors of parts that are in production. For parts out of production, if they were replaced by something or there was a problem with the original part, you won't see them come back. Since this part has been replaced by the new hubs from 42000, I don't think we'll ever see them again. Many of these are just color wishes which will hopefully be seen again. I would guess the PP wheels and tires are too expensive and have limited application so they won't be back. The pneumatic brackets are probably no longer needed because longer actuators will be available. Those parts had a lot of breakage problems so they probably won't come back. I really liked them, but their application is limited and probably not worth the production cost. Again, these parts had a lot of breakage problems so they won't be back. They were rarely utilized to their full potential in sets. Maybe a new flex system which solves the durability problems?

Nothing is as good after Kill 'em All... Many of the opinions in this thread seem to rely on the premise that none of the part innovation which happened in the last 20 years would have happened without studless and therefore the only way to get rid of studless is to get rid of everything. I think this is not true. Most of the new parts could also exist in a studded system, but might look slightly different. So I don't think comparing studless to transistors is apt; it does not replace something outdated with something better. It complements one thing with something different.

I use POV-Ray. Looks like your lights are the problem. Read the whole series of articles I wrote for Hispabrick magazine to see what I do.

I ordered from BlokBricks in the Netherlands and got enough to last me a long time. Red, white, and black. I regret not getting yellow.

I just finished building this car this weekend. The lack of speed in 3rd and 4th gears is simply because the motor isn't powerful enough. If you lift the rear of the car up on jacks, it shifts through the gears very nicely with a noticeable increase in speed each time. I didn't use any flex axles for my copy; I replaced them all with aftermarket pneumatic tubing. It worked great. Also don't forget that you can use the ribbed version which is readily available.

This belongs in the "Buy, Sell, and Trade" forum. Moving it now ....

I was going to say that they would never make a model with 10 cylinders but then I remembered 8455!

Am I the only one who is getting very excited to build this?