Jeroen Ottens

Hi, I have a bit of a backlog of models I made last year, so in the coming weeks I'll try to present some of them. To start here is the Toyota Supra in 1:10 scale in two colours: The models feature the following functions: - Indepedent suspension on all wheels - Working steering through the steering wheel - Opening doors, hood and trunk - An 8-speed sequential gearbox operated through a 12T gear in the central column - An inline 6 fake engine in the front The bonnet was a challenge to build (especially in two colours), but luckily I was able to some of the dark grey triangle panels from LEGO before they purged them from their inventory. I am quite pleased with how the bonnets turned out. The design gives a lot of space for the front mounted engine: The steering axle runs underneath the engine, so it is all quite tight. It is the 2021 version of the Supra, meaning there are a lot of little flaps and curves to copy. The front also has its fair share of those: As does the back: Leg godt, Jeroen

Time for another update. This should be close to the final model: The lime green propeller blade at the bottom will be replaced with a black one. Here is a front view with the changed A-pillar shape: In the rearview you can see I chose for a minimal design of the rearlights. I feel this is the best compromise between accuracy, looks and elegance of design: Even though I have never seen any photos of the underside I suspect that this is how the big venturi ducts run below the car. In the area next to the cockpit a second duct is running towards the engine compartment above this one: I just realise that I forgot to mount the central display screen: The biggest thing to work on is the suspension. The suspension is just strong enough to hold the weight, but when compressed the friction in the suspension is too much too overcome, so it doesn't bounce back. I'll have to take out all friction pins in the setup that I added to minimise play, but I'm afraid that that won't help enough. Four stiff springs is just not a lot for such a big model, so I might have to think of ways to increase the spring stiffness or preload. Comments and critique are welcome.

I made a C+ backhoe with one hub, four motors and nine functions. one motor for steering one motor for switching gearbox two motors for driving functions in the gearbox, so a total of 2x4 = 8 functions. 2 for frontshovel 1 drive 3 for rear shovel 1 rotate rear shovel 1 stabilizers I finished this model over a year ago, but I am still waiting for a way to share a C+ program. This is becoming a major pain for the C+ system for me. It is such a promising platform, but it is severely let down with the support for it. I was planning to only post the model once I have a shareable program, but maybe I should give up waiting.

Cool! It works supersmooth. Interesting that the friction/texture of the small chains is already enough to carry the pins on a fairly steep slope. I hadn't expected that.

Time for another update. One of the things that bugged me was that the unload pipe was at an angle not extended. This is the same angle as the pipe has when extended because the small geartable I used for the rotation was put at that unload angle. But the result of that is the folding part of the unload pipe is tilted downwards when the pipe is in transport mode. So one morning I woke up and I had this idea in my head that could solve this issue. It is a bearing of sorts that can rotate 90 degrees. In the position shown the white rotation axle is nicely perpendicular to the red supporting structure. But when rotated 90 degrees the white axle will be tilted. It remains to be seen whether I can translate this principle to something sturdy enough to hold the weight of the unload pipe, but I thought it was a nice principle to share. Second update is on the doors of the grainbunker. After a couple of iterations I finally have something that works and looks like the real thing: This is the first time I made an animated gif, so if this gives issues because of the size please let me know and I'll hide it in a spoiler window.

Wow, such details and so many functions at this scale. Very nice!

Very nice. Especially the iconic wide smile of the bonnet is smartly done.

I think I will stick to the 4 'wheel' drive for now. I have the space and it makes for a more interesting drivechain . Tracktensioners are much tougher to implement as well. The variable floor sounds like a great challenge , so that will be the fifth pneumatic function then... I currently have the the three transversal drums and the two longitudinal rotors in concept: Here are the drums: And here are the rotors: I have now only a sieve below the two rotors as there is not much space below the drums (because of the 4 wheel drive & gearbox ). I also like the curve of the 3x13 panel below it... I guess the suspension is really a suspension and not so much a height adjustment. So a spring would then probably be better to use.

Another option would be to hide the batterybox in a stand. That way you can show off the working landinggear etc. without having to hold the plane in your hands.

Thanks for the kind words and the offer of help. The gearbox is just two speed, but the switching of the differential locks is done with the same gearbox. If the machine has only 2 wheel drive, are those the rearwheels or the Terratracs that are driven? Making it two wheel drive would simplify the design, but so far I do not need the extra space for the pneumatic functions, so I am happy to stick to 4 wheel drive. For the header I am indeed thinking about a Vario header. It is now ~70 cm wide, so that is about a 35-40 feet header. The convio header uses a superthin conveyorbelt that I don't think is buildable in LEGO. My current setup has only six pneumatic functions available. The ones that I know for sure are: - Opening grain bunker - Extending unload tube - Lifting header - Lifting reel So I have two more functions to add. That could be - The bending of the unload pipe (but this could also be combined with the extending of the unload pipe) - Adjusting the header table (no idea whether I can squeeze that in) - Adjusting the direction the straw is thrown out in the back (don't know how to do that, but it would be cool to choose between spraying straight out, or moving from left to right and back) I know there are all kinds of threshing panels that can be opened or closed during operation hydraulically, but what I have designed so far in terms of threshing mechanisms sort of resembles the real thing, but not to that level of detail that I can add these panels. Furthermore I'd like the functions to still make sense in the LEGO model as well. Ideally I would like to be able to 'harvest' a combination of big and small 'produce', the small stuff gets collected in the grain bunker, while the big stuff is thrown out in the back.

Great to see a wIP topic from you Eric. Looking forward to following this. That sliding wheel is a challenge indeed. It looks like the best compromise between rigidity and functionality to me.

Hi, After some days of digital building I switched back to a physical build: On this side not much is visible. The L-motor on this side is used for the high-low/locked-unlocked gearbox. On this side the internals are visible. In the lower half the drive gearbox is located. The light grey conveyor belt is intended to be used to transport the 'grain' to the grain bunker. The two 3x11 dark grey panels are one of the walls of the grain bunker. Below the grain bunker is now a big hole, there three drums will be placed to drive the harvest to a seef. The seef is located roughly behind the white 7x11 frame. In the back the gearbox for the switching of the pneumatic functions is located. I am now back to XL motors for the switching. Mostly because the 42100 has three of them and there is space enough to fit them. In terms of drive I am back to a 2-hub setup. I now use two angular motors for the main drive of both the wheels and the harvesting functions. I do still have my worries whether this setup will work. Especially the harvesting functions will get some really long axles. It is about time to test the functions, but I must say that it is annoying that this will require some programming before I can even test basics like running the two angular motors. I would really love to have a physical controller with just a basic joystick-motor coupling.

Thanks guys. Config is not final though. In my experience things will fill up more quickly than expected, so I might have to drop a few functions along the way. If I stick to the known pneumatic functions I can use two of the spare functions on the pneumatic gearbox to drive the fan, fake engine and the cutter. Combining drive and the other harvesting functions in one geartrain will free up the other two motors on the third hub. That way I have still all the functions (the ladder and panels will be manual, like on the real machine), but one hub and three motors less. I haven't tested the setup yet, but I assumed that I needed all the power available to move these switches. I'll take your word for it that L-motors are good enough and use those instead. Thx. Thx. You have a sharp eye. According to Sariel's scaler the sprockets + track shold be a bit over 9 studs, whereas in reality the are more like 8 studs. So there is indeed a slight mismatch. It is still the best tire/track combination I could think of for this scale.

It has been a while, but I finally found some time to work on this one again. I've mostly worked digital now to get a bit of a feel for the interior. Here is a picture without paneling: For the eagle eyed among you, there are indeed three Control+ hubs. The model currently has 11 motors to operate 14-20 functions (it depends a bit how you count the harvesting functions). Eight of those are remote controlled pneumatics. The big chunk of gears in the back is the pneumatic function selector. It uses one L motor to select one of four pairs of pneumatic switches. Two XL motors are used to toggle the pneumatic switches. A fourth motor is used to drive two pneumatic pumps in 180 degrees phase. There is one hub for driving, steering, locking the differentials and switching high/low gear. It uses two XL motors for drive, one L- motor for steering and one L-motor for switching gears & locking the differentials. It basically is a 4 speed gearbox, that has high-gear, high-gear, low-gear and low-gear. The rotation of the wave selector is routed through a 24-12 gear combination. The result is an axle that rotates 180 degree for every 90 degree of the gear selector. This axle is then routed to the mid-diff and the rear-axle diff that each have a waveselector to lock the diff. With a 180 degree input it will alternate between fully open and fully closed. So the gearbox switch-sequence now becomes high-gear, high-gear locked, low-gear and low-gear locked. The last hub is used to drive all the harvesting functions like the reel, the cutters, the collector drum, the loaderbelt, internal drums, the seeve shaker, the chopped straw spreader, etc. and the fake engine and the huge fan in the back. Pneumatic functions that I am reasonably confident about: - lifting the header (2 XL) - lifiting the reel (2x small thin) - Extending unload pipe (1x XL) - Bend unload pipe (1x XL thin) - open grain silo doors (1x L) I have still three more switches available that I could use for the following functions: - Left panel - Right panel - Extend ladder - rotate ladder If anyone has more ideas for pneumatic functions, let me know. Here is a view with most of the paneling on: In the real machine there are two huge drums that rotate to split the seeds from the straw, however the hubs and pneumatic selector take so much space that these will not fit. I still want to try to get a conveyor belt or something to bring the crop all the way to the back where the straw spreader will be. I hope it will be possible to feed something like small cottonballs through the whole system where smaller ones are moved to the grain tank, while the bigger ones are spat out from the back. It is getting tight inside though (just as I like it ). Comments, questions and critique are welcome as usual

Brilliant . It shows that you don't need to build planes at minifgure scale to get exquisite detailing. The opening nacelles with turbofans is just great. These kind of details really bring the model to the next level.

First of all, great review Milan. Very informative. When I saw this front wheel mount I immediately thought: McPherson suspension... But maybe that is harder then it looks at first sight.

Maybe medium blue with orange (as in classic Gulf colour)? There are a ton of new medium blue parts in the shark monster jam...

Wow! This one is really true to the spirit of the competition. Especially the width change of the chassis is a great bonus. I know you prefer building in dark grey, but adding some colour could make this entry even better. I hope you get all the transformations to work properly.

Impressive start. Out of curiosity: did you already get yourself a Titanic to see what LEGO has come up with?

Thanks for all the feedback. There will be some extra bodywork between the front fender and the bonnet, but there will be a hole there through which you can see the suspension arms, just like the real thing. Yeah I have a pretty big catalogue in my head that I (subconsciously) use during the designprocess. The headlights for instance are made of a diamond from the RockRaiders series and a headgear crown with 4 tall spikes that was used in an obscure Lord of the Rings set in 2014. Having said that, I do spend also a lot of time browsing through bricklink to find parts that have the right shape (in the right colour). It would be great to have some SW that can search by shape though... The funny thing is that positioning the panels on this car so far has been relatively straight forward. I usually need to position panels rotated around at least two axis, but here most panels are only rotated along one axis (or even just straight). My approach is always to first try to position the panel in the position I want it to have (using ball joints, illegal techniques and what not to keep it in place) and then work on the structure to fix it in place. That structure then can be refined until it is small enough to be out of sight, strong enough to handle the car and preferably doesn't introduce too many new parts. I recognize the A-pillar comment. It is indeed a bit too round. I'll play around with some #4 connectors to get a bit sharper corner at the top. Alternative could be to use flexaxles for looks and some structure behind it for strength. Too bad the A-pillars are black. Red flexaxles against a black structure work much better than black on black I think.

Time for another update. I've been working on this almost all of the time I have to work with LEGO, but progress is slow. Not in a bad way slow, as in I have difficulties with finding the energy to work on it, but in a good way slow, as you would enjoy reading a good book. The car sort of demands to get every detail right. So it is a continuous urge to push the design further. So let's start with an overview shot: I'd say the general shape is starting to come together. There are still a lot of details to work on (like the doors, the interior, etc.), but the basics are in. I have an 8D+N+R gearbox, a V12 and pushrod suspension on both ends that is stiff enough to support the weight of the car, whilst compact enough to fit in that ultratight bodywork. The central tub is more boatlike then before with huge sidepods for the airintakes for the motor. The front is starting to take shape as well. The challenge here is to minimize the clutter, while keeping the shape correct. The little triangle in front of the window can be opened (albeit there is almost no space below it to put anything in): The headlights are one of those details that have cost me already several hours to design. And I am still not happy with them, so some more redesigns will follow. But the detail that has taken by far the most time so far are those pesky rearlights: The current compromise is the omit the middle row of lights. This allows for a very clean and compact design. You can also see the big diffusor shape. Furthermore you can see right through till the front with only the suspension arms of the front wheel blocking your sight (of course this is partly due to the fact that the big airguide behind the frontwheel is still missing). Comments, critique and advice is welcome as always.

Reducing the amount of universal joints will definitely reduce the slack in the system. I would also try to replace any remaining universal joints with CV joints as these have less slack.

I really like those headlights , using the 13x3 panel is a stroke of genius. The airintakes I am less sold on. What happens if you turn the small panel at the bottom of the side intake 90 degrees (or replace it with a combination of #1 connectors and axle-joiners? That downward slope to the middle somehow feels wrong to me. The front airintake could maybe benefit from a continuous orange line at the top. Now there is a 2 stud gap between the hood and the headlight. Adding an orange #1 connector or 2L axle-joiner will make that area more continuous.

Always a tough decision to make when you already have so much invested in a build. I usually switch between digital and physical versions when I have to make these big overhauls, for me that somehow feels less painful. Keep going

Wow, @imvanya @technicmath really creative solutions! Many thanks for this. The horizontal spacing has to be increased to 1.5 studs between the lights, but I think that is for both solutions not a fundamental issue.