Phoxtane

That they are. While high-end industrial printers are almost there, the average consumer doesn't necessarily want to take out a second mortgage on their house to get one! Consumer-grade printers are still limited to rapid prototyping, and the final product still has to be sent to a printing company for best results. For now, I think that making your own Lego components is rather expensive - Lego quite a bit of money on just one mold. I think the closest you could get to that would be milling your own parts on a machine like this one: But that'd still be prohibitively expensive

I actually have the Technology resource set - my parents signed me up for some class, and I got a free set of instructions. It's where most of my studfull Technic beams came from!

I'm fairly certain that Lego Education doesn't pop up on many people's radars when they're looking for good deals. As a matter of fact, you can sometimes get a steal on clearance parts and grab packs of rare-ish parts as well! For example, on their clearance page, you can grab a RCX brick for 65 USD and a package of 100 light bley 5L half-width beams for three USD! The page can be found here: http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/gallery-Clearance There's also the Assorted Tire Pack ( http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/assorted_tire_pack/2206 ), the White Beams Pack ( http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/simple_and_motorized_mechanisms_white_beams_pack/2366 ), and the Blue Angle Beams Pack ( http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/simple_and_motorized_mechanisms_blue_angle_beams_pack/2367 ). I feel that the white and blue beams packs are going to be of high interest, as they are blue and white Technic beams that you can get new! Be sure to check the clearance page regularly, as the selection there rotates through constantly. I managed to pick up 50 light bley shock absorbers from that page for only 25 USD a little while ago!

A 3D printer works by adding materials to create the final product. This device removes materials, making it a milling machine. That said, I'd love to see a Lego-built 5-axis CNC machine!

I built a cage for my Flip Mino video camera out of Technic beams. I'll see about getting better pictures as well as more tomorrow. The cell phone camera isn't cutting it anymore. It's even got a snazzy tripod to stand it on as well, with one set of legs for hard surfaces and another for carpet. Interestingly enough, the camera measures exactly 12.5 studs long, seven studs wide, and two studs deep, making it very easy to mount securely in a frame via half-width beams and certain pins. The back is nearly entirely open, exposing the camera controls for ease of use, and the power button is exposed on the top as well. To remove the camera from the frame, you can simply pull the upper half from the lower half thanks to four pin and axle connections. Potential uses include: - Simple time-lapse stand - Cheapo tripod The frame was actually designed as a way to be able to mount the camera onto a Lego vehicle, allowing me to take footage of what the vehicle would see. If you'd like to build this frame, the link to a LDD file is included below. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/84375076/Mino_Cage.lxf

I'm rather certain you didn't get a counterfeit Lego set. Most of the Lego imitations I've heard of aren't direct copies of certain sets. Even if they are, they're of the small polybag or very small box variety, presumably because they're easy to copy. The 8043 is not a simple set by any means! At 6:10 in this video, Ashens produces a Best-Lock 'Kimmy' set, which appears to be some sort of Friends clone. He's shown a Best-Lock army playset that had a army man and some sort of rocket. As with the 'Kimmy' set, it was rather small and poorly made. TLG shouldn't be worried about this company for quite a while, I think

Good lord, doesn't that man know that if you put too many engines onto a playset it'll collapse into a dimension where you have to wrestle a moose chewing walnuts while wearing flannel?!

I showed this to some people who aren't into Lego, and they were all impressed by the freewheel system. What is the white part being used for the freewheel housing? It looks familiar.

I thought the target for the electroplating process had to be some sort of conductive metal? Or am I missing something entirely about how electroplating works?

Arr, Capt'n Pegleg be at your service as well, matey!

Ah, yes, I remember that now. I'm still going to maintain my opinion that the tail prop is necessary on the Sikorsky. According to the Wikipedia article on this aircraft, most of the power is transferred to the tail prop - which implies that the rotors are primarily used for upwards lift. Intriguing. Unfortunately, I don't see how this would work without a massive rotor surface, which turns into drag at supersonic speeds. There's also the added weight to contend with... I think that at best your design would compromise the ability of the helicopter to fly. By the way- I had it wrong. The tail rotor is actually a tail propellor!

I will also say that the tail rotor on the B-model would not be redundant in real life; as far as I can tell, there's no way for the main rotors to actually tilt forward! Without that tail rotor, it'd only go up. That's the Sikorsky X2, an experimental high-speed helicopter prototype. It's already set a new helicopter high-speed record of 259 miles an hour [418ish kilometers an hour, if you live across the pond]. Once it starts going fast enough, the main rotors slow down to the point where they keep it in the air, but aren't creating too much drag, and the tail rotor takes over.

I ran the numbers, and my prediction regarding the total number of Aquaman minifigures sold should total at 72.

Could I make a suggestion? It may be a good idea to cover the water tank with a plastic bag; that way, if the truck falls over for some reason, you won't get water inside your Power Functions.

One thing to note: the smaller official sets appear to use many smaller axles to make connections between beams. You could try building many small MOCs to use up some of those parts.

If you keep most of your parts in one bin like I do, it helps if you sort out all of the small interesting parts that you don't have a lot of.

The third-party tires are better because the tread is so much deeper and wider. It's especially so on the edges, so those tires can grip the cracks and crevices much better than a Lego tire.

Maybe a screw grabber would work? It's got three curved wires that spread out as you push on the top. You could be able to get at the the grooves in a 2L axle pin with that.

I managed to take a Jack-Stone era rim that only has the one pin hole for mounting to the vehicle frame and stick one of the Technic pins that's designed to put plates on Technic beams - that weird 1.5 unit long piece. Took me six years to figure out that my teeth could do the job...

You have to have at least one hundred posts in other sections to be able to create a topic in that sub-forum. According to that section's rules, the mods may be willing to make an exception, depending on what you're attempting to buy/sell/trade.

Looks to me like it's one step up in complexity from the Quad Bike. I'm not sure if I like it or not...

I wonder if they use a high-speed camera recognition system like they have in food processing. Coupled with a accurate scale, this would ensure that each set has the perfect amount of spare parts.

People with "Computer/engineer/technical" backgrounds were the largest group to take this survey... That's interesting, because I can see why that would be so, and yet I can see why it would also NOT be so. It's definetly a 'hmmmm' moment for me!

I got Lego catlogs far enough back to remember the Belvue and Clickits lines... there were what, like, three waves apiece? I will say that IMHO the Friends figures are just plain weird and to me fit more into the Polly Pocket style than Lego.