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Hopey

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Everything posted by Hopey

  1. Hopey
    I've been travelling for the last few weeks, so haven't really been keeping up with developments. I made it to Lego World Copenhagen on Thursday, which was awesome in a great many ways. One of which was that they had all of the 2h 2013 sets on display in glass cabinets. I think some of the reverse engineers might be interested in the underside shots that I took. Apologies for the reflections. I do have higher resolution versions of these, but am on very restricted internet at the moment.
  2. Hopey
    I noticed these guys: I have no idea if they're official sets or what; I don't really follow Hero Factory, I just thought it was cool that the 9396 blades were being used elsewhere. I've also got some low-quality photos of 42008 and 42009 (the 2h technic sets) from underneath, if anyone's interested. They were in a cabinet, but on glass shelves, so I managed to capture some details.
  3. Hopey
    I was there today, my first ever convention and I was completely blown away. It was very cool seeing some of the MOCs that I'd looked at on EB in real life. And just the sheer scale of it all, the amount of new, quality lego that was just in piles for everyone to play with. I had a dig in the technic section for instance, and there were several cubic feet of parts. as a guess, I'd say that at least 10 each of 9398, 9397, 9396, 8110 and a bunch more had been mixed together for everyone to rummage through. I could have spent weeks there. I was almost tempted to try and pocket some of the fancier parts, like servo motors and whatnot, but my conscience got the better of me. There were no bag checks or anything when I left, even for folks with big bags or prams. Do they just assume that all the good bits, minifigs, etc are going to walk out the door?
  4. Hopey
    I think there might be 12 wheels? It looks as though the middle axle has double wheels. For the B model, I predict some kind of truck and trailer, similar to the 8285 B model
  5. Hopey
    Welcome to the internet
  6. Hopey
    Any idea where it's going to be available? I'll be living in Australia by then, and I'm worried I'm not going to be able to get one...
  7. Hopey
    If only there were some empirical way in which we could determine which one out of a set of, lets say 10 different models, is most favoured by the community, then we wouldn't need to have these hypothetical arguments over which one "should of" won...
  8. Hopey
    I don't even understand your point. The winning entry wasn't Danish, it was Russian. What do the prizes (or lack thereof) have to do with it? Everyone who entered knew the rules and weren't expecting a prize; the prize is having your model made by TLG. I don't doubt that corporations are motivated by money, but smart ones are in it for the long term, and realise that there's more money to be made by improving customer relations through legitimate competitions such as this than they could possibly do by rigging it. In fact, I don't even understand how you're proposing they would make money from rigging it. If they didn't want the enforcer to win, why did they include it in the final 10? No offence, but saying "trust me" like that makes you sound like one of those wacky 9/11 or moon landing conspiracy theorists.
  9. Hopey
    Unless you've seen someone showing that they've already done this, you're not going to have much luck just asking for something like this. Rather than just ask for someone else to do it for you wholesale, you'd probably be better off having a go at it yourself, posting your progress, and asking specific questions. First you need to decide what kind of suspension you want, how many axles you want driven, steered, etc. A good starting point is this thread. The parts you have available will also have an impact; e.g. to do full independent suspension you probably need some kind of specialised wishbone parts, whereas a live axle or pendular suspension uses more generic parts.
  10. Hopey
    Sigh. "Rigged" would imply that the organisers (i.e. The Lego Group) somehow influenced the results towards the winning entry. I'll believe this when I see some evidence. What actually happened is that rm88 effectively promoted his entry using social media, forums, etc, and perhaps some national pride. You might argue that this is unfair, or not in the spirit of the competition, and that the voting should have been done solely on the objective merits of the model itself. Good luck with that though; I can't think of any large-scale democratic process where the winner is decided purely based on objective merits and isn't effectively a popularity contest. rm88 made a good model, one of the best, which was half the battle. (Personally I liked the quad bike, and wasn't really a fan of the enforcer) The other half was promoting it effectively, in which he definitely did the best job, and that's why he came out on top. If you didn't realise you had to play that part of the game, no point getting bitter now. Oh, and by the way, it's "should have", not "should of".
  11. Hopey
    Would I be correct in saying that with any solution involving selecting one of two gear trains that the whole thing's going to get out of sync pretty quickly? i.e. if the wheels aren't all pointing exactly ahead when you switch over, then they aren't going to be aligned. I'm thinking of something involving linkages instead. I don't have a full solution yet, or the tools to do a proper model, however if you could attach the steering arms to some sort of offset cam, then make it so that you can somehow switch (slide?) them to the other side, then the same input should have the opposite steering effect. Not sure what the mechanism would be. Might need a crudely drawn image: If the grey things represent some linkage to the steering arm, then turning the blue axle will steer. If you could somehow switch the attachment point from A to B, you could reverse the steering direction, with no backlash and without losing alignment. Not sure how though.
  12. Hopey
    I've never seen them before, but it appears to be 8167
  13. Hopey
    Out of interest, does anyone have any insight into how the B-model fits into the design process? I.e. when they're designing a new set, do they just design the A model, then give the parts list to someone to come up with a B model? Or are they designed simultaneously?
  14. Hopey
    My votes: 8043: For playability it's great, just because of how quick it goes. 9396: I just love the intermeshing rotors. Also, they've looked at the parts they had, and come to the conclusion that they couldn't do much besides build another helicopter, so they've gone for almost as different a helicopter as they possibly could. Completely different landing gear mechanism as well. I only got my 8880 last week, and I haven't built the B model yet, but I do like the look of it. 2 side questions: a) What B models have as many (or more) features as the A model? They always seem pared down; the 8043B doesn't switch functions; the 9396B only has two functions on its gearbox rather than 2, 8880B is only 2WD, etc. b) What sets contain the most parts specifically for the B model? The only example I can think of is the 8838 shock cycle, which had a pulley wheel + tyre for the front wheel of the B-model trike, not used in the A model.
  15. Hopey
    How did you choose this motor? There's a whole range of them at the mabuchi website. Including this one: 50mm x 36mm excluding shaft, no-load rpm 23,400 at 9.6V draws 1.4A. Stalled torque 21 N.cm draws 57A (!). Draws 9.5A at max efficiency, outputting 65W. About US$10. Go big or go home, I say
  16. Hopey
    I think the whole "It'll never fly" aspect of the conversation might have overshadowed the fact that this is an awesome MOC. It's still worth getting the best possible implementation of the various control surfaces, landing gear, etc, just for the sake of it. Folks build plenty of MOC cars with the best possible suspension, steering geometry, etc, without ever actually driving them in a way that utilises these, and often don't drive them at all. You just do it because you can. I'm slightly concerned that if this thing fails to get off the ground, or even worse does a half takeoff then destroys itself, then you're going to be very disappointed. When, in fact you've built one of the best aeroplane MOCs I've ever seen, flying or not.
  17. Hopey
    I've noticed a bit of a discrepancy in that many (perhaps a majority) of AFOL Technic MOCs are remote controlled, whereas the only official RC sets (other than the old Racers models, such as those with the buggy motors) are 8257, 8043 and 9398. Clearly AFOLs like remote control more than TLG does. I'm not entirely sure why this is. Partially it's to do with cost, obviously, as including an IR reciever and XL motor with 8070 for example would increase the cost quite a bit. There's basically no chance of TLG producing an official set with 3 or 4 IR receivers and 8 or more motors, like some MOCs have, but I reckon a remote control car on the scale of 8081 or 9395 for a reasonable cost would sell in huge numbers, among AFOLs and otherwise. I'm curious why they don't. Perhaps they'll worry that kids will break them? The 3 sets mentioned above are all rather slow, 2 of them being tracked (although the 8043 B-model is delightfully quick, and great fun to scoot around). Or that they want to keep it kind of special, only releasing an RC model every 2 years or so?
  18. Hopey
    So have you done any empirical comparisons of the torque? I'm now quite sure how to calculate it. Based on stalled torque of 393g.cm = 3.85 N.cm ungeared at 13000rpm. With the original gearing (for comparison) of 1:36, this would be (ignoring losses) about 140 N.cm at 360rpm, compared to the original XL motor's 40 N.cm at 220rpm. I'm not sure how accurate stalled torque is as a measure, but that looks pretty good.
  19. Hopey
    Looks beautiful, but what's with the herb garden on the roof?
  20. Hopey
    Wow, you read my mind. So I'm going to go with a bucket wheel excavator instead. Or a chainsaw.
  21. Hopey
    The coupled cylinders should provide the same force, and work at the same speed with the same load. The newer grey pump has a longer stroke; you can offset the crank by 1L for a stroke of 2L. The older yellow and blue ones you have to offset the crank by 0.5L for a stroke of only 1L. I'm not sure if this means you get twice as much air pumped, but you certainly get more.
  22. Hopey
    Each function would require a switch, so three switches. 2 of them will connect to two cylinders each. I felt like drawing a picture:
  23. Hopey
    I bought mine mainly because I'm moving to Australia next month, where they're AU$20.99 ~= £13.80 or €16.50, almost twice as much. I've been picking up a couple of things from ebay as well, as there's practically no second-hand market in Australia. On eBay.co.uk, searching for used "lego technic" shows 7000 results, whereas on ebay.com.au there's a grand total of 100. Oh well, there's always bricklink.
  24. Hopey
    Tilting the whole wing like that might have some effect during takeoff, but once it's flying an supported by the wing, you'll just be adjusting the angle of the motor, and maybe shifting the centre of balance a little bit. I think you'd need tail with elevators or canards of some sort on the front. Although, I guess this is how hang gliders work, so it could work if you have enough precision of control.
  25. Hopey
    I bought two from the UK lego website last week for £7.99 each, and they were shipped from the Netherlands.
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