Carsten Svendsen

I'm not familiar with a whole lot of studded bricks or their building techniques at all, so help and pointers would be appreciated. First off, everything shall be made with studded bricks to get the right curvature. The studless liftarm pictured above is just an illustration. Secondly, I need the inner part and the outer part, which means the 15L liftarm pictured above is the inner part, and the frame around it is the outer part. (It's an enclosure that opens) I only need ½ a circle. Orientation of the studs on the bricks doesn't matter as I will have to adjust it anyway. The center point is the first hole of the 15L liftarm and the opposite end of the liftarm is the end of the opening door. Is this possible?

Oh that's a shame, I would find it very useful otherwise

I can't find this piece anywhere on Bricklink. I looked through the entire liftarm and bionicle catalog with no luck, I also searched for the part number. Does it even exist?

3: 10 18: 6 2: 4 10: 3 15: 2 17: 1

I had a look in the index and I didn't know that there was a battle bot contest right before this one. I must say many of the entries are really great in that competition. I build mine on a very limited time and I probably constrained my self a bit too much by using the yellow rings as a base, where as others had just used proper turntables.

16. Road Breaker Functions: Drive All wheel steering Command seat always points in driving direction Swinging arms to knock opponents away

You haven't seen the video yet. My idea and the entire concept is spot on, I just haven't had enough time to perfect it. Ideally I wanted it to go fast and turn perfectly, but that's how it is.

I have barely had any time to build this for the past few weeks, so I have not had time to perfect the drive train and rotation/steering properly, but it works alright. I just had to get it done today as I will otherwise be out of time for the contest - not that I can compete with the other entries but at least I'm in. I extended the arms a bit further out so that they won't interfere with the wheels. I added a pilot and the battery box plus a basic base. What you see below is the final design, which is why this won't be able to turn 360° or even 180° (because the tan bevel gear is in the way) Originally I wanted it to just keep turning around the same way but the wires need some sort of wind up to keep them in place, and well... time restraints What you see next is the final product and bodywork. It could've been a lot worse, but probably also a bit better. Video will come later today.

That's a shame, I liked the model, it looked really cool. If you don't have enough time to finish it then that's how it is I guess.

Yeah just get to building, it looks very promising. The V8 is quite rad, I like it.

That looks cool, but I can't see how it's supposed to hit other vehicles as the arm seems a bit short for that? I like the concept though :)

The gear train has been revised and I had to reduce the gearing even more to make it move more fluidly. I changed the knob gears to 12t bevel gears as well to make it smoother I also switched out the M-motor for an L-motor. The gearing to the wheel is: 16t - 16t then 12t - 12t then 16t - 24t then 12t - 20t ; A total gear ratio of 2½ : 1 It's moving quite slowly, but it'll just have to do when there's so little space. For the buggy motor driving the destruction ring I moved the output to the faster one so now it goes as fast as possible given enough power. I already tested it with my V2 receiver and it works wonders driving the ring around. It's now fast enough to swing out the liftarms as I want it to. I also decided to look for a proper way to hold the ring in place with gears as the other method proved to have too much friction. It was quite difficult since I had to move the gears in place by half a studs width but I managed somehow. Now for a way to attach everything to the ring I initially planned to use #3 connectors and #3 axles in a ring arrangement, but it didn't quite fit properly. Just barely, but there was too much friction and it was hard to move around, so I ended up just attaching everything to it in the good old fashion. I found those red super long axle things and found that 2 fits in a perfect circle around the arrangement. So that's why I'm going to make it have a red theme to it. I just don't know how I'm gonna do it yet but I'll get around to figuring something out. In the following I tried using all red bricks but I think it might just be too red, what do you guys think? Also the red is really bad on this phone, I'll sort out some better photos next time. I think it might look cool if done correctly. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of red studded bricks to make art out of that battery box with so I'll figure something out. That's it for now, and I won't be building again until in maybe 2 weeks time, I just have too much on my hands at this moment.

I am impressed by the amount of functions you could fit inside of it while still making it look fantastic. Normally I don't care for car mocs but I think this one stands out a fair bit from the regular race cars that I see all the time. Nice job!

I decided that the model was going to be way too bulky, so I dropped the two XL motors and put in just a single M motor for the drive train. I also moved all of the motors to lie down as far down as possible, to make more room for other components as you will see later. I wanted the outer destruction ring to go faster so that I can actually use the right pieces instead of random Bionicle stuff, and I tried everything with an M motor but it wouldn't fit anywhere and if it did, the gearing was too low. So ultimately I put in a buggy motor which required quite a modification on the model to fit. The buggy motor is driving the ring with a 16t gear for a rotation speed of 75 rpm @ 7.2v or 105 rpm @ 9v. I still don't know whether I'll use batteries or the rechargeable one. The drive chain goes around the buggy motor nicely since it has rounded parts. Since its direct full speed immediately I put in a clutch gear to take the initial torque spike, however, the teeth weren't long enough to engage the chain properly so I changed it back to a normal 24t gear. Later on, I discovered that the 24t gear would have some space issues so I changed it to a 16t gear which doesn't engage the chain as well and I'm having some issues now which I'll resolve tomorrow. It's also a lot slower than it used to be. I wanted to fit the 2 IR Receivers on the right hand side where there's now no obstructions. I had to change the entire (grey) construction and getting the Receiver to sit flush was also a lot more difficult than anticipated. As you will see on the picture below, the Receiver has been moved ½ a stud horizontal AND vertical to fit properly I forgot to take a midway picture, but the drive motor has been moved to the side and in order to fir next to the knob gears, there was going to be a spacing of 4 studs 24t gears are too big to fit in a 3 stud gap so I just put 16t gears and chain on which works flawlessly. I turned the chain the right way around to make it less likely to break. The IR Receivers has also been installed and just about fits the structure. Next I wnated to install the destruction ring gear and I found very quickly, that with all the components installed, there's no room to fit bevel gears properly or even secure them properly. Therefore I just made do with the current construction and used normal bricks to hold it in place. It's quite a bit noisy but it works nicely. After that there was only really cable management left and that was quite easy I have ensured that the cable around the buggy motor doesn't touch the 16t gear in any circumstances as I very quickly wrecked one of my cables because of this. Tomorrow I will be looking at fixing the drive train as it's stuck going one way for some reason. After that, I'll be looking at installing the top control house and the destruction ring thing. I'm considering using different colored liftarms for the ring than yellow or black to cut the yellow color back a bit. Tell me what you think, It was quite a challenge to put 2 M-Motors, a buggy motor and 2 IR Receivers inside the rings while still keeping it functional. The battery box & the rechargeable battery are both 4 studs wide, so if I lay either of them on the side it'll be the same height regardless. The only difference is that it's going to get bulky or really bulky, so I'm wondering what will look best as it has to turn over the 20t bevel gear regardless.

I think that you'll find it steers as expected once you pull the rubber tires off of the rims. The problem with skid steering is that for it to work, the wheels or belts usually, will have to slide across the ground. The reason you find it more difficult to work on smooth floors is because of increased friction compared to a carpet floor.

It looks interesting, but without more information I can't tell whether I should be exited or not. I really like the panel job though, nice clean surfaces - top notch!

I have a rechargeable PF battery so it's not going to be too heavy if that was your concern. My only concern is trying to make it look nice and appealing after all the bulky stuff has been installed.

I've always wanted to make something different using the new yellow ring gears, and this competition sparked an idea instantly. I won't tell you what the wacky function is just yet as it will become more apparent later on. I started by building a set of tracked wheels. I didn't have enough of the small sprockets so I had to use the large ones. It turned out that the individual wheels got way bigger than I anticipated so I had to install them on the outside of the ring. The distance to the center of the ring from the 24t gears was an odd number, so I had some issues finding the right combination of gears. Eventually I stumbled upon the old sprocket gears and they fit perfectly. It was at this stage that I realized there were some problems making it move. I had already ensured that no gears had been clamped but it was still not moving without struggle. After many hours I ended up finding the issue in the tracks them selves. By taking off the tracks it moved a lot better, still not smooth though. The distance between the wheel sprockets was also an odd number and I had build the main beam out of bricks like this to make it interact with the 12t bevel gears properly. Even with a sufficient amount of bracing it still kinda came lose, but the tracks still wouldn't move so I decided to scrap them and use small wheels instead. I don't have enough wheels in the same color so I put a yellow axle through the yellow wheels, a grey axle with the white wheels and a black axle with the black wheels. I know it's a mismatch of colors but it could be worse These were actually the right size to fit perfectly underneath the ring. I was extremely lucky that the worm gears you see underneath interacted perfectly with the 24t gears even when it's all out of alignment like that. So naturally I spent a while putting a supporting structure around it all. This is for steering by the way. There will be an M-motor directly on to the 12t bevel gear. In order for this to work with the drive train correctly (which is all of the red axles), The wheel units must be facing the same way or they will just drive in opposite directions, getting no where. So now I had to install the drive train. I had already planned on using a chain for it all as it seemed robust enough to hold if wrapped around the gears properly. So you will see that there's a 24t gear in the middle driving the chain. It turned out later that even though the chain looks tight enough, I had to put a 24t gear on each side to make it even tighter. Bonus info: You see those two 3L half beam in the center of the 5x7 frame? Yeah those were actually quite fiddly to get in as it had to be done on the model. For the drive train I wanted two speeds, mainly so the chain doesn't go from 0-100 instantly and gets ripped apart, since that would be almost impossible to get back together again. I simply put a differential with a motor on either side and it works wonders. However, the XL motors take up a massive amount of space so I tried using M-motors instead. It didn't work as one motor just spins the other one around. Only the XL motors have enough internal resistance to work like this sadly. You will also notice that I ran an axle from the steering function to the top with a few universal joints - more on this later. For extra stability on the M motor I put a technic brick thingy, which I never thought about using like that before. Time to install the wacky function! After several hours I finally found the perfect combination to make the 12t bevel gears interact on the ring gear without any strain. The answer looks obvious when you already have the solution. On the opposite side I put another M motor with a 24t gear interacting on the ring gear. Again I used the technic brick thingy as you can never have enough stability. Ideally I wanted the motor to extend less up, or lie it down even but the XL motors are in the way. I could just put one XL motor on the drive train vertically which would clear up heaps of space on either side where the motors are currently. I just don't want to lose the 2 speed functionality is all... Now is the time to install the base of the cabin to see if it'll all fit nicely together. This is why I needed the connection to the steering, so that the cabin is always looking in the driving direction. I had to put a chain up here as well or I would be reversing the turning direction. Now that that's taken care of, I can start working on the actual wacky function. If you look below, initially I wanted the liftarm to swing out in a 45° angle when spinning for that insane road clearing, but it turns out that it doesn't spin fast enough. I know this because it works fine if I just swing it in my hand. Therefore I had to find another method of sweeping action. I remembered that I had quite a few Bionicle Bohrok sets and the special pieces are big and light enough to catch air and open up when spinning on the model. The only issue here is that they are almost all in different colors, it's gonna be a massive rainbow effect when it's spinning around. That is all that I've been doing this weekend and I will continue the build next weekend. Before I even started this project I thought to my self that I was going to blow the competition out of the water with this thing. Little did I know that I didn't have enough wheels of the same color, and the size restraint of the big LEGO motors hurts quite a bit too. I don't even know where to put the battery pack and the IR recievers. I reckon the battery will have to go on the top that spins around though the wire will get messy quite quickly. If anything, at least I had fun and learned something, right?

That looks mean bro. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't take 1st place

OH how I wish that Sergio wouldn't have died off so he could have kept SR3D Builder alive. It's a powerful program geared towards technic. You don't have to align gears, and you can animate them simply by clicking one button; no coding required. It's got all the new parts if you use a current LDraw library, however some connections won't be accepted on the new parts due to no one working on the program anymore. What we need is another person like Sergio to continue his work.

I have disassembled it and I made a 3D model while I was at it. Down below you will see snippets of the inner workings if you find that more interesting Click for larger versions (it's only two image files) The input is going in from the bottom, into the trigger, then direction, then speed and lastly, the clutch. I am mostly proud of the gear switch for the clutch mechanism, I think that's quite ingenious. Second to that would be the direction chance lever, which also took me quite a few attempts at getting right. The trigger function was the most difficult one, as I had a lot of space limitations, and finding the right way to switch the transmission wasn't easy, but it works. I'll probably make another attempt once I get all of my stuff here. I would use 2 switches and just a few gears, and then the size should be almost identical to the real thing. If you want the 3D model file, just ask and I'll send it to you immediately. I've made groupings but that feature only works in SR3D Builder

Your creations are great, but could you please stop the insane camera shifting at the beginning of the video. I know a lot of people do that, but it's more professional with automated equipment and much slower movement so that the viewer can actually see the model instead of it just zooming past your face 5 times. It doesn't add anything to the MOC/video if not done properly. Anyway, your GBC looks great for a first try at getting in to GBC.

When I read that it took you six months to build, I was like "6 months for that, there's barely anything in it". And then I looked a bit more at the picture and realized that it was so much bigger than I thought it was. I'd say that's a pretty massive feat, I like it.

Something like this maybe? I know it's a scissor lift mechanism, but it could easily be modified to what you want