DLuders

@ Ape Fight: By chance, is the "large scale (heavy) MOC powered by PF" this 85-studs-long x 26-studs-wide truck? You left too many clues on MOCpages:

Jaydavey9 posted this of a "Novel (at least to the best of my knowledge) Pan and Tilt mechanism built with Lego Technic and NXT servos and controller. Uses only two motors but both motors must work together to achieve pure pan or tilt. The advantage of this design is that both motors contribute torque to both pan and tilt movements giving twice the power to achieve pure pan or tilt. Motors do not act as dead weight during motion, instead they can both be utilized during any movement. This is different to some other designs that have a dedicated servo for tilt and another dedicated servo for pan. The design is bottom heavy for stability making it a good platform to mount cameras and possibly further manipulator joints. This mechanism is more difficult to control than other pan-tilt servo combinations but the power and physical stability of this design could outweigh this disadvantage." The device above has practical applications for photographers. Philo (Phillippe Hurbain) has "Lego Accessories for Photographers" on his website, such as the PanoBot and PanoBot2 pictured below:

Here is a recent of a Lego Technic Power Functions Tank by 1blaz62 that shows how one can alternate grey and black Technic Treads. It seems to work just fine in the snow:

There are LOTS of Lego Technic Power Functions (PF) vehicles out there that run 2 ea. PF XL motors and one PF Medium motor off of ONE battery box and TWO receivers. From the LEGO.com Power Functions Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQs) webpage: Question 2: "How many Power Functions Motors can I drive from one Power Functions Battery Box?" Answer -- "As a rule of thumb, you can drive 2 Power Functions XL-Motors, 3 Power Functions Train Motors or 4 Power Functions M-Motors at the same time from one Power Functions Battery Box. If you wish to run a combination of motors, you can e.g. have 1 XL and 2 M running together. The XL-Motor requires about twice as much power as the M-Motor. The Battery Boxes and the IR Receiver have overload protection, so attempting to drive too many motors will not damage anything. The power a motor consumes depends on what function the motor is performing. Motors will operate best when driving a small load." Question 12: "What happens when the Power Functions overload protection kicks in?" Answer -- "Overload protection is activated when too much power is consumed from either a Power Functions Battery Box or the IR Receiver. This can happen when a motor is blocked or when too many motors are running at the same time. If overload protection is activated, the Battery Box or the IR Receiver will cut off power to the output until power consumption has dropped under the allowed value. To regain power, unblock the motor or disconnect motors from the output – then turn the Battery Box OFF and ON again. Under overload protection, the green light on the Power Functions Battery Box will still be ON."

Corne723 posted this of his Lego Technic car. Despite its modest appearance, it has a lot of functionality.

Thanks, Yoraish! I plan on building this! Your below shows how fun it is: "A Lego trial truck modeled after TATRA 813 6x6- version 2. More at: http://bit.ly/yoraish flickr: http://bit.ly/dZyEJa Instructions: Click http://yoraish.wordpress.com/instructions/ OR http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/yoraish/Tatra6x6V2/tatra_6x6_v2_complete.lxf ."

On this TechnicBRICKS post, Conchas reported on the redesigned Lego Technic Tread. Here is the short version: "The original version have a slightly different design from the newest parts and thus LEGO should have changed the mold. This was found by John while playing with ideas to build some large wheels, using circles made of these tread links turned inside-out. By mixing some old and new parts from different sets, suddenly some wheels became very un-wheel like. Looking to find where the problem was, John found to have two types of different tread links. The newest ones had little protrusions in the contact to the next link, that make impossible to create such circles as small as with the old style. Digging further he found also that alternating new & old style links would prevent this issue, despite not very convenient having to sort them all... Although both types will work fine with each other, if mixed in the same track. Because an image is worth a thousand words, below a couple of pictures with annotations from John [brost], which better show the difference between old & new parts design." "The change should have occurred in 2009, since all my DGB and Black links stock from 2007-2008 sets (8272, 8275, 8294 and 7645) have the old style links. Just got the ones with new design, at sets 8263 and 7632 already from 2009. Despite the mold modification, both parts exhibit a "© 2006 LEGO" mark and the same mold reference (57518)."

Crowkillers has 7 pictures of a design in his Brickshelf gallery that you could possible double-up with Technic pins:

Sariel has some ideas for single Power Functions controller handsets; maybe you could pin two of them side by side. He pointed out that TechnicBRICKS has lots of good ideas too. You may be able to adapt some of the designs to do what you have described above.

On his Flickr photostream, Barman76/ barebos has "reverse-engineered" the 8071 (2H2011) set and posted the four pictures below. He also posted a showing all of the 8071's functions. He wrote, "Thanks to Flickr member fbtb for posting the photos of the Technic set 8071 on 2011 Toy Fair. Because of this I could reverse engineer this set. There where a view details I had to guess which part(s) where used. So with a couple of misstakes I think I come pretty close to the original set."

Karf Oohlu posted a picture of the "Tech Family" on his Flickr photostream: "Meet the Techs -- Mum and Dad Tech and little Nick. Little Nick will eventually grow into his adult neck, especially once dad stops trying to strangle him : D " I am unable to post the image here, so you'll have to go to the Flickr link above to check them out.

Yoshroom posted this of his "Lego dualstear. It is an ultra fun model. By using independant turning, this model becomes the most mad and fun Lego model i have ever made." It has 4-wheel drive (4WD) and 4-wheel Steering (4WS) to allow for crab-like, sideways movement into tight parking spaces. The LED lights and optional trailer make this Trial Truck quite versatile.

Although there may not be many NORWEGIAN Bricklink stores (only 11), you could try stores in nearby Denmark (54 stores) or Sweden (28 stores). TECHNIC is most popular in Germany (238 stores), so they could have the best prices and selection.

On his Flickr photostream, Barman76 also gets into the spirit by posting his "White Ice 1 -- Allround Car Competition car 4x4 based on an Icelandic Racer. Build for the ACC race "Plastic Power", there are no tires allowed. Creates a nice drift car race." It uses a special "RC pistol controller, build for the White Ice. It can be controle with 1 or 2 hands. With the small stick on the back the steering can be controled by the thumb. Controller is based on LegOscar's pistol controller." The shows it spinning around:

On this Flickr photostream, Dikkie Klijn posted 8 pictures of a "R.A.T or Red Alien Turtle is a litte racing car made to participate in de ACC - Plastic Power of Lowlugs next meeting." There is an interesting use of the g15 "Technic, Gear Expert Builder 15 Tooth" parts as wheels. The shows it "drifting" across the floor:

On his Flickr photostream, Konajra posted renders of his Lego Sandvik PF300 Mobile Mining Crusher. Here are "2 Lview shots of latest work. A Sandvik pf 300 fully mobile mining crusher. in a 1:40 scale. Only the handrailing and stairs didn't work out the way i wanted so that will be done when this machine becomes reality. Hopefully it will be build starting somewhere in October this year. First I have to collect all the bricks." Do you think that this can be built with real Lego bricks? Why or why not?

This forum is for "Technic, Mindstorms & Model Team". The vehicles in that Brickshelf folder could fall under the "Model Team" category. They could just as easily appear in the "Lego Town" forum.

A quick Google search revealed nothing. Are you thinking about making an 8049 alternate? What kind of vehicle could you make with these unusual parts?

@ montyofmusic: Did you follow the procedures in "Part 2" of this Eurobricks post? It says: Part 2 - Turn advanced graphics OFF (because LDD is crashing or not starting) Q1: I just installed LDD 4 over a previous LDD 3 installation, and now LDD will only start for a few seconds and then shut down. Why? A: Most likely because you have a line in your preferences.ini-file left from the LDD 3 installation that says UseShadersInScene=yes UseShadersInPalette=yes You need to edit the preferences.ini-file and set those values to "no". For Windows 7 and Vista it can be found here C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer\preferences.ini For Windows XP here: C:\Documents And Settings\UserName\ApplicationData\Lego Company\Lego Digital Designer\preferences.ini NOTE: If you can't find this folder, the read here how to make it visible.

On his website, Nico71 (Nicolas Lespour) posted high-resolution PDF Building Instructions for his Lego Single-Cylinder Pneumatic Engine (LPE-1). You can see more on his Brickshelf gallery, and on this , where it displays the "Crankshaft and connectig rod, symetric rods as parallel slides with classic switching system. Work up to 200rpm on the flywheel. Very simple and functional...."

Itchy4000 has added many BIG pictures of his Lego Brueckenlegepanzer M48 AVLB to his Brickshelf gallery. The bridge is very strong -- it can hold a 5-kg (12 pound) weight mid-span! His shows it in action. His Lego Jeep is quite good too (see his and Brickshelf gallery for more):

The Lego Technic Challenge is coming back this Spring. What do you think the monthly themese will be? Please list them below by "Replying" to this post. Let's assume that the 2010 youth winner (Robin7520 -- Finely Hudson) and the 2010 AFOL winner (Zblj -- Jernej Krmelj) are eligible to compete again in 2011! The prizes they won are impressive:

On February 16, 2011, the Lego Technic Designers Blog posted this full-page description of the new mini Linear Actuator (mLA): "This year we expanded the system with a new smaller linear actuator in the 8069 Backhoe Loader. A few years ago we introduced the linear actuator in the LEGO Technic system. This year we expanded the system with the new smaller linear actuator in the 8069 Backhoe Loader. Linear actuators work by converting a rotary motion into a linear motion. Before we had the linear actuators we used different methods of getting the linear movement in to our models. One way can be seen here: When combining a worm gear (1) with an 8-tooth gear-wheel (2) running on one or more toothed racks (3) you can build your own "linear actuator" by pushing the racks back and forth with the small gear-wheel. The LEGO Technic linear actuators works in a similar way and fits perfect in to our building system and our models - especially when used together with the Power Functions motors, like in big crane arms. Try to take a look at the 8258 Crane Truck and the 8053 Mobile Crane, which both uses the actuators. Both models also have other ways of linear movement - can you guess what those are? Because the linear actuators are very powerful, we added a clutch mechanism in both the large and the small actuator. The clutch acts as a safety mechanism; breaking off power to the actuator when the power reaches a certain limit. The clicking sound you can hear from the actuator when it is at its maximum or minimum reach is the clutch being activated. Now let’s look inside the large linear actuator: The orange part (1) is where you put the input axle - the rotating movement. On the inside of the orange connector you see the clutch assembly (2). The clutch drives the white threaded tube (3) which pushes the threaded metal-piston (4) in and out. Because the small linear actuator only is one module wide, it works a little bit different: The orange part (1) is the input axle which extends all the way through the threaded tube (2) and has a built-in clutch function at the end of it (3). The threaded tube (2) is also the piston of the actuator. So why not just use pneumatic cylinders instead? Well, all actuators are self-locking, which means you can't push the piston in and out by hand. That gives you the possibility to control the position of the piston very accurately even when lifting heavy loads. When using pneumatic cylinders that is more difficult. However, the big advantage of the pneumatic system is that it is much easier to get the power to the cylinder. You don’t need to build a long drive-train with cross-axles and gearwheels. You just run two pneumatic hoses from the valve to the cylinder and that’s it. So depending on how precise or powerful your function has to be, you have to select either a linear actuator or a pneumatic cylinder."

Hmmm, bazmarc's shows the LEGO World MINDSTORMS booth area, but this giant tracked vehicle is not shown....

Perhaps the newly-released LEGO MINDdroid v1.2 has solved the connectivity problem. "Now there is an updated version that gives you new features and activities. Here's a list of what is new with MINDdroid version 1.2: - German language included - Improved tutorial texts, also in German - Improved bluetooth dialog - Improved bluetooth connection algorithm, improvements on Bluetooth connection for HTC Desire - NXJUploader - for uploading leJOS-NXJ-apps to the robot (only enabled when the new leJOS NXJ robot model is selected).Comes with two included nxj-Files (AlphaRex.nxj and MINDGameZ.nxj). - Control the Alpha Rex model from the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 set (#8547). You can make the Alpha Rex walk, shake, talk to you via your phone, in your language, give you sensor readings and play music (on your phone). NOTE: this feature only works with the leJOS NXJ firmware."