DLuders

Earlier this month on MOCpages, Gabor Horvath posted his Lego minifig-scaled Remote-Controlled Daf Truck. It uses Lego Power Functions elements inside a truck body that is only 6 STUDS WIDE! Basic information: Length of the whole truck: 44 studs Length of the trailer: 34 studs Width: 10 studs (with mirrors) Height: 30.5 plates Steering: PF M-Motor Driving: PF M-Motor He notes that in the picture above, "The drive comes from the motor on the left of the picture, through the axle in the foreground to the differential. Then it becomes faster through the light brown and the black gears, then becomes slower through the worm screws. Only one wheel is drived on each side. I think [a differential] is necessary to avoid creaking in the bends and the convolution of the axles and there is enough place, so why not? The wheels are 7 stud wide. It increases the stability and makes the driving more reliable. The other two wheels (they are not drived) are own-built. They don’t bring weight, they are a little bit smaller, so the tires aren’t tight. If they brought some weight, they would steel it from the drived wheels. The result would be, that the truck couldn’t go. He also posted this this Lego Digital Designer (LDD) .lxf Building Instruction file (Note: 4 elements were removed). He noted in the below, "If you steer too much, it will destroy the mechanism of the steering." However, this could be easily remedied by replacing the 24-tooth Technic Gear behind the truck cab with a 60c01 "Technic, Gear 24 Tooth Clutch".

Sheepo has added a "Double Wishbone II" front axle design to his Lego Technic Modular Platform System. "You can download all axles and chassis in only one link: Download ."

I think that stack of 1x7 Technic Liftarms looks fine to simulate a folded fire hose. However, one could use 4081b "Plate, Modified 1 x 1 with Clip Light - Type 2 (thick ring)" parts on the ends of 3666 1x6 Plates or 6636 1x6 Tiles sandwiched in between them:

As noted on Bot Bench, "Anika Vuurzoon has created something so cool. She NXTified the new LEGO Friends invention workshop set (3933). It looks simply fantastic. You should check out her Youtube channel, she’s quite the artist." The below shows the internal workings of the automated figurines:

Wall-E's adventures continue all over the world! On his Facebook page, French-Canadian AFOL bazmarc (Marc-André Bazergui) recently posted several videos and pictures of his Lego Mindstorms WALL-E v5.2 at Lego World 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark. That's him with his creation below; did anybody here on this forum see Wall-E? The shows Wall-E unpacking himself:

@ interestedpen: There are other methods for building Lego cylinders of different radii. From Flickr, eilonwy77's pictures below show "The outside circle is the more traditional way of making circles. The inside is a slightly different methodslightly different method[/url] using more circular pieces. I didn't expect the radii to be different, but they are. You can wrench the ones with more circular pieces into tighter circles. I was trying to re-do a curved wall part, and did it with the more traditional method, and suddenly it wouldn't fit anymore." Image

On this Eurobricks topic, Zblj posted a LDD .lxf file for a round Castle cylinder: Image

On MOCpages, Kenneth Rattledge posted 6 pictures of his modifications to the Lego Technic 9397 Logging Truck: "Here I have extended the chassis and added a third axle. This axle has a lift function on it; at the moment it is manually lifted/lowered by the knob at the back of the truck via a worm gear. It is not really correct as it is a trailing arm setup; it might get modified again at a later date and also maybe I might try and connect it up to the PF gearbox." Here is a size comparison of his modified 9397 Logging Truck with the 8285 Tow Truck:

Yes, the mudguard looks good!

Reported in this Yahoo! article, this "animation was created by Alex Kobbs for the opening of the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The musical score is an original piece named "Roll the Dice," which was composed specifically for this animation by Glen Ballard (yes...THE Glen Ballard). "The event was hosted by Jay Mohr, and held during the 2012 DICE Conference in Las Vegas, NV. The film was projected onto 3 giant stage screens to an audience of roughly 700 individuals, most of whom were/are leaders in the video game industry. "A stream of the entire show can be seen here: http://www.gamespot.com/portal-2/videos/15th-annual-interactive-achievement-awards-6350172/ . "The montage highlights 15 unique games, and is meant to be a celebration of some of 2011's top achievements in the video game industry. "The film took roughly 3 months to complete from start to finish. It was shot on a Canon Digital Rebel XTi at 24fps, 12 movements per second." You can click on the to view it in High Definition! Can you name all 15 video games? Add your guesses below!

@ mpg/ Marco Pirola: Your 3 new pictures look good!

The projected prices are entirely possible. At Shop.Lego.com, the large 8110 Lego Technic Unimog U400 set cost US$199.99 (which seems reasonable), and the technology-rich 8547 Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 set costs $279.99 (with Mindstorms is reportedly the largest-selling Lego Technic set). Inflation in the USA has been running ~3.5% per year, so prices are bound to increase over time. Let's face it -- many Technic AFOLs spend a lot of money on this hobby. We asked TLG for pneumatics --> they gave us the 8110 Unimog. We asked for a lot of recent innovations, and they are trying to meet our wishes. They did their market research, so they believe that enough Technic fans will buy these 2H2012 sets so that they can make a profit....

Mo_ asked me to post this new topic about the POTENTIAL U.S. PRICING for 2nd Half 2012 (2H2012) Lego Technic sets. Using the prices charged for recent sets, he projected the possible cost of these 2H2012 sets (in US Dollars): 9398 4x4 Crawler: US $218.04 9396 Helicopter: US $105.26 9393 Tractor: US $37.59 Because it is difficult to format a table in a Eurobricks post, please refer to the attached Excel spreadsheet. You can see his methodology for predicting the prices above. H2 2012 prices.xls

@ mo_: I tried sending you a Private Message (PM), but "The member mo_ can not use the messaging system. This personal message has not been sent" (probably because you don't have the minimum of 10 Eurobricks posts). So, just send me an e-mail to LudersDG@MSN.com and I'll post your pricing analysis.

@ mo_: You can probably gain some Eurobricks powers when you have at least 10 posts. Here are the hyperlinks and pictures of the Bricklink parts you suggested -- two 54604 "Electric, Light Brick 2 x 4 with Red LED" parts and two x400c20 "Electric, Fiber Optics Cable Wide 20L (Exo-Force)" parts:

Here is Gekke Ted's Eurobricks topic about "Solving Grip Problem with [Lego Technic] Link Treads". On this post, he wrote: "I got them at a Dutch hardware store for about 15 eurocents a piece, depending on the volume of course. You can probably find these in the US too. If not, and if there's more interest in these caps, I can make a shipment to a US Bricklink store, so they can distribute them in the US. Or send it directly, but I am not sure what the shipping costs will be. We can figure something out." On this post, he added: "Shipping to Sweden will cost about 10 Euros up to 2 kg. So you can get 500 for around 70 Euro. Or 200 for around 45 Euro. I am willing to do the shipping for you. If there are more people interested, it might be better to open a Brickstore. However, I am not familiar with the costs and regulations etc."

@ Monkail: Welcome to Eurobricks! On this Eurobricks topic (click on the underlined words), Louskam presented his "Easy Power Functions (PF) Modification" for the 8081 Extreme Cruiser set in the YouTube video below. Although there are no Lego Digital Designer (LDD) building files for it, there are these photo-sequence PDF Building Instructions (134 photos, 26 MB). He built his in white Lego Technic parts; just think "black" instead of "white" when modifying your 8081 Extreme Cruiser. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiHWOqSo8jg Splat/ slfroden motorized (reverse engineered) his Lego 8081, and posted pictures on his Brickshelf gallery. Nuno2500 posted his 21-step Lego Technic 8081 "Easy Power Functions Motorization" on his Brickshelf gallery. That one looked simpler to implement, so I used that method on the 8081 set that I own. If you are ambitious, you could possibly build your own LDD file of a MOTORIZED 8081 Extreme Cruiser, by using the 8081-1 (A-Model) LDD file (from Tore M) or the 8081-2 (B-Model) LDD file (from P4trickvH).

On Brickset, you can read the reviews of the 8069 Backhoe Loader ($59.99), 8081 Extreme Cruiser (also $59.99), and the 8109 Flatbed Truck ($99.99). If you only could choose one and you had enough extra cash, I would buy the 8109 Flatbed Truck.

@ Stari89: Whoa, there's a lot of snow in Slovenia this year! Your Snow Runner does not "clog up" with snow like a lot of other Lego snow vehicles, due to its open chassis design. You should put a "Dog Treat" on it, so your dog will not bark at it anymore! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICw60VrQxAY

@ mo_: Welcome to Eurobricks! I am not a "Lego purist", so I like the idea of utilizing a spent metal CO2 cartridge. If there is a way of REGULATING the pressure (like the speed control knob on a Paintball gun), then a FULL CO2 threaded cartridge could possibly be used on a Lego vehicle. The spent cartridges look a bit like full-size Oxygen or Acetylene tanks....

If you view this Flickr video, you can see the Lego figures "juggling" balls via an optical illusion machine known as a "Zoetrope". Lego Tron wrote that "The slits between plates act as a shutter creating an 8 frame animation. This Legotrope was displayed at BrickCon 2011 in Seattle." I attended that show, but missed seeing it -- perhaps Blakbird or dhc6twinotter remember it....

Thanks for the heads-up, Camaro365! The all-black versions of Technic Panel #5 (Bricklink Bricklink 64681), #6 (64393), #13 (x1979), & #14 (x1980) will come in handy for many other MOCs too! I find it strange that the #13 & #14 BLACK Technic Panels (from the 9397 Logging Truck set) are being sold by TLG in the USA now, while TLG has not released the actual 9397 SET on Shop.Lego.com in the USA....

Optimus Prime can kick all of your gluteus maximii!

@ midori: Welcome to Eurobricks! It would be nice to have an "Extra Small" (XS) Power Functions Battery Box barely larger than a 9V battery. This adapter (pictured below) is made from a PF Adapter Cable soldered onto a 9V battery plug that clips onto the top of the 9V battery, but is does not have any "attachment points" to secure it onto a Lego model. Would your proposed XS Battery Box use a 9V battery, a disk-type Watch Battery, or something else?

I telephoned Lego Customer Service (Enfield, Connecticut USA) again this evening to follow up on the "missing" B-Model PDF instructions for the 9397 set. Cara ____ did some checking, and said that the 9397's B-Model Instructions will not be posted online until the set is available for sale directly from Shop.Lego.com in the USA. I said that the set has been available in Europe for weeks, and that the European Lego websites all link to the (dead-end) Lego USA website, but she said that was the company's policy. SO, I guess we'll have to wait until sometime in March 2012 to access the B-Model instructions....