Brickthus

Yes, he's definitely lazy. I think there are 3 levels: 1. Copying pictures of official sets. The only work that's copied from you is the photography. 2. Copying track plans or virtual designs. They've nicked your work but the design tool images are nicked from the tool author. 3. Copying MOC photos. That's outright plagiarism. I had 2. done to me by some Japanese guy a while back, nicking track plans I'd done in Track Designer. I think that one was sorted out when I emailed the Brickshelf moderator. At a lower level, we all read stuff off the web and use ideas to make our own stuff. We tend not to declare the prior art very often, except where it's so obvious that someone might notice. There is still credit for integrating others' ideas to make a model that's better than the sum of the ideas. I'm more careful now about putting my name on stuff, as well as the date if it's pioneering work, since there are some things in the community for which inventing the idea or way of doing things has some value e.g. a few years ago it was pneumatic logic, stopping cylinders in the middle, or helicopter rotors. Some of the time my modelling style would be recognised anyway! I tend not to bother watermarking my photos of sets, except where I've modified them or added value to the pictured model, since TLG did more work on the content than I did. Mark

I reverse-engineered the serial port tower from my RCX 1.0 kit ages ago. Here's the circuit. I had intended to the same for the RCX 2.0 USB tower at some stage but didn't get round to it. Mark

I don't yet have any detailed information on whether a PF motor could outperform a 9V motor. Now that I've found the PF train motors sufficient, I'll look more closely at their performance relative to 9V motors. Mark

I have been testing a pair of new PF train motors to check that they are a drop-in replacement for 9V motors in terms of power, torque and speed regulation. The RC motors performed poorly in the same test, compared to a pair of 9V motors, so it was important for the future of LEGO trains that the new PF train motors should be up to scratch. I used the Electric Parts pictured above. The LiPo battery (fully charged) and PF IR receiver were the same for all tests. You can see a pair of 9V train motors, a pair of RC train motors and a pair of PF train motors, as well as the bogie trims I used. The PF motors have the wire exiting at one end of the bogie plate part of the casing. If the wires on a pair of motors exit in opposite directions along the track then you will need to use a pole reverser switch to make both motors turn in the same track direction as I have done. The PF motors were each in a Test Bogie top and bottom The bogies are taller than the motor. the motor's pin is fixed into a Technic plate and the additional bogie plate attaches to the coach body. This is just because that's the real scale dimension for the coach bogie. We don't realise how tall bogies are when we're standing on the platform! The Test Coach 1, 2, 3 Two trains were used for testing, a heavy passenger train 1 2 and a 20-straight-long goods train 1 2. The passenger train has a lot of weight and drag, especially in the curves. The goods train has fairly heavy 4-wheel wagons and the oscillation of the couplings makes for variable drag. Both are a good test of motor tractive effort. The PF train motors performed very well, passing the standard test comfortably. In a further test, with a heavier train, they performed well, showing a limit of operation at least as good as 9V motors. This test was beyond expectations for the maximum load to be pulled by a pair of motors at a train show. The good speed regulation means that both passenger and goods trains can be left to run up and down slopes while the operator talks to the public at a show. This is a good result and bodes well for the future of LEGO trains We can now proceed at full pace with building PF diesel and electric trains, and steamers that have motors in the tender. Get your PF train set orders in! Full explanation of Test info Folder when moderated I might do a few more-specific tests, especially for electrical load sharing, but I anticipate no problems there. Perhaps Philo will do the proper tests to plot the motor graphs for his motor web page. TLG, please speed up the availability of PF train motors as a separate set! Mark

That's right. Some links to PF Train Motor test pictures: Electric Parts Test Bogie top and bottom Test Coach 1, 2, 3 Test info More in the Train Tech forum, including test train pictures. Mark

For bogie diesel or electric engines, and steamers with motors in the tender, yes, the new PF train motor will be easier to use. For steamers with powered driving wheels and diesel shunters, the M or XL motor is still the better way. I'm testing a pair of PF train motors and the early results are encouraging. Performance so far is at least as good as 9V train motors. A lot better than the RC motors! I'll post some pictures in the Train Tech forum soon. Remember you'll need a pole reverser switch to use two PF train motors with the wires both exiting at the coupling or non-coupling ends! Mark

I see the need for a brain breather! As an AFOL at a workshop a few years ago I did about 3 weeks' work in a week and was worn out when I got home! It was *such* fun though. For my brain it was like having a Bugatti Veyron and an open road for miles, ready to floor the accelerator! It seemed like the workshop was also a chance for some of the staff designers to get out of the office. I can't believe TLG would be ageist enough to assume that childhood finishes at 99 years old! I hope to be building to 120 if I live that long! And I hope there's LEGO in Heaven too (the real Heaven, not the LEGO store room )! Is TLG the company with the greatest number of patents per year in Denmark? Mark

I like the ActiveX control for use in vb6 with my RCX. Similar for WeDo hub would be great! I wish the NXT could be used this way too, though NXC serves OK, apart from less interactive stuff, which would improve datalogging usefulness. e.g. the RCX temperature sensor can drive a thermometer bulb diagram easily, but I haven't gone that way with the NXT yet. Mark

Good to have a some static pictures as well as the video. Then we can have a quick look at the key points and come back to the video when we have more time Do you fancy trying a pneumatic engine like this? Or maybe a 3-cylinder one? With the 3-cylinder one I thought of putting the motor in the tender, as this provides good control of speed and direction via the 6 hoses. I should use slightly shorter cranks for the cylinder travel but I wanted to make the most of the available travel. Large cylinders would work better but be too bulky for an engine to run on 9V or PF tracks. The 2-cylinder one is less easy to control, but works like a real steam engine, the variable advance or retarding of the valve gear controlling the speed of rotation of the wheels. Needs some shrinkage work to fit through tunnels though One key point with a real steam engine is that the pressure is from a regulated source (a fixed boiler pressure), so it might be that valve position is proportional to mass flow of steam and hence cylinder velocity (not acceleration). With LEGO pneumatics the pressure is unregulated and the 'fluid' is highly compressible, so valve position is proportional to acceleration of the cylinder and hence it is more difficult to control. Mark

Oh yes! I usually work in radii because it is so rare for me to have a half circle together! 80 stud centres for the diameter, 88 studs outer width, plus any carriage overhang. That's 704mm wide. With a 750mm-wide table there's enough room for a diameter but no room for buildings outside the track except at the corners. Mark

Have you considered pneumatics? Mechanisms Scenic Modules and connections Mark

The outer diameter of standard curves, the width required to fit the track in a semi-circle with either PF, 9V or 12V track, is 48 studs, with the diameter of track centres being 40 studs. Flexi-track will do a little less than this diameter at a push. Someone fitted a circle inside the standard circle. This might strain the track and/or be too tight for all but the shortest fixed wheelbase wagons though. I notice the wheelbase of the new tanker wagon is quite long. If you want to make wider curves that line up well with baseplate studs at both ends of a quarter curve, and don't want to use flexi-track, put 1 or 2 straights between each curved rail (3 straights for a quarter circle). This will add 32 studs to the length and width of each quarter circle (32.219 but the track flexes enough for it to fit OK). I added 2 straights between the curves on my 9V layout, with 1 straight between most curves in the yards. The gauge of the rails (the distance between inner edges for PF or 9V track) is about 37.8mm. For standard gauge track of 4'8.5" (1435.1mm) that's a scale of 1:37.97. Flexi-track varies a bit because of the need to flex, which can cause friction as a wheelset passes through the narrowest part. Mark

The AAA battery box is better for occasional running at home. The LiPo battery is better for shows, with intensive use and repeated recharging. Neither will last long on a single charge. The LiPo battery takes a while to charge so you would need 2 or 3 LiPo batteries for a set of however-many trains running one-at-a-time in the same direction at a show, in order to always have a fresh LiPo battery ready to put in the next train (assuming it takes about twice as long to charge as it does to discharge). Therefore my advice is to build trains so that the battery box is easy to remove and swap. Having said that, the charge current is about 700mA so if your trains need only one train motor each and no lights, two LiPo batteries might be enough. Some of my trains have up to 4 train motors, 2 auxiliary motors and lights; the peak current draw is 1300mA, too much for one LiPo battery as they are limited to 800mA. Yes, adding lights and auxiliary motors will shorten battery life. After a point in the discharge cycle the battery can no longer hold its voltage, and so the train will slow down. The point of flatness is 1.35 volts per cell for Duracells, giving 8.1V for a 9V battery box. This is still more than the 7.4V of the LiPo battery but even at 8.1V a set of AAAs or AAs could not provide the current because the charge is not there. A 25% drop in voltage would mean 9/16 of the power to a resistive load because power is VxV/R (3/4 x 3/4 divided by a constant). Remember that a motor is an inductive load so the equation is more complicated than that, depending on out-of-phase voltage and current with integrals: V = L x di/dt. Whilst DC motors respond to voltage, the equation also depends on motor back-EMF, which rises as load falls (for a resistive load V - E = I x R). The initial limit of performance as battery voltage decreases is more on the peak acceleration and in overcoming drag than in top speed, as long as the load on the straight is low enough (no wagons are still in a corner so drag is low). Motor speed will decrease more easily at times of greatest load. Presumably the 5ft long train is 6-wide, composed of standard sized vehicles? Mine are 8+ wide, with some vehicles around 64-80M long. 3 such vehicles is as much as 2 9V train motors can pull. Mark

I sort in two stages. First by type (bricks, plates, Technic, Train, Minifig, Roof bricks, wheels etc...) into a bag each for the sort, all type bags into the type input drawers (except if I have 20 of one piece from a set sort, when I'll give them a bag of their own). Then I sort the input drawers if they get full. If I'm looking for parts when building MOCs, I might remember that there are some of the required type in the input drawer, so I don't raid the sorted bricks, saving time by not doing the second sort. I tend to do the sorting better for type I use less often because high use of plates would waste more time sorting if I'll use them soon. I also keep a few drawers of my mini-cupboards for types that I use all the time, e.g. a 1-litre drawer for stacks of black 1xn plates, and a drawer of mixed axles and a large bag of all the types of pegs (with small supplies of sorted pegs for when I want 20 of a type). I have dedicated supplies of bricks for big projects too. My Technic parts are moving to a deep store, shallow store system now that I have enough to warrant it. Mark

For those amounts of parts I would use a drawer system on the building desk, sorting parts by function. For larger amounts, put the ones you won't use immediately into freezer bags for deeper storage. There are big drawer systems to house the bags, but for very deep storage you can stack crates. I use one stack of drawer units as input drawers, one drawer of which is for bags of mixed Technic parts. When a drawer gets full I sort those parts inot the deep and shallow stores. This should work OK up to about 1 million bricks, but it takes a long time to keep it working! Pictures of my storage system here Mark

The WeDo hub uses 5V not 9V so motor power is restricted. Just as well for kids in school, but not so good for AFOLs! I had the impression 8 hubs were possible? If so, it would replicate the functionality of 9V Interface B for ports. I found the software quite slow on my PC though, so not sure I wanted to attempt 8 USB items at once! I have made some circuits to interface with the WeDo parts. - a sensor circuit to exploit the tilt sensor software block and enable 5-speed reading of a PF IR receiver output. - an output circuit to turn the WeDo motor output into a DC level signal for an RCX or NXT port. The two together would enable 2-way communication with an NXT. Mark

For AFOLs, a AAA battery box is better for occasional use, with a LiPo battery for shows. Since I have many trains, having a LiPo battery for each would be too expensive. Therefore designing trains to have hot-swappable battery boxes is best. Remember also that the child market keeps the AFOL market afloat, so the AAA battery box is a must for families. There is a claim that the new motor means that AAA batteries will last as long as AAs used to with previous motors, but that's something to test! Apart from that, the smaller-capacity AAA batteries would run out in a mercifully short time for parents! Unfortunate that AAAs are more expensive per mAh than AAs, but the lightness goes some way to offset that, having advantages in efficiency and in lowering the centre of gravity, for better cornering. I buy AAAs and AAs in bulk anyway (24s or 36s), so that helps offset the cost. I feel sorry for families who buy batteries in 6s at premium price. I have faith that the new motors will be more powerful, like the 9V motors, and not rubbish like the RC motors, but I will have to test them to prove it. Perhaps some of you will have learned from my earlier hints Mark

The advantage of using only one o-ring is reduced friction on the curves (no differential wheelslip to overcome). Does that help reduce the amount of drag the engine creates, when driven from a tender motor? Would it also help if the rods were lengthened to join the connecting rod nearer to the middle wheels (reducing the angle between the rod and the cylinder axle)? Mark

I made some extendable joints for a Shay steam loco here. That's an extension of 2M, albeit at a lower torque for a train, but it allows the Shay chassis to go round curves in either direction, powered by an onboard motor. I should switch to the shorter uni joints now that 3M ones are available. For high torque applications I would be tempted to use a frame rotation around the rear axle where there is a right-angle mesh of gears, rather than a uni joint. Even better would be to put the motors as close to the wheels as possible. An XL motor can already twist a 3M axle! Mark

My train signs and signals are here. It took me 2 months to work out how to signal my new layout. Now I have to build the signal brackets! I will include speed limits and other signs, according to how a real British railway looks. I expect these will use the clip-on signs, perhaps with stickers. This is different from my no-sticker policy for rolling stock because the signs are self-contained and there will be no stickers over brick joins. Mark

An empty 9V train motor would work well. A single wheelset is prone to losing power more easily, but multiple single wheelsets could be connected together. Consistency of manufacture and reliability would be important. For a track-powered scheme you would need some sort of battery or large capacitor on the train, simply because track power is not continuous on metal track, especially over points. One reason I connect the 2 motors on a large loco with a wire is because a single motor can find a dead spot on the points and hence would be pushed or pulled by another motor, not something that would aid motor life! The wire ensures that both motors receive equal electrical power as long as one makes contact. If a PF-powered train with track pickup hit a dead spot, the speed setting in the IR receiver would be lost, stopping the train. If a pickup were used with a connection to the DC input of the LiPo battery, you would have to overcome the tendency of the battery to stop the train every time power came back after crossing a dead spot, since it has that function in the battery's control logic. I would have to check whether this applied to the 9V and 0V outputs for an IR receiver, but it definitely applies to the C1 and C2 outputs of the battery. Anyway, since the DC input is 10V, you would have to apply the 10V to the track, in which case you couldn't run 9V locos on the same layout. The best scheme would use a boosting switch mode power supply, working from a variable input of 3 to 9V at either polarity and converting this to 10V DC to charge the LiPo battery. The SMPS would include a capacitor to keep the battery input voltage constant over dead spots, so that its logic would not trip. this would mean a PF loco could run on any powered 9V track that had a voltage sufficient to move an unloaded 9V train motor. The circuit would have to be a variable current source with good stiffness of voltage regulation, without dissipating too much heat in the output transistors! This scheme would enable a PF loco to double head with a 9V loco, as long as the PF handset and 9V controller were kept at similar output power levels. I'd also like a PF battery output device, to facilitate using two LiPo batteries together, with current balancing, to get up to 800mA from each one and power more than 2 motors. Some of my trains have 4 train motors as well as auxiliary motors and lights, with a total current requirement of 1300mA up hills! Such a device should also aim to overcome the 7.4V limit and get up to 9V, perhaps with a DC-DC converter, but this would be large if it had to handle 12W! Mark

Some key issues to make a LEGO car go as fast as possible: - powerful motors - minimal gearing - big wheels - light vehicle weight and power supply The motors most suited to RC cars are the 5292 motors, which you have two of in set 8366. Have you tried larger wheels with these? Perhaps the 82mm motorbike wheels and tyres? This would get the most out of 2 motors and wheels without gearing. The next step is to use larger wheels, but this would need more motors. Perhaps four 5292 motors could drive a pair of Hailfire Droid wheels with suitable light and strong construction to create a hub for them. Other than that, you're not likely to get a higher power to weight ratio without using an RC Car motor and more battery power than LEGO systems provide. An RC car might give 40 Amps from a NiCd pack for a single motor, but no LEGO motor is designed to handle more than 1.5A. The Power Functions XL motors are the "more powerful motors" that we've been asking TLG for for years, but LEGO parts will never get conventional Technic motors into RC territory because the medium can't handle the power. An XL motor can twist a short axle, so anything more needs metal axles, metal beams and proper bearings. I recently melted a beam and axle having mounted a drill (see advice) in some bricks in order to drive a jet engine model faster than 3000rpm. This was intended to be an advance from using four 4000rpm 9V Technic motors with only their own bearings and no axles through beams, which had drawn about 1.3 Amps at 9V from a bench power supply. The same limits apply to flying as to going fast. There is another way to achieve 50mph with a LEGO model, but only to fire it with a catapult! Mark

I have opened a couple of the older switches when they leaked enough to cause problems with operation (i.e. the major leakage prevented highly-loaded cylinders moving). I don't recommend opening switches unless they are already failed to a similar extent, because this will wear the tabs that lock the two parts of the casing together and it might never be possible to squeeze the lever as well as when the switch was new. I would recommend re-lubing of older switches, since the sealing effect of the lube must wear out eventually by being spread around and forced out of the ports. It might not be necessary to open the switch to do this, because some lube could be injected into the ports or put on the port side casing in the hole made by moving the lever. I might try getting some of that super-lube to try it out on older switches. Be sparing with the lube though. Certainly the newer switches (with pin holes) are stiffer in operation than the older ones. This is not a bad thing because it gives them enough life (measured in lever movements). It made me wonder whether my proportional pneumatics might cause them to expire early (many operations per minute) but the cycling is not as much as for the components of a pneumatic engine. Pneumatics are life-limited components, just like motors and anything made of rubber. The design criteria for the parts would extend only to the point where a child, who is of suitable age for a pneumatic set to begin with, might have given up on LEGO as a hobby, so components need to last only 3-5 years to satisfy that criterion. Like many products, the characteristic life of a component is set to the length of time after which the manufacturer will not see too many complaints. If a certain length of guarantee is sold in the shop (on top of the usual 1 year guarantee), you can bet the characteristic life of the product is set to be just beyond it because otherwise everyone who bought the guarantee would need a replacement. Therefore extended guarantees on most electrical products are worthless, unless you get a duff product. Just make sure the box you take away has the product in it before you are asked about the extended guarantee, so no-one can select a better or worse item on the basis of your decision! Thankfully this would not apply to LEGO products and most of them last a lot longer than electronic goods! The quality of LEGO products is one of the main reasons to recommend it. This limit of life might be about 3 months running time for a motor, but it's measured in running time, not in real time. This means it should last 10 years or more. There is a time factor with pneumatics and rubber items though. The lube becomes less viscous with use and probably with higher temperature too. this may account for the stiffness when a valve has not been used for some time. Therefore don't bury them too deep in your MOCs so that you can cycle them a bit before running a MOC. I usually take a pneumatic MOC through all its cycle stages before running it from air pressure. Mark

Yes, I like that one even better. It begs the question "When exactly does one finish a MOC?" This is one reason I did LEGO trains, so I could keep improving them. Unfortunately I have quite a few that I exhibited up to about 5 years ago, and standards have kept improving, so there's a lot of work to do! Some of my more recent ones, which are small wagons, are here. I see them as templates for rakes of wagons because most wagons look best when there are several, either of the same type or of similar types in a mixed goods train, depending on the train, load and era of course. Mark

Neither would be effective - there are ethical standards to consider! Mark