Brickthus

Definitely a case of needing pneumatics if the gears are sticking at the end stops. The more compressors in the pump, the better! The XL motor is great for powering pneumatic pumps. I increased the number on my Swash Plate Pump to 6 but I could add more. The next step is to go to a proportional closed-loop pneumatic system, to get the same response as hydraulics. That's an area I'm researching. Mark

It is said in model railway circles that some layouts look like the designer deliberately aimed the track at the nearest hill! I wanted to avoid that on my layout, so a corner tunnel just wasn't enough. On this corner the track levels split to become one over the other. This pic shows the clearances of the prototype loco inside the tunnel, though the tunnel mouth was not built yet. This pic shows a similar effect at the other corner, the tracks taking half a lap of the layout to swap heights. This pic shows the amount of infrastructure required to run one track under another for a long distance. It becomes 8 tracks underneath the station, for a fiddle yard with 4 tracks each way. I haven't yet taken recent pictures of the first corner, now that there is tunnel mouth, but the tunnel mouth is half way round the long curve, mounted at 45 degrees to the baseplate. The tunnel outh needs to be wide to allow for overhangs of vehicles on both sides of the track. The ground should also continue to rise above a tunnel mouth - it's not all cut-and-cover! Great topic idea BTW Brickster! Mark

Here's few I did earlier: Modded Parts Designed Parts I have many more that I hadn't yet published pictures of, especially a 40mm pulley and tyre, and thin liftarms of all the lengths of the thick ones we have now - I suggested those to TLG in 1997! TLG have a criterion of how easily kids can use them, so that's probably why we don't have more varieties of thin liftarm, as thick ones are easier to handle. These days, if I have enough of a piece not to harm ability to rebuild a set, I'll probably get the tools out and make the parts! Pneumatics is a different matter though. A 4-port valve to do this function in a smaller space would be really useful. Mark

Interesting that a hand can act as an infra-red mirror. Worth trying with walls of different colours of bricks to see if different distances reflect the same amount. I would expect more reflection from red/white/orange than from blue or black. I used the handsets as binary position sensors to make a set of unconnected automated PF machines talk to each other. Whilst the position function is a bit more definite than a reflection function, the use of the handset batteries is almost constant, as it is for the motor supplies. LiPo batteries and chargers could supply the motors but the handsets need 4.5V. This system could be used with a static machine and one or more roving machines, possibly with up to 8 machines in the system! For that, each machine would transmit on 1 channel, red or blue, with the next machine listening to a particular channel of red or blue, but not both. Machines could also monitor both channels and perform AND, OR or Exclusive-OR logic functions. I had the idea that PF could do the logic similar to my pneumatic pick-and-place robot. Mark

A toothbrush might work to remove fluff from around the metal gear at the bottom. The gear tends to accumulate dust from the track. The stiffer the toothbrush bristles, the better for getting into tight spaces and removing fluff. Also dust your track before you run the train, to help stop this problem occurring frequently. Mark

A Toad you say? Built on a standard 6x24 wagon base. The wheels turn underneath, but are sprung to the centre and have the two sets linked, so it can lead wagons when being pushed down a siding. I was running out of brown bricks at the time, hence lots of 2s! I'd like to give it more of a "plank construction" appearance if I rebuild it sometime. Mark

You say that now... I got lumped with being a PaB price investigator just because I said how the prices are a bit out of proportion! I would have preferred "pneumatics guru, power functions guru, 8mm scale trains guru" or something equally prestigious, but these titles are not to enable us to show off! Back on topic, My pick-and-place robot has a pneumatic hand with better grip. It's good for 2x10 bricks, so 2x2 round bricks should be OK for it. I deliberately used parallelograms rather than single angular beams. Human finger grip depends on fingerprint (like rubber wheel rims) and squashiness of the finger pads (again like squashy rubber LEGO parts) I would add some 1x2 rubber liftarms with 2 cross holes if I were making a new robot hand today, because they would grip non-flat objects well. Mark

Yes, there is a type of grease in pneumatic parts. I wish TLG would say which type. Any cylinder that's had oil of any type in it will need cleaning and then grease re-applying in order to restore the seals. The grease can be seen in the clear cylinder that was available a few years ago in a Mindstorms accessory pack. Mark

Having built the tractor, there are 2 things I don't like about it: 1. The front axle hangs off one long axle. This makes any significant front end load prone to bending the axle. This is a cheap and nasty live axle! Not strong enough IMHO. 2. When turning the steering to the right, the right hand mudguard collides with the exhaust silencer. This is not usual for Technic sets as all functions should be able to perform their full range without colliding with static parts. I noticed that the box pictures have incorrect images of the flexible red axles, showing one end without the round 3.2mm diameter bit. I used to wonder why these axles were not just the cross shape in cross section, but twisting one whilst it is curved by 90 degrees shows that their torque capability is very limited, so it would not be good to encourage their use in that application. ZNAP set 3571 includes 2 flexible parts with axles on either end, a bit like mini net curtain rail or the Cybermaster antennas, which were designed for transmitting a reasonable torque. Mark

I got one last week, mainly for the green panels, which would look OK in amongst my railway scenery. They're an alternative to using a 1x4x3 panel to hide a Mindstorms RFID sensor, which will recognise the tags on trains. Sadly the sensors are just about gone too. I think they had 2 left in Europe after I ordered mine! You can still get them direct from Codatex though. Combined with an NXT kit, 2 cheap Black NXTs and the 8049 Log Loader (Pneumatics - yay!) this was a great order! It helped that the Tractor & Trailer was so cheap and I didn't have the previous similar tractor already! Mark

I have all the modular buildings so far, and I've found them great for keeping up with all the techniques for Town building. No doubt I will soon be buying a Grand Emporium. I have the street of sets in my front window because we live next to a primary school. The carousel rotates as the kids come out of school. However, I have to hand it to Jamie for being instrumental in getting a half-decent steam engine into a set, in the form of Emerald Night. It really shows the best of how TLG has listened to AFOLs that some larger wheels were created, a non-train motor was used to power it and rods made from Technic parts were used in a set for the first time. It also makes good use of the PF light brick that I had the privilege of helping to design. Yes, there will always be some compromises between what AFOLs create and what can go into a set, but by getting these right Emerald Night is a stake in the ground, showing the way forward for LEGO trains into the Power Functions era. May Emerald Night be followed up with an equally pioneering AFOL train set, using more functional techniques. Steen Sig Andersen is another designer of note. Perhaps we will show appreciation to him another week? Mark

Not especially prone, no. Life depends on how much you run the motors and how big the load is. All of them will eventually wear out, more so the more we use them as shows. Most layouts have 2 trains running all the time. I try to keep motor current down to 200mA/motor (of a capability of 300mA) to prolong their life. At a show it's best to run each train for no more than half an hour at a time. Mark

Thanks for the update Jamie. Good to see that you guys at TLG are on the case! With the original version of the Emerald Night kit, I added a spare half bush (small pulley) to the 6M axle, in the place opposite the output bevel gear. I also ensured that the input bevel gear was all the way onto the 5.5M axle as I built it. The bush would stop the input gear from falling out if it worked loose on the 5.5M axle. Try this if you have the original kit without the extra 1x1 brick with hole. Mark

1. 9V train motors are obsolete; motors have a finite life so they will not work for ever and replacements will be required. AFOLs who run 9V trains now will eventually have to run PF trains. 2. You can never have enough train motors because you will always build more trains. Changing motors between trains is not an option at a show, especially if the trains hide under the scenery! 3. Recent entrants into the AFOL train community would like to build trains compatible with those of longer-established AFOL train builders. They have no 9V train motors, so have to use PF ones. Not all trains can use the medium or XL motors. 4. There are instances where a 9V train could use PF train motors at the back, if the gearing were the same. It makes the train electrically as long as the first carriage (enabling sectional operation in 9V mode) whilst reducing the drag in the curves from longer or heavier trains. My Pendolino has 4 motors, 2 of which could become PF motors if they were drop-in replacements. For US trains, the A unit could have 2 9V motors and each B unit 2 PF motors if the gearing were the same. 5. It's not just about gearing. It's the electrical characteristics of the internal motor - its electrical impedance, speed regulation and torque at a given speed. The torque and speed curves need to match and the same increase in load for a given voltage needs to result in the same change of speed and the same current drawn from the supply. PF train motors get thirsty more quickly, causing the PF LiPo battery to trip its overcurrent trip. PF train motors are not only incompatible with 9V train motors, they are unsuitable for the AFOL train application. 6. Re-gearing the motor or changing its characteristics should be done by the professionals. It is part of product design. A £10 motor is not worth anything if I have to buy new gears and put in the hours to re-gear it! Especially if the operation is required for over 50 motors! LEGO train motors should remain an off-the-shelf item. Very few modellers of other train scales and gauges rebuild their own motors! Besides, we want all the motors to be compatible in an expanding community. A bespoke solution is not the answer. Mark

Jamie, is it true the 8866 motor was aimed squarely at kids' trains (4 carriages 6x28), not as a drop-in replacement for the 9V train motor? Is the 8866 motor produced in the same place as the 9V train motor was produced, or did the production site switch with the new motor? I've found the 8866 motor overgeared and lacking torque compared to 9V train motors. This is a problem for AFOL trains and, ultimately, the take-up of PF trains in the AFOL communities. Please would you pass this message on to the right people. Thanks. Mark

I voted for prefab simply for the ease of use, though Track Designer is even easier for standard track pieces! Please could someone update it with flexi-track! I have all the types of track. All could be ballasted. I used to hate the lack of grip on white sleepers with blue rails. Glad the 12V clips sorted it out! I used to like using blue and grey rails in ways other than 6-wide. 2.5 wide or 3-wide could be good for a Great Ball Contraption or mining train, 4-wide for a crane track appears in the 777 railway ideas book. Separate parts would allow there to be fewer part types overall, given that we now have the Indy mine chase track at 4-wide (bring on the straights TLG!). I've ballasted mostly prefab track. 12V track had more of a problem with discharging ballast between the rails - 9V track can use ridge tiles on the sleepers to get the load through the holes but 12V can only really discharge to either side unless it's an unpowered siding. The common ballast wagons years ago were the Catfish, which discharged only through the rails, and the Dogfish which could discharge either side as well. The Trout was a side unloader, so some of my early wagons for 12V track were like that, built on 6x16 motor frames and using a geared system similar to the wagons from the 7777 book to pull out axles on cranks and release balls into the chute. Mark

The previous wheels are 30.4mm diameter, making these new ones 36.8mm diameter, which is 4'7.2" in 8mm:1ft scale. Therefore I'll use them for locos with wheels between 4' and 5', most likely tank engines. There are some locos for which suspended sets of driving wheels wouldn't work because there wouldn't be enough unpowered wheels on the track , either in bogies or pony trucks, to support the loco, especially going round curves. The larger drivers alleviate this, enabling locos with too few pony wheels to be built, such as an 0-4-4 or 2-4-2. I might do an "Oliver the Western Engine", an 0-4-2 whose drivers are 5'2" IRL. I already have Toad the brake van and Scruffey the trucks' ringleader from the Awdry story! I was really hoping Ben would make some wheels of 49.6mm diameter, which is 6'2.4" for larger main line locos. 2 larger sizes to go, because 43.2mm would have to come first. The increments are 6.4mm for the 2 plates' height per size. 43.2mm could replace 40-tooth cogs and maybe these modified model team wheels in some applications. One thing to remember when doing a 3-cylinder engine, as in the link above, is that you need wheels with holes at 30 degrees to the orthogonal axle orientation in order to get angles of 120 degrees for 3 cranks. In fact the angle wasn't precisely 120 degrees but it's close enough. BBB wheels with 1 hole would struggle to provide this, to they're best for 2 and 4-cylinder locos. Mark

Whilst the PF set will be complete, you will still need the XL motor for the EN cab. The EN needs to be driven from its driving wheels. It doesn't like being pushed. As a test to see if I could increase the speed of an extended EN train, I tried adding an 8866 train motor to the carriage with a PF medium motor in the cab (3x speed of XL motor) and the 8866 motor was overgeared and pushed the coach off the rails. This would have been a worse overgearing with the recommended XL motor in the cab. In short, if you want more pulling power, use two ENs each with an XL motor and set the IR receivers to the same channel, but don't expect more speed! I understand the 8866 motor is designed to pull a train of 4 6x28 bogie vehicles (i.e. a train set like the two for this year). This makes it unsuitable for many AFOL trains. In tests against the 9V train motor, the 8866 motor has poor speed regulation with load changes (hills or more wagons), is overgeared and has too little torque. As 9V train motors are obsolete, AFOL PF locos are beginning to use a medium PF motor per bogie, often mounted vertically inside the loco body. Mark

Definitely add another motor. Long term use at such a slow speed would damage a motor. Consider the no-load speed of a motor. That is at least 300rpm for a medium motor or 110rpm for an XL motor. A motor should run at more than half its no-load speed when under load. If you need to run the load at the high speed, add another motor if the speed gets lower, otherwise gear it down by a convenient ratio (8:24 or 12:20 are convenient as the axles are two studs apart, 8:16 less so because they are 1.5 studs apart). The slowing down of more DC motors on the same battery box or power supply depends on the power supply. In electrical terms, how stiff the voltage source is, because for a DC motor the speed is proportional to voltage. A 6-AA battery box will supply enough current to maintain its voltage for 4 medium or 2 XL motors. A PF IR receiver can supply roughly the same, though the maximum rating from the two outputs together is 1 Amp (the same as two NXT motor ports because they use the same motor driver chip), lower than the maximum motor ratings. If you need to drive a lot of motors at high power (more than 4 medium or 2 XL motors), use multiple power sources or IR receivers, setting the receivers to the same channel and connecting the motors to the same shaft (beware of reversed gearing!). One motor per wheel can be good for large vehicles as it gets the power straight to the wheels without wasting it in the transmission or overtorqueing transmission parts (particularly universal joints). Mark

Several of the return-to-centre steering solutions presented here would apply to pneumatic valves as much as to steering. The key with pneumatic valves is keeping the mechanism small because the space overhead quickly gets above 100% of the valve size! For a single movement of multiple valves, consider driving a single valve and using a cylinder to drive a set of valves. A single medium cylinder can drive 4 valves quite easily in a 2x2 back to back configuration. Mark

But the point of Bionicle (from a biased point of view including business truth) was to exploit the collectability attribute to 7 year old lads in order to keep the Technic line going for the rest of us Just a shame Bionicle got too many of the new moulds, leaving Technic without the small versatile parts it should have had years ago! Ever since I bought my own LEGO, I've bought sets for the parts they contain more than for the model itself. Technic sets do well in this regard. Some people, those who don't like or understand Technic, are just not gifted in mechanical engineering. Technic enthusiasts need mechanical ability as well as spatial ability. Even amongst the gifted Technic enthusiasts it takes people a while to understand some concepts. Proportional pneumatics for instance... (which you should be able to do with an 8049 set and a couple of PF motors, one to compress the air and one for the dither). It's more difficult to get working concepts across unless you make a video. For me, videos take longer than a set of pictures because you need 90% chance of 10 minutes reliability first, so a mock-up won't do! I would call myself a Technic and Trains enthusiast, though I make forays into other themes too. I'm a born engineer with a passion to make things work, so Technic is my 3D pencil and paper. Steam trains need Technic - only 1 of 7 steam locos and more prototypes does without Technic (and Toby's motor wheels are hidden). I'm quite happy for EB TM&MT to be my main Technic forum. Handy that it has Train Tech alongside it for the trains bit. TechnicBricks is great as a resource but has too many embedded videos for the amount of RAM in my PC! Mark

The only intelligence is the 700mA rating at 10VDC. I would recommend not using a device with more current capability than that. Mark

Sadly not a LEGO piece! I saw an industrial 5/2 valve driving a metal cylinder to move the arms on an owl. The valve was supplied with 1 air pipe and 1 wire pair to control it. 2 pipes to the cylinder. There were cylinders of different lengths and girths on the ride. It shows how useful a short fat cylinder would be, if there were an application where we couldn't use a travel reduction lever. As part of the ride scenery, the owl was made of sheets of chipboard. Mark

There is one small alteration I would make. I would make the mini compressor and small cylinder each have a stroke of exactly 16mm, so that this model would work better with no strain as a cylinder goes over top dead centre. It is important that most elements should be simple enough for 7-year-olds to understand. That's the minimum age for a set that has contained pneumatics before. The versatility provided by the simplicity means that we advanced users can create more complex devices from the simple elements. For instance, different pump/compressor types are better in different applications. Here is a swash plate pump, to which I have added more compressors than the 2 in the pictures. The PF XL motor is ideal for it as it needs lots of torque. Versatility is an essential property of LEGO parts. The moment we go to ready-made car chassises (as we have seen in several incarnations in recent years), the moment we begin to take away the skill of building a car from the user. The same goes for pneumatics. How many of use really understand how pneumatics work? How many of us want to be more than users of the product? For every box there is someone int he LEGO community who will take it apart to see what's inside it in order to exploit the properties of the device components. This is currently not necessary with pneumatics but it would be if a single motor-compressor were made. Any such motor-compressor would not be right for all users and would be an AFOL-specific product anyway, so not commercially viable. Therefore it should never happen. I got a car tyre air compressor for £20 and set it to 20-25psi, which is the right pressure for LEGO pneumatics (other than engines). A cheap commercial product does the job without the need for expenditure by TLG. The compressor takes 4 Amps at 12V, which a LEGO device could never provide (the new DC train transformer is limited to 700mA at 10V). You can make a double length cylinder already, with the joining parts from the 8421 crane. I admit the 3.5M travel is an odd length but that's legacy from the original 1991 parts. The 64mm cylinder should have been made in the 2-port system, but I guess cost got in the way. If I had a magic wand, I'd make a 4-port valve to replace this set of 4 valves in a pneumatic 2-pipe reverser. That would shrink pneumatic logic systems considerably. However, commercial valves come in 3/2 and 5/2 varieties, as well as others, so it's not commercially viable for TLG to make the 5/2 valve. Seeing them on rides at Legoland, they're not much bigger than the existing LEGO valve. What we really need for the small cylinder and mini compressor is a custom length thin liftarm that makes the most of the existing device stroke at minimum cost. That might be cheap enough to be considered by TLG, especially if it could be a new cam piece with other applications. Now that a pneumatic servo is possible ( ), I invite you to build one, try it and find that a new LEGO servo is unnecessary! You can use a PF medium motor with LA or worm drive to control it (on the red beam), to set a remote pneumatic valve to any position you like!I have steering, crane jib and steam engine applications in progress. The NXT motor is also able to act as a servo motor. Mark

My layout is 16'x12' at a show, 17'x14' at home. Pictures of the scenic part here. Mark