allanp

Oh well. Although I'm finished with this hobby let's read the rumours about what technic "treats" TLG are bringing out next year. I bet it'll be more LA's and such. *reads rumours* WHAT!!!!!!!! I'm back!

Yeah, because they are mechanically authentic replicas of real life hydraulics, they are not painfully slow when operated manually, they are not painfully slow and do not do all of the gearing down for you when motorised, they are always powerful, just look at how the outriggers quickly lift 42009 off the ground and the whole concept of using an LA in place of a pneumatic is a great idea. Sorry guys, couldn't resist. I'm going to have a wash now, I feel unclean!

I'de be happy to help out if I could only figure out how to correctly place pieces at the exact angles I want in mlcad. Anyone know of a good tutorial for angles in particular as I haven't been able to find one.

I searched the internet for a picture of a black bird. Seeing as a bird is slang for a woman I'm not going to post what I found

He's leaky on the ground but he flies like a bat out of hell

I think they could tweak the dimensions and clutch power to make them work but you guys are right. The more I think about it I think the way the pins are at the moment it probably wouldn't work. Oh well, not all my ideas can be winners, thanks for the feedback guys

After reading this a second time there may be a drawback from TLGs perspective. Removing that limit you mentioned to how far the pin can be pushed into the hole might make it a bit harder for younger kids to assemble sets without pushing pins too far in when placing two beams together for example. Yes I think I see your first point now. Good thinking.

I don't think it would slide. It would be as likely as this part sliding out I guess: True. Hmmmmmm. I guess for this to be problem you would need a piece with a blind round hole (like the front of a PF motor) that can fit perfectly inside a frame. I can't really think of any off the top of my head.

I remember him being a lot taller

I have a bunch of these in my setup: http://www.maplin.co...7-x-147mm-nd82d They are great, removable plastic drawers with an all steel case. And yes, a 15M beam fits in the smallest drawers.

So are the large ridges on friction pins really needed? Take the 3M friction pin for example. It has a large ridge which cannot pass through a hole and a smaller compressible ridge that can pass through a hole. I can't think of a single situation where the larger ridge is needed. You could just have two of the smaller ridges and it would still work the same but you would also be able it insert/remove it without having to take the whole model apart. You could do this to all friction pins and they would all work the same but it would also allow you to legally build things like this: It would also open up lots of other new possibilities when designing new parts. Any thoughts?

Nice find. I guess they will be creator like sets.

Now there's a good idea!

I was thinking of starting a thread during the mini contest where we can all blatantly take the piss out of each others entries even if we thought they were perfect, just for laughs. It's probably best I didn't if somebody didn't get the joke . Besides, a certain crazy Scottish person didn't enter so it wouldn't have been as much fun . What was the topic again? Oh yeah, Paul B, you ramble too much . Seriously though, I prefer it when somebody posts the full article here with text descriptions, videos and pictures all in the post instead of linking to another site, so I say you should write more! The only single time when I think you might have been going just a little overboard with your posting is with this very topic like Blakbird has said , ironic indeed . I personally only ever read Eurobricks and TechnicBricks so unless you post it here I probably won't see it so I'm probably not the best person to advise. Besides I've had complaints about me in the past but my thinking is that, no matter what you write, no matter what your opinion there will always be some that find reasons to not like it and that's fine by me. So as long as I'm not offensive or obscene or breaking any rules it's all good. If somebody does not like what I write they are perfectly free to not read it, completely ignore me, write to their MP or congressman and gather a bunch of celebrities to record a charity single all about how wrong I am."I believe LAs are the future, shut Allanp up and let LAs lead the way!" .

It's that time of year again and I love the anticipation but as others have said, it's not anticipation for the sets so much as it is for the parts and functionality. So what new parts could we be getting? For most of the sets it's hard to predict outside of new pins, axles and random connectors so the most interesting for me to speculate on is the 24 hour race car. Being a large scale road car we could hopefully get a proper transmission this time. We could get clutch gears in more sizes and a stronger diff and larger 8880 style CV joints that can take more torque and give greater steering angles and hubs with low friction like the new ones but less wobblyness. Whilst tumbler tyres would be cool, personally I hope we DON'T get those because it means we will also get tiny wheel hubs witch prevent having the steering pivot being where it should be and decently proportioned steering/suspension geometries and all that stuff that's been said before. I would rather have a new very low profile tyre with a new large wheel hub that is also very deep so there is lots of space inside it for all the steering geometry goodness. And also, this time make it look like an actual real life wheel.

For the mini contest I watched a bunch of youtube videos to get a good picture of the mini digger. I think this video was the most informative but the presenter might actually be a robot, can't tell My camera only goes up to F8.0 but that was plenty for my model to get the whole thing in focus. I used macro mode to get the lens right up to the model (only a few inches away) and had the camera low and looking up to make it look much bigger. I used a low ISO to help prevent grain and compensated for the light loss that causes by having a longer exposure time and mounting the camera on a tripod. I also "borrowed" two large light boxes from my brother and did some extra work in photoshop to remove some more of the grain. I also found that the yellows looked a bit green when compared to official set pictures so I shifted the colour a bit to add a bit of orange.

I have built some very simple cars using the 9v ungeared motor and got some crazy fast speeds out of them. One thing that might help is to use the shortest wires possible. The longer the wire the greater the electrical resistance. You could also benefit from having better bracing for the gears. Whilst I'm sure they will not slip teeth in your current set up with so little torque you still want to avoid having axles that are going through only one beam as this allows too much sideways slack in the axle which leads to inefficiency. Any more than two beams is also a waste so have all rotating axles going through two beams. But then you have to make sure that the two beams are completely in line with each other and braced so that there is no twisting in the chassis which might cause them to go slightly offset from each other. This is where the studded construction helps because studded builds are usually much more resilient to twisting. However the drawback is that they are heavier (which can be offset by requiring less beams to create a stiff chassis) and also create more wind resistance. Having steering can also slow it down even if you are going straight. Lego steering parts are not accurate or rigid enough to keep the wheels dead straight. When your vehicle moves forward, the slack in the steering will allow the wheels to toe out just a little, which will cause rolling resistance. One way to overcome that is to have the steering rack in front of the axle and place it slightly out of line so that they would toe in slightly. Then when the vehicle moves forward the wheels tendency to toe out will correct it. This is done in real life non driven, steering axles. The opposite is true for driven steering axles. To get this right in Lego takes a lot of trial and error but it can be done. It also makes the car much slower in reverse! Oh, and remember that 8880 tyres are quite heavy with a large area for wind resistance. It might sound trivial but it all adds up.

Well spotted

Poseable is just about the best word to describe it. Highly detailed and poseable but non functional display models for older children.

Here are some I could find. The unimog: A link to 8043: http://www.technicbr...43-part_19.html 8462 towing it's prototype: (Can't tell if it's real or a MOC. It is a computer render). Some info on the 8480 prototypes from a Q&A with one of the designers. Q: How many prototype models of the space shuttle did you build?" A: After a year of research, the space shuttle took three designers a whole year to finish. They did nothing else, which shows how much detail goes into a technic model. Around 80 working versions were built before the final one." Q: "That seems a lot." A: "Not really-for every model in the lego technic range around 800 prototypes have been built in product development." I remember seeing a very early prototype of 8485 in person. It was very much like the plane simulator from the 8891 ideas book but twice as big with a black base (there was some 40t gears in there) and a red helicopter. The rotor blades were direct drive from a vertically mounted motor, so pretty darned fast! I also remember seeing an an early 8448 prototype. It was black and looked more like 8880 but with a front mounted blue/purple engine!

Just a heads up, live build event now started on technicbricks. https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/108341563834053315290/hangouts/onair/watch?hid=hoaevent%2Fcm0kr1glgfanv82r5hlfu2oepmk&wpsrc=yta&ytl=u4WJAuCLrXc

Oh right. That's a shame, the brick show gets quite a lot of traffic and it would be nice for technic to get some exposure on there.

BTW, are we talking about reviews for the brick show? Because doesn't that kinda force you to do video?

I love technicopedia. You raise a very good point and maybe I'm wrong about revealing too many secrets. In fact, there are a few models that didn't interest me until I read your review then I had to have it so yeah, I take it back. BTW, when is 1996 coming out?! That is a great review. I'm fairly confident that you can make a video review have all the same information and content. Hmmmm, maybe I should try make a video review of 8868 and find out for myself.

Well, a video is just a bunch of moving pictures and text can easily be spoken while you point to the relevant thing you are speaking about so it really just depends. Technic is about working models and the most interesting part is how they work. A video usually does a great job of showing what the finished model looks like but it does not usually show what the inside mechanics look like. Pictures show this way more often because they typically show progress of the build. However I think a video review still has the potential to be better because if you can somehow get the camera in to see those moving parts, you can show not just what the mechanism looks like, but what it looks like moving. It can often be confusing when looking at a still image because you can't always tell which parts are moving mechanism and which parts are static, non-mechanism and so a video might prove to be even more effective. Having said all that I think there is a lot to be said for leaving some mystery to the model. Knowing exactly how everything works, how every gear connects to every other gear and so on does spoil the fun of finding all that out when you build the model yourself and therefore can slightly diminish the models appeal. Maybe you could start with the wide shot of the finished model and then before going into the main body of the review, go to points part way through the build so we can look at the mechanisms as they are being built. Not a whole "lets build" but maybe 4 or 5 short clips, each showing an interesting new mechanism. "So here we have the gear box in place and that's how that works, it's braced by these three beams and held into the model here, here and strengthened here" kinda thing. Then go to the close up and the final review. Like another thing you get with picture reviews, It would be nice to get a close up of any new or cool parts released in the set before you build it.