allanp

Of course you could absolutely be right, and I might be letting excitement cloud my judgement. But didn't the book detailing the design of the Ferrari say that they only really intended to change the outside of the car from the Sian, or something like that?

Apparently the embargo date was changed at the last minute, but not everyone got the memo.

I think I'm actually more sure than that (but it is a nice number!). If you look at the rotary cam AND the 8 position indexing wheel and compare them to mine, I mean, it's gotta be....right? These parts are nothing like the Cada parts in comparison. 3D printing has greatly sped up the prototyping stage. From being annoyed at the Ferraris lack of innovation compared to the Sian, to having what you see in my videos of my gearbox working was literally only a couple of weeks. The parts just worked first try (except the shifter fork which took 2 tries), so if I can do that I am sure they can, especially Marcus who I think is in charge of new parts? And it wouldn't be the first time coughpheumaticsmk2cough! But I love it, it really does confirm to me that they do listen to this small group of passionate enthusiasts. Comparing their polished final design to my quick and dirty proof of concept I think there are positives and negatives, but mostly positives. To get the negatives out the way, the rotary cams and drive rings are 2 module wide as opposed to my 1 module wide, so theirs is slightly bigger and less compact, however it is only 4 extra studs longer for a complete 8 speed gearbox, and as the indexing is done inside the gearbox itself instead of having a bulky mechanism behind the steering wheel, things should still be more compact and definitely more realistic and with way less friction than previous supercars. The longer shaft however does decrease the max torque a non reinforced gearbox can take, but for non motorised models it fine. For motorised models just add a beam between gear pairs and it'll be fine. As for the positives, a potential improvement over my concept is that the shift fork no longer has a tiny pip to engage with the rotary cam. Instead it can now accept a much stronger tow ball and it can also accept any kind of pin, which should make it easier to interface with other kinds of shifting mechanisms (like you get in stick shift cars which we are definitely missing in technic). These new parts also work with the already in production gears (mine would have needed all new gears). Finally, I'm not sure if this is better or worse yet, but the shift positions are 45 degrees apart on my rotary cams, but 135 degrees apart on theirs. Their rotary cam also appears to have the axle hole on each side offset by 45 degrees (as spotted by @ord in the Yamaha thread). You could stack 4 of mine on an axle to easily get all 8 positions, flipping them wouldn't matter. Theirs however might possibly take a bit more thought to get all 8, but I suspect that might have been done to increase shifting reliability, in case the rotary cams don't rotate close enough to 45 degrees.

@ord Well spotted, I didn't notice that. It does look like the axle holes are 45 degrees out of phase. I wonder why they did that? I guess it would make 4 and 6 speed designs easier as you can just stack them in the same orientation and the 45 degree alignment is already done automatically. For an 8 speed however, if you just stack them, position D of the first rotary cam overlaps position A of the last rotary cam. But it should still be possible to get all 8 positions by flipping two of the cams.....I think!

@ord I think that's very likely correct.

I don't think that's the case with these parts as the shift positions are A and D, positions B, C, E, F, G and H are neutral. Positions A and D are not offset by either 90 or 180 degrees, but by 135 degrees. It's very much like mine which shifts in 45 degree increments.

Or maybe they saw my gearbox videos? Say what you will but I am 69% convinced these new parts were inspired by mine, and I am very happy with it!!! Sure they could do with adding a few more gear sizes but how many new parts can we expect in one year?

The mad lads did it! YEEEEEEES!!!!!!! And no I don't think they are ripping off the Chinese. If you look at these parts and compare them to my own then I am pretty sure they just listened to us, and for that I am so greatful that I can almost forgive the colour coding! . Thank yooooooooooouuuuuuuu TLG (was that you Markus?!)

If you make it smaller but keep all the same functionality, including its PU electronics, it would still be very expensive but smaller, the size would decrease much faster than the price, so I guess it needs to be a certain size and level of impressiveness to justify its PU components and the price tag that comes with them.

This is a very good point. The Titanic is a great 9000+ piece build but the Colosseum is a terrible 9000+ piece build. The difference is repetition, the Colosseum has tons of repetition where as the Titanic does not. I think these frames will do a great job of reducing that.

Would those frames be any lighter than if they had the usual hollowed out full beams instead of these seemingly solid half beams? Maybe they are not solid. But maybe it's not for weight reduction but to make the corners look slimmer?

Seems to move at a decent speed for play. The real one moves painfully slow so that's one of the very few acceptions where being unrealistic is actually better! The base also seems pretty solid, like I don't see much bending under its weight so I guess it can take some extra boom sections. There are still the usual downsides from having PU/control+, and having so much internal gearing inside the motors that there isn't much (if any) in the way of gearing for us to build and play with, which is a shame. Far from a PF conversion I'm tempted to do a 9v conversion with buggy motors and ungeared 9v 5x4 motors (powered via PF or buwizz) just to have some nice high ratio gear trains. That's true for all PU/control+ sets. But besides that the model itself is winning me over. It might have been downsized but size isn't everything and it retains everything of mechanical moving interest. Day one is a bit of a stretch but first day of being on sale at Smyth's is gonna be hard to resist TBH.

They look the same width to me. But I can't see how the four panels of a section of boom are connected at the corners, as I can only see a single beam in each corner. Are the 4 sides actually made of 1 single piece? I must admit, despite the unrealistic proportions, it is more mechanically realistic than previous flagships so I find myself more tempted to get it. I think this will be mine as soon as there's a good deal on it. Not a day one buy like the John Deere but some day.

I think the small issue here is that the term whingers is used in a derogatory way. If you disagree with said opinions that's fine but there's no need to be mildly insulting about it.

I don't think limiting the weight it can lift is the best way to prevent it tipping over due to the different radii it can operate at. I wonder if it could use the inbuilt tilt sensor to sense if the superstructure is tipping too far. This could then disable winching up or any other functions that increases the working radius, whilst allowing winching down and functions that decrease the working radius, whilst also sounding an alarm and flashing a red warning ⚠️ icon in the app. That would actually be a fun thing to play with. Though I don't know if the real crane has that function.

Looks nice, but are they really going ahead with that price? BIIIIIIG discount buy me thinks. And gotta love the talk about the CE logo. To me CE stands for Check Everything, every machine I have worked on in industry has a CE stamp somewhere and every machine falls short of PUWER regulations. CE doesn't mean much in reality but everything has to have it so......it's a sign of the times. I just had to buy car insurance for an RC car! The times we live it!

New hubs look great with minimal slop and larger CVs. I wonder how much friction they have compared to the previous small CV joint version. The new tyres also look great for heavy duty machinery like mobile cranes and so on. Still I do hope for skinny wheels like you'd get on an 18 wheeler but these are still very nice. The price is also very good considering all the PU elements. It is almost complete. We are still missing a good gearbox that has low friction and is realistic. But apart from that it is complete and that is great to see. There are some negatives though and they are all around control+/powered up. I still don't get why the hub needs 4 screws! Only one is needed to prevent access "without a tool" and I'm still not sure if that regulation even applies to AA batteries. And far from there being any improvements to the app, let alone any proportional physical remote available even as a separate accessory, the app seems to have got worse! What happened to the code block environment with icons made in MS paint? And the steering also looked slow to respond to input with a noticeable delay, but seemed much quicker to return to centre. Have they given up on developing powered up? Might explain the price drop! But then there's the price of the Liebherr sooooo..... A question for @kbalage follow up video, for easy alternative gearing options, is it possible to swap the new hub for the planetary hub for a slow crawler? How easy is it to swap the Daytona diff for the red one, and is it worth the trouble?

I have seen springs like that on a very old official Technic set, the second auto chassis I think. Were they the same springs as on the 6.5 soft shocks?

Intriguing, this is gonna be good

That's a very interesting insight into your process, thank you for sharing

It's not that rare to see building mistakes in official product images. There's also a minor error in the instructions on page 25, the direction of either the orange arrow or both the white arrows should be reversed.

I'm not sure that having a licence must necessarily have a negative impact on the set from a technical point of view. The McLaren F1 could have had a gearbox, or even better a whole new gearbox system looking like my own concept and been amazing with or without the license. And the best set ever, all hail the mighty Arocs, had a licence. Not saying that having a licence never negatively impacts a set but that it shouldn't have to. But I guess it depends on which license they choose. Tesla cars would be an absolute crap license for a large Technic set (although good for a small pullback or creator), but JCB could be epically good. I mean, we've been hyping the JCB backhoe for how many years now? One hasn't even been announced!

I think the designers are aware of this feeling, and might even feel it themselves. There always seems to be a pneumatic tow truck, or an airbus helicopter, or a John Deere skidder set that reminds us that Technic can be great again! Bringing things back to the Liebherr I even think this can easily be made great again! The lower main boom is made up of 4 segments of new rectangular truss frames and the upper main boom is made of 3 of these segments, when the proportions of the crane makes it look as though they should be much longer, maybe about 7 segments for the lower boom and 6 segments for the upper boom at a guess. Surely there is room in the 700 euro asking price to include a pair of 3 segment long boom lengths to be added as a load for the crane to lift. Not only would this give us a load to lift but it would also mean that we can add those lengths back in AT OUR OWN RISK, as the instructions wouldn't tell us to add them back in, but we would know that we can just by them being there. If that makes the crane less stable, well tipping over is a real concern for any real life crane operator so that would just make the play experience more realistic! With the simple addition of these two boom lengths the asking price becomes more reasonable. It's an increase of 100 euro of perceived value for about 10 euro extra cost to Lego......probably! As it is, I kinda feel bad for the designer (I think it was Marcus, right?). Of course we should complain about an unreasonably high asking price. But he's put a stellar effort into bringing this crane to us and we only seem to comment on the price. I'm not much of a hugger, but I'd give the guy a hug if it makes him feel better!

In a parrot, yes. In something like a predominantly white with pink and teal accents Sukuki Jimny type compact 4x4, with working 4 wheel drive, live axle suspension, steering, piston engine and working retractable soft top aimed towards young females, maybe encouraging them to think about a future career in engineering (like Technic did with me as a young boy), that would be great. In the bowls of a gearbox or excavator, nooooooooo!