allanp

I bought mine the day it came out from the Argos store in Walsall if that helps.

Nope!

I really don't think you can stop the cheating, which is a real shame. Looking at the monthly winners I would say that over 50% were built by adults. It's not just the high standards of the MOCs, I was up there at that age, but just look at the number of parts some of them have. How many under 16s have that many sets all nicely parted out into individual bins of all the different parts and colours. Also notice that the V-TOL is something that is fairly obviously built by an under 16. Then we had the thing of the AFOL submissions not being included for the monthly prizes. Only after that did we suddenly see a large increase in the standard of the MOCs and number of parts used (all the correct colour) in the MOCs that were winning. I could be wrong, I may have had the ability and pacience but certainly not the parts or the organisation to design and build anything like some of these huge, non multicoloured MOCs in two weeks at that age. Did anyone else here have cos like I say I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong because it's just so bloody unfair to the under 16's who have the exitement and the will but not the resourses or the experience to match the AFOLs. Lets face it, any under 16 who has the patience and the will to sit down and cultivate their minds to build a MOC instead of play the x-box and generally cause havoc is a miracle. And all *some* people in the AFOL community can do is piss all over them so they can win their precious monthy prize, a prize they could quite easily buy themselves without having to save up their pocket money. It really is disgusting and i'm gonna stop now before I really get pissed off with it. Just one more thing before I go tho, whilst I am hugely grateful to TLG for the chance to participate in this competition and win some expensive prizes (thankyou so much TLG) I will not be participating in the next one. Although Lego is greatly enjoyed by kids and adults alike I feel that Lego mainly belongs to the children and due to the above, all entries that look as though they were built by adults should banned and no adult competition. I know that sucks for us AFOLs but it is only my humble opinion (and again I could be wrong) that if that's the only way to prevent the under 16's being treated unfairly then that's what must be done.

That's awesome, it looks like something in a James Cameron movie. Nothing in particular just the cool/industrial/sci-fi look it has. A friend of mine asked me to build something very similar using NXT motors and small enough to fit in a standard maze used for micromouse competitions. Here's what I came up with: http://www.rwnlabs.co.uk/drupal/

It could be a good thing. Nothing keeps prices down like competition and right now, technic doesn't really have any competition. Besides, if they make some longer pneumatics I won't be complaining! What am I saying. DOWN WITH MEGABLOCKS!!!!!!

Does this help? Edit: Ooooops i've made a mistake, thinking about it this design will not allow the end to rotate about the axis. I knew it was too obvious Unfortunately I think UJs are gonna be your best option. Why do you say UJs won't be good enough?

I would think one M-motor should do it with a properly designed platform.

This is absolutely increadible! I love the extra little chrome pieces too.

I guess you don't need a small cylinder, you could try leverage. Put the cylinder close to the pivot point of a lever, then put the bands or spings far away from the pivot. This should require more pressure to activate the switch. But I can't emphisize enough to be mindful of the pressure damaging your one and only pump. I have been doing some tests using tap water, a pump and a pressure gauge (that only goes up to 30 psi ). Step one was to see how well it can pump air to compare later. It took 10 strokes to move the needle right round. So now that's sorted, time to pump water! First of all I was surprised at how well it can pump water under pressure. It did it as well if not better than it does air. So next was to attatch the pressure guage. With four pumps it was the needle was right round touching the stop again on the other side, one more pump and the pipes (secured with a cross block) popped right off. But not wanting anyone to damage their parts I decided to go further and test the pump to destruction if necesary. So I kinked the hose and held the pipe on again with the cross block and also with my fingures as tight as I could. Again the pipe just popped off. Tried it several more times until a couple of times, the water forced it's way past the seal, pump going down but no water going anywhere. I figure this is gonna be the maximum pressure we're gonna get. It took a fair bit of force to push it down without pumping any water. Probably about 2 or 3 kgs at a guess (which means if the seals in the larger cylinder can take it, a force of 8-12 kgs may be possible from them). Anyway, after pumping water at what I figure to be the highest possible pressure attainable from these pumps I pumped the pump a few times with air to dry it out and hooked up the pressure gauge again to see how well it still pumped air. Thankfully it still works fine. Can move the needle of the gauge right round just as it did before with the same number of strokes as it took before (10 using air). So it would seem that those little pumps can not only pump water as well as they can pump air, but it is also pretty hard to damage them by using them to pump water, at least for now I have failed to do so. Is there any other tests anyone would like me to do before we can say it's safe to use pumps in this way?

I see where you are coming from, but I think you may have misunderstood me a little bit. I was refering to the cylinder used for pressure regulation. If you use a smaller cylinder, the smaller one has a surface area about 1/4 the size of the larger cylinder. This means that the pressure would have to be 4 times as great before the cylinder can overcome the spring/rubber bands and move the valve, giving you four times more pressure. So I would advice using less resistance at first. But like I said, I don't know what kind of pressures are happening here so I can't say for certain that the pneumatic parts will cope.

Would I be right in saying it's for a printing machine? Like a heidelburg? If so then I would stick with the valve block. You should in theory be able to use an airtank to "store" some vacuum. So you can be generating the vacuum all the time and switch a valve using a cam to give you instanct vacuum. Then maybe you can get 180 sheets per minute However you could always try efferman's idea again but using more than one cylinder. But I would think one is enough providing you have a good enough seal. What dish piece did you use?

This is excellent, well done. Remember tho increasing the number of pumps will not increase the pressure, but it should increase the speed. Putting more rubber bands on the pessure regulator will increase the pressure. In fact, using a large cylinder as the regulator means the amount of resistance you put against it there will be the amount of power the hydraulics will operate at. If you have 4 kgs of spring pressure the cylinder should lift about 4 kgs. Alternatively you could use a small cylinder as the regulator. I believe it's pressure area to be about 1/4 the size of the large cylinder. This means that putting 1 kg of pressure there will translate to 4 kgs at the hydraulic cylinder, not accounting for the switch stiction. The weights memtioned are only examples. Before doing any further testing to see what performance is possible personaly I would do some tests to see what pressures are being achieved. If it's 10 psi then go ahead and improve it, but if it's peaking at 70 psi then stop! We know that the pump (and it's internal one way valve) can cope with pressure of maybe up to 50-60 psi (which some of my MOCs have run at and depending on the cylinders, valves used). I've not seen these parts run at any higher pressure than 60 psi and so I can't tell you how they will cope.

Oh dear! Well thanks for showing us the results. What fluid did you use? Looks like it was water. I'm wondering if these cylinders are no good for this. Air is thinner and so it should seal a liquid, but then I guess you wouldn't really notice a tiny bit of air leaking, whereas you obviously would with water/oil.

Awwwwww please be careful with your parts, I hope you don't do any damage!

In one of the photo's, someone with a very good eye has also pointed out there is a diff in the front axle, you can see some of the teeth!

Look closely at the red and yellow gearbox switches. One of the switches has either compressor or a rear PTO. The other switch has either a front PTO or a second rear PTO. If you include the forth pneumatic switch that's (correct me if i'm wrong) one pneumatic + one rotary PTO at the front and one pneumatic + TWO rotary PTO's at the back. I know (or guess) one of the rear ones is for the turntable, but what's the second one for? One more thing. Take a close look at the box art, specifically the three pins that the front wheel clicks onto. Notice how the slots of the pins do NOT point towards the centre of the wheel. Could this be only a slight modification to the existing hub, or could it be a whole new one, possibly even with some form of gear reduction (planetary perhaps) inside, also meaning possible 4WD? This is only wild speculation of course, but if that second PTO is not a PTO it could be for powering the wheels, which would make having some form of gear reduction at the hub very helpful! Even so, it already looks like an awesome set, I can't wait for it!

I too thought you meant technic "themes". A theme based on the rollercoaster tycoon computer games would be great. As regaurds to within the main technic theme, I think animals might be better suited to B-models to give more variety. A proper flagship monster truck would be great if it has alot of new heavy duty/low friction transmission parts. A multi engined plane or a BBBBIIIIIIIGGGGGGG helicopter would also be cool. Things like clocks, printing machines (which I used to work with as an engineer) and looms would be great for us AFOLs, but i'm not sure they would be that popular with the target demographic. Besides i'm not sure how well a 6 colour heidelberg would work in lego!

They are indeed 9L, otherwise they would have to be bent into place. I'm still wondering why there appears to be two rear PTOs (plus the pneumatic PTO). I have upheld my tradition of waiting until Christmas day to open the latest technic flagship every year I have had a technic flagship. Could this be the first year that I can't wait that long?

I hadn't anticipated that it would self centre, but now that I think about it I should have realised that there will be twisting in the axles. This is storing energy so that when you release the power it springs back. Regaurding the slowing down, this could be for a couple of reasons. 1) Those CV hubs have, IMHO, a design flaw. The hub rotates freely in the outer part however, the CV joint is tight inside the hub, this means that the larger the angle of steering, the greater amount of friction you have. I have always found that annoying and I have no idea why they decided to make them so tight. The new female CV joint part (as found in 8070) is fine in this regaurd, runs nice and freely at any angle within it's limits. 2) When the motor is stalled it will draw alot of current. This will sap power from the electronics meaning there will be less power going to the drive motor. 3) You may also be inducing friction by trying to steer the wheels beyond the limit set by the CV joint. You may want to try limiting the amount of steering just a little bit. Hope this helps.

The parts being referred to in these posts are mainly these: http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/6272 http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/5282 http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/5292 As can be found in 8475 RC Race Buggy (2002) and 8366 Supersonic RC (2003). The transmitter is a 3 channel transmitter, the reciever has two electrical outputs (ie one for main motor drive and one for an auxilery like a gear shift) and an in-built servo motor for steering. One of the electrcal outputs (the red one) is controlled via the up/down joystick and is proportional (sort of, I think it's three steps or speeds), the other electrical output (the dark grey one) is operated via the paddles on the back of the transmitter (similar to the gearshift on an F1 car) and is either on or off. The functionality of this system was great. I hope that the current PF line will include a servo motor in the future.

From the looks of your current setup, this should fit right in. You might want to mess about with the gears, or maybe use a linkage, as it is it will go almost, but not precisely back to centre.

I was thinking of using the multiple turntable idea to build a solar system.

I assume that you want three rotare function and for them all to be operated either individually or simultainiously as desired. like drive both tracks at the same time. Am I right? Or is there any consession you could make, ie is it possible that one of the functions be a linear movement?

The problem of the ruturn circuit can be overcome by having the valve submerged in the resevior or by having them abouve the resevior. The fluid will come out as the cylinder pushes it out, as it was not compressed it SHOULD not spert out everywhere put just flow out nicely, depending on how much of an effect ballooning pips will have. Nethertheless they can still be submerged to prevent it sperting out. As for submerging the pump, that is not a problem in itself, that's easy. But it has not been tested to see it the pump can actually pump the desired liquid reliably and without causing damage. It's understandable that it has not yet been tested here. But again, there are workarounds, like usuing one side of the small cylinder coupled to a valve in some way as to keep the fluid flowing in one dirction. For me right now the main concerns are can it be done without damaging parts (like the one way valves inside certain pneumatic elements) and what is the best fluid to use.

They are number 4 connectors. Edit: Ooops, Blakbird beat me to it Edit 2: Hey I just noticed i'm a knight now apparently. YEY!