allanp

I think flying vehicles can be a tricky thing to make interesting as a Technic set because their main function of flight can't really be replicated (at least while not looking like a tethered drone). On the other hand, a digger or a crane can easily made to actually dig and lift things. So with flying vehicles, in some cases you get a large vehicle with a little spinning propeller and some small flaps that move. But some sets like the osprey broke that trend by having larger, more dynamic functions with two fairly large, fast spinning tilting propellers. Sets like 8480 and control centre 2 also broke that trend and I think the Airbus will also. But with the Airbus TLG need to show it in action. Pictures alone won't do it justice.

I wouldn't say interest is waning. I think there's interest but I guess people want to see the functions in action before making their minds up. Also, besides the proportions there isn't much else for us to complain about. It has new functionality achieved with new parts that allow for said functionality to be done more authentically, a variety of different mechanisms, it's bound to be packed with complexity, the build should be interesting from start to end with mechanisms from top to bottom and it's size (price) looks to be fully justified. Sure, it might have looked a bit better and there's multicoloured gears, but I don't feel much like complaining about that given all the previous good points it has. For me, 8480 is the king of flying Technic vehicles. It does have lights, a additional micromotor, minimal colour coding and some belt drives (which I still miss!) over the Airbus. But the Airbus has more dynamic and exciting functionality (a huge, fast spinning, 5 bladed rotor vs rather slow moving functions of 8480), much more authentic mechanism (although how do you make an authentically working space shuttle in Lego?!), it's landing gear is motorised, and I think the new cyclic/collective parts are more interesting than the new parts in 8480. So for me, if I can ignore the nostalgia of 8480, the Airbus is in with a chance of beating it!

I'd say don't be tempted to remove too many pieces at each photo and like @howitzer said, take pictures of the parts that were removed at each step and keep angle changes to a minimum.

it's the 5 sided piece that all the rotor assemblies are attached to, with the central beam running up through a square hole in the centre.

I think this almost confirms the whole head doesn't tilt, and it's the individual blades that tilt as the head rotates. Looking forward to seeing how they did the cyclic/collective mechanism. Also looking forward to see what others do with the 5 way liftarm.

Yeah I think that was the 4th version of it or something.

Well, here you go! I also moved the shifting components around (so it's all in a 2x2 on centre grid) and made it way less tall than the previous demo. This is a more compact 4 speed version, using the 12t, 16t, 20t and 24t gears. There is also a neutral position. I am testing it with 2 powered up XL motors with 9V duracell batteries. In 1st gear the gear ratio is a 3:1 reduction, so that's 2 powered up motors geared down 3:1, which is a lot of torque on the 24t clutch gear and drive ring. In 1st gear the piece I used to block rotation kept flying off! The last time it flew off I couldn't find it quickly so that's where the video ends . But yeah, this gearbox is a fully braced version and there's no skipping in any gear. I have also messed with the tolerances a little, and it's also not running at a few thousand RPM this time, so now it's very quiet also. And here's a quick test of changing gears under load: It works very reliably with a load of 2 white clutch gears. However with 3 white clutch gears it doesn't always want to shift without applying a bit more force that I would feel comfortable with. I suspect this would be improved though with higher quality injection moulded parts rather than FDM 3D printed parts.

I remember this set as was always amazed and impressed with the mechanical design. I found you had to roll it just right, so the rear legs unfolds fully without touching the ground, it shouldn't have to lift the droid before it's fully unfolded. I remember that it would fully unfold, then the droid would drop down onto it after it had fully deployed.

Yeah this is a bit confusing, but honestly I think it's just a tricky function to show in a single image, so they put the arrow there to differentiate between the different ways the blades tilt. I'm thinking the rotor head does not tilt, or at least is not intended to tilt. But apparently the 2 speed gearbox is there to allow you to see the function working in slow speed, and generate a small draft in high speed. I think it would only take a small bit of lift to tilt the head slightly. But my guess right now is that it works like a proper swash plate, tilting the blades individually instead of the whole head. But I have seen some real rotor heads that looks like they can tilt, I thinks it's called a teeter hinge? Not sure how that works as the blades can also tilt along their axis as usual.

Some more detail.... The 24 tooth gear is the reverse idler gear. You will see how I have printed the rotary cams. On the wavy part, I had that facing up in Cura so the wavy geometry was printed with the smooth X and Y axis movements of the printer, this was to minimise any Z layer lines in that area. However because it was printed this way the opposing side is really rough. But that's very simple geometry that just needed a quick rub of a needle file. The drive rings were the most tricky parts to make as I wanted nice, smooth, accurate surfaces where the selector fork ridge mates with it, and where the clutch gears slot into it. Like the rotary cams, this wouldn't be an issue for proper injection moulded parts, but for this 3D printing noob I had to print them in 3 separate parts and glue them together, aligning them by eye as best as I could. The drive rings are not very deep, only 1 stud, and much less than that where they engage with the axle extender. The selector forks have a ridge that engages with the drive rings, it's this ridge that helps keep them straight and not bind on the axle engenders. The axle extenders would normally be a single 3 module long piece with centre stop, like any other 3M axle extender. However, again due to 3D printing, I split them into two 1.5 module halves and omitted the axle stop so they could be slid together onto a 16M long axle. The selector forks have a loose fitting cross axle hole. Originally they had a plain round hole but I found that they would slide much better if the sliding surfaces was on the flat sides of the axle as opposed to the rounded outer diameter of the axle. This also allowed me to have a cut out on the underside which provides clearance for the 24 tooth clutch gear. The pin that engages with the rotary cam looks quite small, but as it fully sits within the groove of the rotary cam it is plenty strong enough. You can also see I made 2 new parts for the indexing mechanism. I wanted to have the rotary cams move to exactly the right place so these pieces allowed for a nice positive stop in exactly the right positions. I'm sure the indexing mechanism could have been done with pre-existing parts, but while I'm making new gearbox parts I thought, what the heck, might as well make things easy for myself. Besides, part of the motivation behind making this gearbox was to make it simpler than TLGs approach, and see how easy I could make it for people to design their own, and incorporate this gearboxes functionality into their own MOCs. While TLGs target audience might be okay with following the instructions for the Sian or the Ferrari, I think they would find it difficult to MOC there own sequential 8 speed gearboxes from the pieces they provide. So I wanted to see if these pieces would make the whole thing much more intuitive and easy to understand, making it much easier to incorporate such functionality into their own MOCs. I think I succeeded in this regard. Whilst I tried to put a lot of thought and effort into the design of the individual elements, I really didn't have to put much thought into designing the whole gearbox. The parts made it very easy. I just built it while waiting for parts to print. Hopefully you can get a sense of the force enquired to shift, it isn't very much at all.

Could you not add some discrete slope bricks or plates that stick out near the hinge so that they come to rest on the other part to block downward movement? It might even look like some nice extra detailing/greebling!

@2GodBDGlory PM sent

Thanks for all the comments guys . I'm happy to share 3D files and more pics of the individual parts. I will need to clean things up a bit as I have been messing about with things, also parts are split (and later glued together) to make them easier for this 3D printing noob to print them. But let me know what you would like either here or in a pm. I'll probably put the parts together as one piece so you can decide how best to split/print them. Btw let me know if you are able to split the parts or if you want me to leave them already split up, though I wouldn't necessarily trust my judgement on how best to split/print the parts if you are more experienced at 3D printing. I would also like to try out other configurations. It was built this way to make it easy to show from the side but I'm pretty sure things could be rearranged to make it fit different spaces. @Gimmick not much force to shift. Should be easy to motorise. When I get more time (later this week hopefully) I shall show more of the parts and the indexing mechanism. Thanks Kbalage

Thank you In terms of improvements, I think I could improve the tolerances by quite a bit. I'm new to 3D printing so not sure how close I can be. Things that should be tight on the axles (like the axle extender pieces that the drive rings sit on) are just completely loose! I could use regular 2 module long axle extenders and leave a cutout on the clutch gears for room, but that would make them need to be asymmetrical. The clutch gears are only asymmetrical right now because they was easier to print that way. But this design does allow them to be symmetric. I could also improve the pegs on the shift forks (that engage with the rotary cams) by not printing them, and instead leaving a hole and gluing in a much smoother, round piece of plastic. I could also step back the drive dogs just slightly more on the drive rings to give some more clearance but that shouldn't be needed if the gears wasn't wobbling about so much. They don't jam but they do cause some rattles. Maybe I could soften their edges a bit. Lots of little improvements like that which I might do over time. But for now it's very reliable and functional.

Thanks Milan. Yup, there's just something more exciting (and I guess in this case authentic) about fast spinning gears and fake engines and the sounds they make! And yeah, if these parts (or something very similar) was available from Lego it would be so much nicer. As it is now everything is loose and wobbly and rattles! I'd rather hear the brraaAAAh click brraaaAAAH of the engine/motors than the rattley gearbox. Works though! Thank you

Thanks @efferman. The cam piece probably took a couple hours to design. I wanted 8 gear positions but also a small neutral area between each gear to allow a bit of time for the previous gear to disengage before the next one engages, and also to allow for a neutral position without taking up one of the gear positions. So in Fusion 360 I started my making a straight track, using circles that match the shift fork pin diameter in each position. Then wrapped it around the cam.

Hi all. This is my custom gearbox with 7 forward speeds, neutral and reverse. This is made with some custom 3D printed components. I basically wanted to make a more realistic gearbox and wondered if it was possible, given the right parts, to make within the Lego "system". Here's a video of the results: Yes it's very noisy/rattley and the parts are very loose with not very good tolerances, but thems the breaks when you have an FDM type 3D printer! This is only a prototype. I'm certain it would run much nicer with proper Lego injection moulded parts, with the much smoother surfaces and tighter tolerances they can achieve. I think it would run much quieter with some grease but wanted to try without any. I'm really pleased with this result. I like that it's much more realistic and has very low friction. There's no way you could ever push it fast enough to make the gears click while driving a fake engine. I'm also really happy with the sound the engine/motors make when shifting through the gears, it's really satisfying to play with! For gear ratios, I decided on 24t, 22t, 20t, 18t, 16t, 14t and 12t as that would allow the main shaft and the lay shaft to fit on a standard 2 module spacing on centre. 2 gear teeth doesn't sound like much of a difference between ratios but remember that their mated gears are also changing size by 2 teeth, so the difference is noticeable, with a fairly large range between 1st gear and 7th gear. In terms of torque, it can stall an XL motor without anything skipping in reverse, 3rd, 4th and 7th gears, as those gears are right up against supporting beams. However in 1st, 2nd, 5th and 6th, as those are in the middle of the axles, the axles can bend and gears can slip under the torque of an XL motor. However this can be fixed by adding two more support beams between those gears. This current setup however is fine for medium torque, high speed applications where you are using faster motors, different gearing or simply manually driving a fake engine. I didn't want to test it to destruction however as these parts take hours to print! The indexing mechanism is also more accurately placed, built right into the gearbox, so no need for that mechanism to take up any space by the steering wheel, so hopefully that should allow for a much cleaner steering wheel construction with a nice, angled up towards the driver steering wheel and flappy paddles. The force required to shift is much less that the UCS Porsche, but being placed far from the steering wheel you'd probably want to use a push/pull linkage rather than a twisting shaft. Hope you enjoy and any comments/constructive criticisms are of course welcome. Or if you just want to say it sucks you can do that too!

I don't have the set but I think @Gimmick is correct. The noise only comes when the motor that switches the functions is calibrating correct?

Oh ye of little faith! Edit: made dedicated post to discuss gearbox better and not derail this topic!

Yeah probably not soon but TLG also don't like parts for only one set so they'll want to reuse them somehow.

Hmmmm not quite but close. At least these new swash plate parts should be able to slide vertically for the collective pitch control. They are usually held in place via a somewhat complex set of linkages, that also work as a sort of mixer. It'll take the two separate cyclic/collective controls from the cockpit and mix them together to control the swash plates tilt side to side, front to back as well as up and down.

I wonder if there will be 3 and/or 4 blade swash plate elements in future?!

So it might be coming this year then? And yes they are getting better at controlling leaks up until a week or so before official reveal.

@kbalage again you make a lot of good points. And yes my point about being educational was a bit strangely worded. But a lot if toys that aim for educational only hit boring, where as models that aim for crazy levels of authenticity hit exciting and educational. But, perhaps more confusingly, I'm actually arguing for a bit less complexity in these supercars. They don't need to be as packed as the ATV nor should they be. Even if we add the much wanted brakes to the cars it wouldn't be that packed. The gearbox I described would actually decrease complexity and would hopefully not feel like so many useless gears, as there would be far fewer gears and less pieces required overall. But another thing that would help a lot would be an optional simple motor upgrade. The wheels would be lifted off the ground and a high speed motor added to the engine so you could see and hear the wheels spin faster and faster as you flick through the gears, with a satisfying brrrRRRR click brrrrRRRR, click brrrrRRRR. I think that would not detract from it being a display piece, if anything it would make it a more dynamic and impressive display piece to casual fans to see a highly detailed car that actually went brrrrrRRRRRRR!!!!!. But of course we'd want a nice low friction gearbox to get the wheels spinning good and fast!

Thanks @Maaboo35. Of course I want it!