allanp

Allanp's eyes would like a word with you! I remember back in 93 when they released a hovercraft with a strange new gear. It's full use only became apparent in 94 with 8880.

Of course you might be right. But the fact they are spaced two studs on center only tells us that the number of teeth for both gears adds up to 32 (16+16 or 12+20 for example, assuming the teeth are still the usual mod 1 gear size). But they really don't look like 16t gears to me in that picture. They look new to me. The pinion looks to be 12-14 teeth.

One gear does look bigger than the other, but a 24t wouldn't fit, and I can't see much but they don't quite look like double bevel gears. And I care if they are recolouring gears to be silly bright colours but that's a different topic!

Nice to see 5x7 frame is coming in more colours, and standard green this time which is good.

Seems like a nice little sprung loaded over centre mechanism for the cab switching. Hopefully the wheels on the cab just push the cab past centre and the springs will then take over, keeping the little wheels lifted off the ground. And do we have a new gear, or just a new red colour for existing gears?

It would be better to take power from the middle as you will be loading the output shaft equally on each side, which should lessen side loading of the axle reducing friction. And also like others have said use fewer gears and axles if possible.

Those mindstorms bases are pricey but they are available on Lego bricks and pieces for £4.69

Many large builds like this have an internal box made of Duplo to reduce cost and piece count, but that's only good for large terrain where the whole base is supported by the floor or table. You could use the large bases from the latest Lego mindstorms set to build large "I" beams (ok, this font isn't great but I'm trying to say *eye* beams!) and then do a bunch of diagonal bracing. Imagine standing in the middle of the six foot span, would it hold your weight? Might need a few I beams built from a sandwich of many mindstorms base plates braced together so the can't come apart. Then connect with a bunch of triangles. Triangles are the strongest shape. But perhaps make the triangular cross bracing beams from technic beams and frames sandwiched between 5x11 technic panels. The panels are stronger than the 5x11 or 5x7 frames. But the frames could definitely be used in combination with the panels to make very strong beams. Then you could also brace these big beams with a triangular latticework of regular beams to prevent them bending. So big *eye* beams, braced with big triangular beams, braced with regular beams. Or you could just do what they did with James Mays Lego house and build around a wooden frame.

The batmobile tyres are good but I think they could do better. They need to be narrower and the wheels need a deep offset so two can be pinned back to back without any spacers while still leaving a small gap between the rubber tyres. That's how most truck type wheels are and would increase the authentic look and feel of any model that uses them. Would love to see these on a RC 18 wheeler with remotely attachable/detachable trailer with leaf spring suspension and more powerful drive motor.

Well you wouldn't want to get the two mixed up now would you? Reminds me of this guy:

@nerdsforprez Maybe it was the above post?

But can it lift....THE MONKEY!

They could use the ATAT racks with the 28t turn table but I doubt it. This big crane most likely gonna have the BWE racks I'd say.

@Gumalca yeah many of our (certainly my own) wishes may sound absurd, but a huge bucket wheel excavator, or a 7 motor 2 hub excavator would have sounded absurd before they happened. One of my wishes was the planetary reduction hubs, that was absurd before it happened. Keep wishing for the absurd my friend, that's how you know you're wishing for something better!

@SNIPE Indeed this could be quite interesting, especially if they were to do a transmission with a long linkage between the gearbox at the rear and a proper gated stick shift at the front, and leaf spring suspension. Would also be great if the car was corvette scale so you could have many cars to choose from to put in there. The car deploying mechanism could be a cool sequenced thing or something, either like 8868b or like the 8109 flatbed truck which lowered it's wheels, extended the rear and unfolded the rear all in one clever function.

Yeah, even for a 1.5 meter crane the base will probably be not huge. But I wonder if there will be some new pieces for the booms. There's a lot of beams and pins that would normally go into a 1.5 meter crane, at 2800 pieces I'm thinking there's probably some new piece that allows beams to be strongly connected at all weird angles. Or maybe something like a single piece 7x11 frame with triangular trusses moulded into it. Like this: combined with this: A hundred or so of these would explain the relatively low piece count and higher price. I assume they would want to build it strong enough to not break into a million pieces if it ever fell over, such pieces would help with that. I must admit I am getting more and more intrigued by this set. As the real crane uses mostly cables and winches it shouldn't be too difficult to make this somewhat mechanically realistic as well as being quite capable.

I see, that's good info, thank you.

@Bartybum It is a fairly high price for the number of pieces. The inclusion of only a few pneumatics wouldn't normally affect the price to parts ratio that much in a non motorised model, like 42128. That was still well under 10 cents per piece. "The set contains several pneumatic cylinders, including two gray ones for the first time" This bit makes me think there's more than the two grey ones however... "and are responsible for the movements of the gripper arm" this bit suggests only the arm is pneumatic. So for the 2 theories. Either there's a whole bunch of pneumatics (including for the stabilisers, claw and lifting the cab for a total of 8 cylinders), or they saw the selling figures of 42128 an decided they could charge more! Of course I hope the first theory is correct but you already know either way it's a day one purchase for me! But there does seem to be some discrepancy somewhere as the price, part count and description of only he arm being pneumatic doesn't quite add up. Maybe it does have motor with osprey battery box? Maybe it isn't only the arm that's pneumatic? Maybe the price is in Canadian dollars? Looking forward to seeing this one.

Yes, I was agreeing with your assumption that it's wouldn't use actuators for the major functions. Am I getting confused? I haven't had my coffee yet I'm still wondering what all the various hydraulic rams do, just out of curiosity. I see that some frames have to lift up into place, in so doing they are also lifting a whole bunch of steel cable, so I assume some hydraulics are being used for erecting the crane. The one in the thumbnail of the video posted above seems positioned in a way that it would counteract a tension force in the connected structure, keeping the arm straighter and therefor much stronger.

So, is it not delayed then? Red would be a good choice, I'd also love to see a fully black or white supercar. But until we know more about it it's hard to get excited just yet. It might be another Chiron/Sian in red, it might be electric, or my hopes of a realistic gearbox will come true. Who knows at this point!

Notice it says that it comes with several pneumatics, two of them are grey. This is excellent news, not only are we getting different coloured pneumatics, but that description sounds to me like those 2 grey cylinders aren't the only two. Of course I'm looking forward to this one!

Nice video, thanks for sharing. But still it looks as though the cables are doing all the lifting (after the crane is assembled). I did think the hydraulics were used for assembly but I noticed they weren't attached for most of the assembly so I'm not sure what they are for tbh. Maybe they help adjust the tension on the ballast? But the video does demonstrate quite a few possible functions. Left track, right track, slew, boom 1 winch, boom 2 winch, hook winch, ballast move in and out, ballast wheel steering and several stabiliser jacks. So it looks as though there's potentially enough functions to easily fill 2 hubs. Plus, do we think the weight of two hubs is going to be enough for a 1.5 meter crane? Maybe there's some counter weights included.

Why would you motorise the cyclic or collective functions? Surely they would just be a manual lever? It may only be motorised rotors without any gearbox. Or more likely it will be a four function gearbox with rotors, winch 1m winch 2 and landing gear, with manual sliding door and manual blade pitch controls. I think that would make the most sense. I do hope they managed to pull of both cyclic and collective main rotor controls.

Maybe it's Canadian dollars!

YAAAAAAAAY!!!!