allanp

And after one post as new moderator correcting grammar the congratulations stopped Seriously though well done and thank you for helping to make this the best forum on the internet

I remember this part from a few sets released in 1995, like 8460, you can see it on the handle between the wheels: I think (not 100% sure) it is also one of two pieces glued together to create this part:

It should be noted that out in the real world if you do not know something you are encouraged to ask for help from others, at least that's been my experience .

So something like this? Each motor drives a front and a rear wheel with a reduction of 72:1.

Looking at Blakbirds Technicopidea I see that the original set only really had 2 gears, despite there being three gears in the gearbox you could only select 2 of them depending on if it was motorized or not. So I guess functionally the remake is accurate to only have 2 gears. Would be more mechanically accurate to have 3 however, plus the differential and tilt adjustment for the seat. But considering they had to build it from only the parts that comes with 3 of the first wave sets it's quite impressive, and I love the front cover of the instructions, how they matched it to the original is great!

Due to Lego instructions being so good I don't think size, part count or amount of complexity has much correlation with difficulty. Building a complex 3000 piece model just seems like building 10 simple 300 pieces models. The model may be complex but you still build only one step at a time placing only a few pieces per step. So there's really no difference. I think the only difficulty comes from set design that is at the limit of functioning properly. 42009 and 42043 have a similar size and complexity and the same motor.However 42043s motor can power its many moving functions easily whereas the design of 42009 means its motor struggles to power some of its functions properly leading to unreliability and much more care needed during the build to make sure everything moves freely.

After hundreds of builds and as an adult none of them are hard, but in purely relative terms, looking at every Technic set ever made I would say 42009 is probably the hardest to build correctly because with 42009, more than any other set, it isn't just about following the instructions. You have to really make sure everything runs perfectly otherwise that motor just isn't powerful enough to operate all of it's functions (like the outriggers) reliably. I think 8480 and 8043 had the same issue to a much lesser extent. Most sets are pretty fool proof however. Just build it to the instructions and it'll work just fine.

Thanks for the comments Please feel free to build one, if you need more pics or info just ask

It weighs 1.044 kg Dimensions are 41 studs long (44 studs if one of the disks teeth are pointing forwards), 26 studs wide (32 if you measure across disk teeth) and 12 studs high. Well to test against heavier opponent all I had to hand and built is the Technic research ship which weighs about 0.9 kg, so I added some weights to it to make it heavier than hypnodisk and.... I quite like those dark blue parts so I decided not to cause any more damage, but hypnodisk is completely undamaged. So I tried it against a sturdy table leg. The disk stopped with a loud bang as it hit the table leg but Hypnodisk is still undamaged with a very slight mark left on the table leg.

Thanks Sounds a bit like one as well! I like using UJs because even the most rigid Lego construction can twist, the UJs allow that without causing binding of axles. Not really necessary as this chassis is quite stiff, just something I like to do. Yup! It's possible to make a more destructive robot, but I wanted to make it look like hypnodisk, which is pretty destructive anyway and my favorite battle bot. I think I remember the original was inspired by a lego model, so I guess it's come full circle .

So I thought I would spend a day to complete an old prototype hypnodisk I posted on brickshelf a while back. However because the disk is pretty much the same as the prototype posted a while back (besides the internal structure where it mounts to the turn table) it will likely not be eligible for the TC11 competition. But I'll post it here anyway just for fun . Anywho, here it is.... It has buggy motor driven spinning disk, 2 L-motors for drive, 1 M-motor for the self righting arm, 1 V2 receiver, 1 V1 receiver and 1 lipo-battery box. Todays build started with rebuilding and updating the old disk from the prototype. Here you can see the internal structure a bit better. And the completed disk... That old turn table is well used and spins very freely. After that the drive motor and front wheels where fitted along with the disks drive motor. The gears that drive the disk are meshed at a slight angle, but works well. Then came the rear part of the chassis along with the self righting mechanism. The m-motor has enough torque to cause both the white clutch gears to slip, so any larger motor would just be taking up space and weight. And after adding some quick body work it's finished. A lack of grey corner panels made it more tricky. Here's an underside shot. But enough of that, you want a video? i got a video, my first in fact, and it's tricky to drive this thing with one hand while holding the camera (phone) in the other, but you get the idea And here's a quick video of the self righting mechanism. Hope you enjoy, comments and constructive criticisms welcome

Understood. I'll probably keep it as it is as any change to the disk will probably make it worse . I may post a topic on it just to join in with the battle bots fun but won't enter it in the competition unless I decide to think up a new design for the disk .

Hi guys, was just wondering would I be allowed to post an entry that is a complete version of a prototype version that I posted a while ago? Today I have completely redesigned everything except the spinning mass, which I am happy with, and the total design time including designing the previous prototype plus today's building is about 3 days.

A model in the control center 1 set also changes function by changing the motors direction.

I only have one or two models built at a time so usually about 120,000.

I didnt think about the battery box being effectively an adjustable weight. Was just thinking about completely full ones. Being able to tune the weight of the spinner to suit the motor so that it can store lots of energy whilst still being light enought to spin fast is a great advantage

That is also true and should be considered. Good point . What I was getting at is that because the opposing robot isn't fixed in place you are having to rely on it's own inertia otherwise it will just be pushed out the way immediately after the initial hit without any damage being caused to it. Take the same analogy of the car and the bullet, car is moving at 1mph but this time there is another bullet glued to the front bumper. So now we have two bullets, one moving bullet speed, the other glued to the front of a car moving 1mph, both having the same total kinetic energy. When colliding with a fixed object the damage will be great in both cases. But when colliding with an easily movable Lego model, the Lego model will just be pushed out the way by the slow moving bullet but will be completely obliterated by the fast moving bullet despite their both having the same amount of total kinetic energy and surface area.

A motorbike wheel I would say is a bit on the light side for this scale but like you say it is very efficient because of the tire on the outside edge. I would say that makes it an ideal spinner for a smaller scale of robot. 45x45x45 is quite large. You could spin the wheel faster using gearing up but that brings it's own inefficiencies. At the same time I would say big bar spinners with battery boxes are too heavy for Lego motors to be efficient. There is a balance you have to have between the power a lego motor can give to a fly wheel and the fly wheel itself for maximum effect. Another thing to consider is when considering the energy of an impact, not only do you have to consider the energy in the flywheel but also the inertia of the opposing robot. A big heavy slow bar may have a lot of energy but if it's not moving very fast it'll just move the opposing robot out the way without damage, whereas a fast moving spinner (like a motorbike wheel as you say) will impart more of it's energy. Think of a car with a scoop moving 1mph and a bullet moving thousands of feet the second. They both have the same energy but the bullet will cause far more damage. So too heavy is bad, but you do need enough weight to be able to store the energy given to it my a Lego motor and I'm not sure a motorbike wheel is quite heavy enough. But if that's what you want to use aim for at least 4000 rpms on that bad boy! Having said all that, a flipper is a much greater challenge than a simple spinner. So that I think would be more impressive but really you need the V2 2x11 pneumatics minimum. Even better would be the old single acting long cylinders as they move with far less friction. Those really can flip a heavy opponent (or a car like 8448!) if you have enough of them.

Weight is only half the equation and you can get enough of it by building very dense and beefy which will also make it strong. Speed is the other half of the equation and massively heavy bar spinners filled with battery boxes spin very slow compared to a lighter but solidly built spinner. Spinning bars and fly wheels will only store the energy given to them by the motors. But if they are too heavy friction and flexing causes energy losses resulting in a very weak spinner that bogs down the spinner motor causing it to draw too much power which may cause other issues.

Using a buggy motor>40t gear>turntable is exactly how I drove the disk of my hypnodisk, and it works very well , drove the buggy motor directly from a V2 IR reciever.

I had this problem too building it from my own parts so I extended the beam that it gets jammed on with a 5x0.5 lift arm to eliminate that edge. it's a tight fit but it does fit ok.

Does anyone else have two different sets where one of them is your favorite and the other one is the one you think is the best? That's confusing, let me give you an example. My favourite set of all time is probably 8868. Though I really like 8880 and 8480 as well. And in a sense these are for me best sets of all time as they brought so much cool new stuff to the Technic toy box. And of course nostalgia plays it's part also. So those are my most loved and cherished. So those would be my favorites, but purely objectively speaking, without the rose tinted spectacles of nostalgia maybe they aren't actually the best? IMHO I think the best Technic set ever released was 42043. It's just as innovative and brought many new parts to the technic toybox like 8880, it's even more mechanically authentic than 8868 and as complex as 8480. It has all the good points of those three sets combined! Not only that, but 8480s complexity, like most complex sets, comes from mostly just gear trains whereas the complexity of 42043 comes from many different places (gears, pneumatics, live axle suspension, complex linkages for steering and so on) making it's build engaging enough to compete with the joys of studded building. And the reason for it's variety of complexity types comes from the designer trying to mimic the real life complexities and mechanics of the real thing, not just making a toy that moves. The end result is a truck that has a plethora of functions including a crane arm that has some actual lifting power (cough 42009 cough 8043 cough. Oh, I need some medicine!) and it's all authentically realized. I though 8110 was brilliant (still do) but 42043 beats even that. So yeah, 8868/8880/8480 are my most cherished but objectively speaking 42043 is the absolute best!

Ide say stick with trans yellow. A blue JCB would still have a yellow or amber beacon in real life, unless its an emergency JCB! In which case you would need to recolour the rest of it to white or lime

Anyone tried separating these pieces in step 7 part 1 in the image below? It's from 8466.

Have you heard of a website called bricklink? You can buy new and second hand parts individually from modern day to really old stuff from the very early days of Lego. The oldest/first programmable mindstorms brick is this one: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=884a#T=S&C=3&O={"color":3} they are very cheap HOWEVER they were first released in 1998 and were programmed using an IR tower that plugged into your computer via an old school D type connector: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=x87#T=S&C=10&O={"color":10} And you will need the software, which was originally designed to run on windows 95! https://www.bricklink.com/search.asp?colorID=0&itemID=44442 But if you can get that older stuff to work that would be the cheapest way. In anycase here's where you will find many different programmable bricks for sale: https://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=P&catString=463 ....and here's where you'll find many pieces of software for programming. https://www.bricklink.com/browseList.asp?itemType=G&catString=180 Make sure you get the right software for the right brick, that you can run the software on your computer and that you can connect the programmable brick to your computer.