Trains!

Ah, don't worry. I'm not going there just yet, but Sweden saw it's first train meetup this past weekend and I was there and had a lot of fun! Here's a little edit of the videofootage I got with my helmet cam:




Update: Here are some photos from the same event.

RobotWars bot

In March 2005 there was an AFOL-event i Karlskoga with RobotWars, for that I built this robot and in the end won the competition. To learn more about the event see the page for SweBrick VII.

Most of my bricks went into storage but I kept the robot and a RIS-set at hand in case my fingers got the itch. It took a while but the itch came and I decided to tear down the robot and build something else instead. But first I had to snap a shot or two...

Wedge-design.

In the middle I had an arm for lifting via pneumatics, four airtanks that I pumped manually before combat but also an on board compressor. The arm was way to weak to do any difference once into combat...

In the back I had two big wheels that spun fast to bounce away enemies that attacked from behind. The batteries for this function drained and the wheels hardly spun at all. I had two small battery boxes for these wheels and the compressor and two big battery boxes for propulsion.

Guts. I had four motors per wheel hooked to the battery boxes via a number of electrical plates arranged to put out 18V instead. Here's a guide how to build that, but stay cautious!

It was a lot of parts in this robot. :-O

In the end I never built anything with the parts...

RCKillough Mk III

Yet another Killough. This one built prior to a Swedish LEGO fest I was holding. I built this to arrange a driving competition. It worked out fine :)

Also see my first Killough and my second. The page for the first Killough contains a lot more info on the Killough platform in general.

Facts

Same thing as the first Killough, however this version is smaller since I put the motors back to back. I had to add two more gears but the gear ratio is still the same.

For Mk III I went back to the wheeltype used on Mk I since they worked much better then the 8462 wheels on Mk II. The wheel uses 'Tyre 56 x 30 R Balloon' and can be found on Peeron here.

I looked at my other wheels but non is as thin and at the same time rounded. Perhaps the BIG wheels from 8466/8457 could be used? :)

Here you see the underside and the new center design with the motors back to back.

Beacuse of the new design I had to put a lot of gear around the edge, I was afraid the heavy battery pack would cause difficulties but it worked like a charm.

Here's the course for the competition. The first time the object was to knock down all minifigs on blue/yellow stands and leave the rest on shortest time. The second run you just jammed 'em all on as little time as possible. The Killough climbs stacks of 2 x 2 bricks making some stick under the chassi so it was a real challange.

Here we a little from the race. As the videocamera on the tripod is recording I have this on tape, however it's too much work to extract the video and put it OnLine. I'll get back to that later. In the meantime there is a handful of videos of the first Killough.

Pushing the 8480 to the launch pad.

Playing.

Here's my sisters son, Mattias, showing some real skill in driving this thing. He's seven BTW and was dissapointed it could "only" drive around. Kids :)

Lynx Mk. III

I felt like doing another tank and as always I ended up building big. I had a lot of fun creating the "camouflage" on this one. I see it as a lesson in "greebling" as the spacers call it.

Mk III is easy to explain, I've already done Mk I and Mk II :)

The tank is not design to look like anything real, I just putted the bricks togheter in a way that "felt" right. I like building this way. I'm not patient enough to make big MOC's real looking :)

Facts

Radio controlled.
Four 9V motors, two for drive (controlled sperately to allow tank-steering) and two for the turret (left/right & up/down).

Here's what it looked like on 2002-10-12. A good view on how the frame is constructed. Basically the tank is a frame covered with plates. Nothing fancy.

2002-10-19, a week later it is finished. I did not build the whole week as you might imagine. The progress was quite fast, I just had other stuff to do. This is a view of the front. The neon 2 x 2 slope bricks are supposed to be head lights.

In retrospect I should have made a second go at that turret. The hoses are supposed to be some sort of smoking laying thingie to make the tank "disapear".

Notice the black minifig head used in the end of the gun.

The bright LEGO colors is not ideal for camouflage in Swedish autumn forest but overall I'm pleased how it turned out.

Front again.

Overall the tank worked like a charm. The major flaw was the 1 x 6 plates constantly popping off the chain links but I could live with it. Another issue is raising or lowering the barrel, when the motor shut off it would continue spinning a short while so you had to turn the engine off before the barrel was at the requested height.

I shot some video on it but I'm too lazy to edit, convert and upload that now :) Later.

This MOC ate all of my 1 x 6 plates in black, I had to "steal" some of them while building other stuff (not shown).

Camouflage is done in black, green, brown, tan and light/dk gray.

Action shot.

Don't go any further...

Surprise!

And a few indoor photos. I have since found the ISO setting on my camera so photos don't look grainy anymore, it's a brand new camera in these conditions. I don't know why I tell you since these are from the Auto ISO setting days, guess I just ran out of things to say. Blah!

::I'm quiet now, in case you did not notice::

*shhh* I'm trying to see how that camouflage is done!

Well, GEEE! I'm *so* SORRY! :-)

Readers that have been to LoTek before might ask what music is corrupting my brain this time, the horrid truth is that I don't play any at the moment! :-D

Synchro

My first Synchro. Since I had so much problem with the transmitter in Killough 2.0 I rebuilt it as this synchro while recharging the transmitter battery. As it turned out the new battery was charged with wrong polarity thus it worked even worse then before :) Once the battery was fixed I had a lot of fun with this one. The biggest amazement was how powerful it was pushing stuff around.

Also built on one day.

Facts

Synchro that rotates (360+) all four wheels at the same time in the same direction (moves in synch = Synchro), thus one can change direction of travel without rotating the platform itself. Fitted with the turret and guns from Killough 2.0.

Black with blue trim. The yellow details on the turret was leftovers from Killough 2.0.

That's a stuffed platform :)

My brother and his son had lot's of fun with this one, especially shooting at people. I suppose it's in the genes

Weight testing the gear ratio. I took a bucket of wheels and trow all the servos and stuff on top of it. This was sufficient weight and I could probably have used faster gearing with out problems.

Profile. One had to be careful not to rotate the turret if it was lowered into the chasis or cords might get ripped.

Bottom. Two 9V motors for drive, two for steering (one added late to improve steering) and two micro motors as triggers, five servos and two battery packs made this a heavy synchro.

The axle joiner has munched away on the housing for that motor. Ooops.

It's hard to spot, but the mark in the motor is there.

Wheel setup. This worked great, it took a lot of stress before the cracking noise of gears slipping occured. Black box to the left is a servo.

Killough 2.0

A quick build to have something to show in a Geek-meet my friend arranged. Unfortunately my RC equipment had a bad transmitter battery. I had plans for an obstacle course with points etc. and the driver with the highest ranking would win a price. It only worked for one driver then the battery was dead :(

See RC Killough for more information about Killoughs overall.

Facts

Standard Killough fitted with a double barrel gun on a turret :)

Empty frame. The wheels from the 8446 Monster Crane truck works better then these from the 8462 Tow Truck.

Underside.

I made the controls in two parts, one mode for driving and another for shooting/controlling the turret. I had separate fireing on the two cannons.

Almost identical photo. The turret could be rotated 360+ and lowered into the chassis in both extremes. It was fun trying to shoot straight up and thus hitting the Killough itself. Perhaps I need to get a life? :)

Backhoe

This project started with a gearbox and with this gearbox in my hand I started thinking what I should do with it. Somehow I figured a Backhoe would be fun to build so that's what I did.

I've always had a bit of trouble getting a nice gearbox done so I sat down and focused on gearboxes one night. I did not come up with a good version since the high gear also had to turn the low gear gear train. I realized I had to separate high and low gear and this tractor is what I did with the final gearbox.

I made the gearbox with MLCAD and had to make some fixes on it later. Here's the finished version:

While constructing I looked at some pictures of a Caterpillar 416C. Photos can be found here, but I don't know for how long since it's an item for sale. I used the pictures for inspiration only, this is no scale model.

As always I went for the RC stuff and I've been thinking about a way to milk more functions out of my five channel radio. I came up with a solution that let me control eleven functions via both polarity and pneumatic switches.

Facts

Weight: Approx. ~4kg (8.818lb)
Total length (including blade and backhoe {folded}): ~79cm (31.102")
Height cab roof -> ground: ~27cm (10.630")
Width: 24cm (9.449")

Functions

It has two different operation modes, one that let's me drive the Tractor and lift/lower the blade and also to switch between the high and low gear and another that let's me operate the digger arm. The selection of modes is also controlled via RC.

Operation mode #1 - Drive mode

Function	Motion/State	Powered by
Drive	Forward/Reverse	Dual 9V motors
Steering	Left/Right	9V motor
Gear	High (~1:2) /Low (~1:150)	Pneumatic cylinder
Blade	Up/Down	Dual pneumatic cylinders in parallel

Operation mode #2 - Dig mode

Function	Motion/State	Powered by
Digger arm	Left/Right	Micro motor
Digger arm	Up/Down	Dual pneumatic cylinders in series
Digger arm	Bend Up/Down	Pneumatic cylinder
Bucket	Up/Down	Pneumatic cylinder

Switching between the two operation modes also triggers some additional functions between two states

Function	Motion/State	Powered by
Outriggers	Up/Down	Dual pneumatic cylinders in parallel
Headlights	On/Off	Polarity switch
Worklight	On/Off	Polarity switch

All in all eleven different remote controlled functions.

We start off with an overview picture displaying the whole thing.

Pretty self explanatory :)

Front view, I'm rather satisfied with the design on the blade. I've been thinking about doing a blade this way and when I made a MOC that could be equipped with one I could no longer resist :) I must say I'm fairly shocked with the amount of black double bent liftarms I own (and they're all there). I knew they were plenty but not that many...

And the right side, surprise! It looks just like the left :-O

What defines this model - The backhoe. It's no easy task to build those things but I'm satisfied with how it turned out. The rubberbands are there to keep the boom up when the pressure goes out of the system.

I'm really satisfied with the outriggers.

Here you can also see the worklight that turns on when selecting "dig mode".

Looking down on my creation are you? :)
The exhaustpipe is connected to the main power polarity switch. If turned a little the Backhoe powers up or down. The two lights on the roof blink when the power is on.

Bottom out :) There is no bottom - I had trouble covering the top with plates...

I'm not that satisfied with the cab. First I got disappointed when I realized I needed the space for the servos and stuff and then the polarity switches refused to fit inside it...

At least I got some side mirrors and railings there :)

Rear mudguards, it took some tinkering but they finally turned out OK. The 1 x 4 plate that looks loose is connected to a pair of ½ pins that locks it between the 4 x 4 plates.

And here's the front mudguard. It's attached to the wheel mount and turns with the wheel. I like this setup.

A blurry picture of the outrigger. The function of these is terrific! It's probably the one single part I'm most happy with on this MOC. As mentioned they automatically lowers when I switch to "digging mode" and rise when switching to "drive mode". Splendid!

The outriggers again. The red LEGO in this picture is the micro motor driving the turntable with the backhoe on. Notice the medium pulley wheels on the drive axles, an attempt to stiffen the axles up a bit.

If you've seen my RC MOC's before you know I have some absurd form of fetish for taking pictures of the RC On-Off switch. Here it is :) It's hidden under a hatch this time.

The steering setup. I stole this design from 8479 and adapted it to my chassis width etc.. It works pretty OK steering the two wheels unparallel but still keeping them parallel when driving straight. This allows for better steering.

And going to the bottom with the steering, here you can se the engine that steers. It's connected via a wormgear for speed reduction and a z24 slip gear to save the design. The two z24-medium pulley sandwiches in the top of the picture is part of the pneumatic compressor.

The ground clearance is nothing to brag about so I suggest you read about my next picture instead :) The sheet used as backdrop is no help to me here since it's "bubbled" up a bit.

This is the backhoe arm in it's extreme left position. Of course it can be swung around 180 degrees to the far right. Swung and swung, it's a pretty slow motion and the micro motor tend to jam occasionally...

This is as far as the backhoe can reach backwards, it could have been more but then it would not fold nicely so this is a compromise I'm pleased with.

I used double pneumatic cylinders in series to get a better/longer stroke to this motion and it works as intended.

Curling it up.

Some detailed pictures of the blade. It's made of 37 double bent liftarms and is 39 studs wide. I also just noticed it's dusty :)

The box connecting the blade and tractor. I did not work that much on this part hence the result.

This is the total amount of lifting capabilities. Not much :) Also the blade is so heavy and the pneumatic design so poor that it needs a little HOG help to get there.

Scale comparison. This is a kid who has one of his best moments, he get's to sit on the tractor while someone takes pictures ;)

Frame with a gearbox with pneumatic control, one motor and all four wheels.

Time stamp: 2002-03-02 11:35

Outriggers in place, compressor (based on Ralph Hempel's design) and the second drive motor. The steering is also finished. At this stage the high gear worked splendid. I added some beams over the dif to keep things in one part while driving in the low gear.
Time stamp: 2002-03-02 19:08

Backhoe is finished.
Time stamp: 2002-03-02 20:47

The micro motor and turntable for the backhoe is in place.
Time stamp: Unknown.

Blade done.
Time stamp: 2002-03-02 23:06

I realized the low and high gear made the outshaft turn in different directions so I added a polarity switch to automatically change the direction on the motors. Problem solved.
Time stamp: 2002-03-03 10:52

After a few unsuccessful attempts installing most of the servos into the body and thus leaving the cab I gave up and went for the space inside the cab. I made this control tower with the different setups needed. Two controls per servo and five servos = 10 controls.
Time stamp: 2002-03-03 22:09

All functions hooked up and working.
Time stamp: 2002-03-10 15:12

Control tower installed and working.
Time stamp: 2002-03-12 12:52

Model finished.
Time stamp: 2002-03-20 19:05




Here are some of the notes I did while planning/building this MOC. They're all about making the controls work like wanted and how to connect the pneumatics and electronics.

Here's the control scheme. I hope it's clear enough so that you can understand it. Each servo controls the switches that are located on the left and right side of the servo. I made dual pneumatic and electric systems.