Lugpol’s Zgrredek (eng. Grrumpy) is going to river rafting during the summer holidays. He says there only this on his mind right now, so what else could he build?
I like how the water flows over the fallen tree. The cliff is also great: with very clever use od dark tan and these falling tree roots!
Have a nice rafting, Zgrredek!
At last, we can provide you with an ‘at first hand’ info about the new elements of the Power Functions system:
The lights
Their full length is shown above. The lights are powered via a new-type-only plug, and a surprisingly huge brick that separated their wire, which has the exact dimensions of a classic 2×2 brick. Pity it has no electric contacts at all, otherwise it would be a way to connect the lights to the old 9V system. An advantage of the lights’ design are long, quite flexible wires that connect the forementioned brick to the actual lights. The lights can be inserted into any 1-stud wide hole, and they take up to about two thirds of a stud in depth, which allows to put a transparent 1×1 brick on the other side of the hole. The lights give strong, white light, that strongly brightens the transparent brick of any color, thus trans-orange brick may appear yellowish, etc. The lights’ design seems to protect them from any damage caused by the cables being pulled. It’s hard to tell how much power the lights need, but when powered from regular, not fully charged batteries together with a motor, they become apparently dim while the motor is running.
The switch
Not too big, it has a lever that can have an axle put through. The lever itself is very much like the one used in the PF handset, except it can swing roughly twice as much. Nice thing is a pole reverser on every switch, identical with the ones used in the handset. But there is a surprise too - unlike the PF IR receivers, the switches are sensitive to the direction in which the battery box switch is put in. It works like a pole reverser on them, which seems inconvenient (you need to keep in mind how to turn the battery box on in order to avoid all the switches working in the opposite way), but may have some use in future.
The linear actuator
Their range is not their main advantage, as it is merely 5 studs compared to the 4 studs of a traditional pneumatic cylinder, and 8 studs of two connected pneumatic cylinders. But the actuators make up for it with their excellent strength and accuracy - it takes 26 full revolutions to extend or retract them fully. Compared to the traditional Lego worm gears, which need 6 revolutions to extend by 2 studs, it means that we just got the most accurate Lego element ever: with accuracy of 5.2 revolutions per stud against 3 revolutions per stud of the regular Lego worm gear.
The speed of full extension / retraction of an unloaded linear actuator for various motors (in seconds):
The actuators need their tips to be locked in order to extend or retracted - when let loose, the tip is simply revolving. It may be the consequence of some kind of an internal clutch that protects actuators from the damage when they can’t be extended / retracted further and they are still driven. We have been testing them with PF XL motors, and observed that when an actuator reaches its extreme position with the tip locked, something starts to snap rapidly - obviously something inside the actuator, as no snapping PF XL motors were ever recorded. It seems to be an intended behaviour, as the actuator is apparently not damaged, and continues to work normally as soon as the motor changed direction.
A pleasant surprise is to see two kinds of braces that come with actuators - one allows an articulated mount, the other a rigid one. The first type will be obviously more popular, but it’s a good thing to have them both.
Both braces are 3 studs wide, and need actuator to be driven with at least 3 studs long axle (the latter, rigid brace allows longer axles). With the articulated brace, the actuator can be driven via the new, shorter universal joint, or with two possible setups of the bevel gears (shown above). The older, 4-studs long universal joints can’t be used here.
The first MOC contest in LugBrasil is now open.
The theme is Science Fiction and the ones who want to participate must build a vignette 8×12 studs with no limit of parts or height of the moc. You can use every LEGO part or even LDD or LDraw!
You must enter your entry between 09-07-2008 from 00:01 hs until 27-07-2008, 23:59 hs. The entries must be entered in THIS topic.
The voting will be between 28-07-2008 until 03-08-2008, 23:59 hs.
The Prize for this first contest will be an honourable mention in his profile and a special article in LugBrasil Portal.
Everyone’s invited to participate!
If you have any doubts, post them Here.
Lego Customer Service published an on-line instruction for the main model of this year’s Technic flagset, the 8297 Off Roader. It can be downloaded from here:
There are some surprises inside:
The new Towball Couplings. Yes, they are shorter, yes, they allow to transmit the drive, and yes, they use the already known steering parts from the 8466 set.
Completely new differential. It’s narrower than the old ones, is only 3 studs wide and meshes easily with a 20 Tooth Double Bevel Gear. Inside, we can see part that prevents internal bevel gears from bending, which used to lead to breaking gears. We don’t know yet whether the new differential can be locked or not.
The doors. As anticipated, they open thanks to the pneumatic shock absorbers mechanism known from the 8448 set.
The lights. They appear to go through a 1-stud-wide hole.
All the Power Functions in a nutshell. The distributing gearbox at the model’s bottom allows to drive either the front winch or the mechanism that changes the ground clearance.
It seems we just got plenty of reasons to buy the new Off Roader. Especially the Truck Trial lovers will have several new interesting parts for suspensions and drivetrains. Not to mention the four big wheels!
The happy first owners of the 8294 set show how it works. Apparently, the new parts that control the digging arm - linear actuators - offer excellent precision. It’s also obvious that the excavator has a distributing gearbox based on a transmission driving ring, that allows to control both actuators with a single knob.
The exact dimensions of the actuators are finally known:
To commemorate the 50 year patent of the LEGO brick, 0937 Community is having a contest in wich you have to build a MOC inspired in the 2×4 brick. This contest will end on September 6, at our exhibit in Viana do Castelo (Portugal)- Club Meeting - 0937 in Viana. The jury will be Jan Beyer.
The rules are:
- The construction must have has in its base a 2×4 brick multiplied by 4. The brick will be 8×16 studs by 4 bricks height. To make it easier, you can add one plate on the base and another one on top of the brick. The studs must be 2×2 round bricks.
- The brick can be “broken” for creative effects. But it always has to be noticed its presence.
- It’s not mandatory that you use the brick laying down like the example.
- The creation may exceed the size of the brick (horizontal and vertical).
- The creations must be entered in the MOCs entry page from 0937.
- Only creations with LEGO parts are allowed.
- Digital creations are not allowed (LDD, etc).
- Everyone may enter the contest, but be aware that you need to bring your creation to 0937 in Viana (don’t forget to register here if you’re coming!) for the selection of the best one. If you want to build a creation for this theme and don’t want to participate in the contest, that’s ok, just present it in the Moc entry Page from 0937.
-Every situation not predicted will be solved by the Forum 0937 Moderators. (myself included)
It’s been some time since we presented Havoc’s excellent model of the Colonial Marines APC from the “Aliens” movie. The author is still interested by the subject, and just completed its renewed version:
Havoc claims that his model has a numerous shortcomings, but he’s probably the only person to spot them. The transporter features two steered axles, opened driver doors and sliding side hatch, two rotating turrets with the rear one that can be shifted to the back of the vehicle, and opened rocket launchers. The entire model can be opened up to view its detailed interior:
You probably remember a great model of Zagreb national theatre built by Matija Puzar.
Matija is a 30 years young IT-researcher at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is originally from Pula, Croatia, but has moved to Oslo on his quest for a PhD. During the last few years, Matija has been an active (or passive) member of several online communities, such as LUGNET, Trains N Town, and Eurobricks. Offline, he tried to find whether there were other people in the vicinity with the same strange hobby. Surely enough, he found a few of them, and one cold November evening in 2005, the six of them sat down and founded the first Norwegian AFOL group, Brikkelauget.
Recently, we had an honour to chat with Matija about his favourite creation
Why did you decide to build a model of this particular building?
I like that type of architecture, and Zagreb has several candidates (the theatre, the main train station, the art pavilion, to name a few). I should have probably started with something smaller (which I regretted very soon), but I really liked the theatre’s building, as well as its surroundings.
Please, tell me how you approached the design. I know you did the virtual (MLCAD) model first, but did it include all the little details?
I started by looking at the dimensions of the real bricks compared to real people, to see whether LEGO-tiles would match LEGO-minifigs the same way. It seemed it did, so I designed one of the corners:
The windows proved to be a challenge in the beginning, as they had to be SNOT-ted with tiles in between with “nothing” to hold on to. But once I
got the basic idea, it turned out to work very well.
Then I decided to play a little bit with the capital, as my original one was of the wrong type. I ended up with the following design:
I tried to keep to the details as much as I could, but still keeping in mind that it had to be possible to build with bricks (and without getting bankrupt).
Did you change anything from the virtual model while building the model with real bricks?
There were of course a few times when I found out that the way I designed it actually wouldn’t work in reality, mostly in corners where walls would meet. This was a bit unfortunate (although expected), but I managed to keep the usage of bricks as close to the original plan, to avoid coming suddenly into a situation where bricks were missing. Which, of course, did happen.
On pictures, it looks yellow. Is it yellow, right, not tan?
I must say that I hadn’t had the opportunity to see the real building since I started with this project. However, I did remember it to be yellow, and from all the pictures I have seen, it is definitely closer to yellow than tan. This was very much confirmed when I read your blog post where you compared this theatre to the one in Krakow, which was a clear tan-candidate.
Wow, that’s interesting. So what did you base tour design on? Photos, blueprints?
I based my design exclusively on detailed photos made by a friend of mine (she likes to be referred to as “Elgar” 
). She tried also to get some more precise data from the theatre itself, but that proved to be difficult (they wanted official request by letter, which I, just to make a model, really didn’t want to take the trouble to do). Later, after the design was done, I sent them a letter with a picture. I never heard from them.
The difficult part was the roof, as there are very few pictures of it. Actually, I couldn’t find any pictures of the back of the roof, so a little bit of it was improvised. However, that is really not a problem, noone will notice anyway if something is wrong 
Which elements were most difficult to model?
It took me a while to be satisfied with the capitals. The next on the list would be the two diagonal sides at the main entrance. The lower of the two domes took a while to get right, and it certainly did not help that I had to do it twice. The second time was after I realized that the selection of sand-green parts was not as standard and huge as I expected. This was the first time when I first had to look for available parts and quantities, and only then try to build something accordingly.
Well, sand green is quite rare indeed. Where do you get your bricks? Bricklink?
Yes, Bricklink was the only place I could get sand green from - LEGO couldn’t deliver anything (this was before the Green Grocer came out). As for more common parts, I order them through a local retailer.
What are you most proud of this creation?
The fact that I actually managed to force myself to finish it, including the thousands of flowers around (which was very much time consuming and, I must confess, extremely boring).
Did you learn some new building tricks while working on HNK?
This was my biggest project so far, so I had definitely time to get better known with the geometry of the bricks and the possible ways of (ab)using it.
How did you manage to build it in your apartment? After all, it takes a lot of space!
Indeed it does. I was lucky to have a relatively big kitchen and, having it built during winter, a spare table.
Is the theatre building (the model, not the original) one solid piece, or is it modular?
It is most definitely modular. The main point, all the way since I started designing it, was to make it possible to be transported. Here you can see what the various modules are and how they are put together:
…and here you can see more or less how it looks like when it is ready to be transported:
In addition, there are a few more boxes containing the baseplates and gardens around the building, sponsored by LEGO Norge, so that the whole thing would be finished before LEGO World. Otherwise I would probably never have done it due to the cost.
Is it finished, or do you plan to add something to it?
It is LEGO, so it will probably never be completely finished Every time I put it together or take it apart, I find some details I want to fix. However, I have no plans on doing any major changes or additions (which includes doing the interior, which I know you are about to ask next).
Actually, I remember seeing some red support structure inside, so I assumed you have no plans for that. Which leads me to another question - how much does it weight, approximately?
According to the data available from Bricklink, and taking into consideration all the parts not there by design but necessary to hold things together, it should be between 50 and 55 kg.
Where can Klocki readers see this creation in real life?
Currently, the creation can be seen in my basement in Oslo, one box at a time though. I was invited to show it at a few exhibitions, but due to its size and my budget, I can’t promise anything yet. One of the problems is that all those boxes do not fit in my (small) car, and I don’t know how else I can pack it without crashing everyting. Yes, it is very fragile.
I hope this will happen some other day (exhibition, not crashing, of couse). By the way, do you plan to disassemble it ever?
I don’t plan on doing it. I can’t promise anything, though.
Can you tell us what are you working on right now?
Right now I decided to take a longer break. I shortly interrupted the break to make a model of my hometown’s orchestra which this year celebrates its 15th
birthday (here). But I have no other concrete projects in mind.
Yes, I have spotted your orchestra few days ago and blogged it. I must say tt deserves a decent concert hall! Did your friends in Pula like it?
Yes, you actually did say that it deserved a concert hall But I think it is best if they perform outside, the weather is usually good on exhibitions and it is better if people can hear (or at least see) them.
Not all of my friends know about the model yet, I have only spoken to one of them who provided me with the pictures and names of the current active members, and we wanted to have it quiet until it was finished. So, soon, after the final touches are done, we’ll see the reaction.
You live in Norway. Can you describe the AFOL community in Norway?
The AFOL community in Norway is relatively small, but people are slowly coming out of the closet. Norway is, after all, the country with most LEGO sold per capita, so I am sure there is a big potential. This was proven when LEGO this year organized the first LEGO World, where we found several
people who did not know about Brikkelauget (our first and, to my knowledge, only AFOL group in Norway) and who were interested in joining it.
Recently, you have been selected by LEGO to represent the community as LEGO Ambassador. What are your early thoughts on the program?
I think it is a wonderful concept and, from what I have seen, a very successful one. When I was young(er), I remember being very frustrated at not being able to tell the company about how I felt, nor was it possible to get information on things I was wondering about. During the last few years, we have seen a dramatic change in the way LEGO looks at its customers - the LEGO Ambassador program is a perfect example of this, which had already given concrete results. I am very proud to be part of this program, and to be able to make a change, even though it might be a small one.
Thank you very much for taking this interview. I hope to see your amazing theatre is person some day in a future!
Thank you, it has been a pleasure.
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