The long awaited Technic sets (see below) have finally arrived on LEGO S@H

The guys over at TechnicBRICKs.blogspot also compared the prices of all these new sets for every country

I also noticed that Lego UK have lowered their prices for the snowmobile by £6 and the tractor by £12. looks like im going to be spending my birthday money after all!

Read more HERE

Here is a really cool Bobcat that i found on you tube, it uses Lego pneumatics to control the lift and tip of the bucket. This is a really good example of how one can combine pneumatics and the NXT together. I wish there were more information on it so that it would be easier to replicate, or make improvements.

After Building a light box to take better photos out of PVC Pipe, I had a Bit of excess pipe laying around so I got to thinking, What if I could build something that could move along over a pipe with ease.

So that is when I got to thinking, I needed 8 wheels, 4 on each side so that it has enough traction to move along the pipe under a heavy load. After I had built the prototype I figured out that it was going to be difficult to power all of the wheels with just one motor.

At first I tried chains but found out that wouldn’t be strong enough, and would be very easy to do in the first place. This is mostly because the wheels on each half turn different directions.

To be able to get them to turn like this I was lucky enough that the distance was perfect so I could use the right amount of gears. To turn the wheels different directions as shown above. From what I had to work with I came up with this design:

When I was done getting the Moving part of things done, I worked on the lifting mechanism. After several attempts to get the perfect ratio on the gears from the motor to the drum where the string is wound onto I moved onto the pulley system.

After Building and testing Pipe Runner on the small Test piece of pipe I had and deciding that it would work good enough, I decided that I would then go ahead and build the pipe structure to be able to run on. I started simple, but then realized that I needed somthing more stable so i added more pipe to sections to make it stronger.

Due to the strength of the PVC pipe Pipe Runner is only able to lift about 5 Pounds. That is my only disappointment with it. If I ever decide to make another one similar I will either use metal pipe or enforce the current one. Other than the pipe not holding very much I believe that Pipe Runner Works very well and I like how it turned out.

I used the Mindsensors.com Sony Playstation 2 Controller interface to control it in the video. Programming anything to be extreamly accurate with string is very hard due to the string winding up on the spool different ways every time. Using the PS2 Sensor makes hooking very simple and easy.

Please feel free to post any questions, comments, improvements or if you need help with the Pipe Crawler at the Forum. Click Below:

Downloads:

Video:

Pictures:

Here is a pair of Claws that I discovered on YouTube that I found very cool. These look like they work very well and are somewhat simple. I may try something like this for fun when I have one of mine taken apart.

The idea to make a crane to lift heavy objects came from Philo’s Webpage. His Crane Pimousse® uses an RCX but I only have an NXT so i decided to give it a try.I Used 50 pound test fishing line as the lift cable. It uses 8 pulleys to give it mechanical advantage to be able to lift an extremely heavy load.

It is designed to sit between two halves of a table and have the hook go up and down between them. At the time I built Heavy Lifter I did not have very many parts so I could not make it move as Philo’s does. If I were to build one today I would certainly make it movable. In my tests, It lifted about 40 Pounds about a foot in the air. It is rather slow because the lifting mechanism is geared down to be able to lift such a massive load.

It mostly uses parts from the Retail kit [8257] and the Crawler Crane [8288] and possibly maybe some other parts from other kits I’m not quite sure.

At this time I do not have any Videos, LDD file or Program, due to the lack of pictures and time to attempt to rebuild it. Sorry!!!

Please feel free to post any questions, comments, improvements or if you need help with Heavy Lifter at the Forum. Click Below:

Downloads:

No Downloads at this Time!!!

Video:

No Video at this Time!!!

Pictures:

Here is a look at the new 2008 Technic Sets.

Released First Half of 2008 (Already Released and available to purchase over at Lego.com);

First is Set 8290 Mini Forklift. It looks to be about the same size as the Mini Loader set 8418.

Second is set 8291 Dirt Bike.

Third is set 8292 Cherry Picker. This set has Power Functions to control the spin of the boom. It also includes instructions so you can build It into a Dump truck

Fourth is set 8296 Dune Buggy.

Due for Release During second half of 2008. The following are just My estimation of how these sets are going to be, by looking at the pictures and knowledge about how they should be.

Fifth is set 8294 Excavator. This is one of the first sets to be released that has the new Linear Actuators. This set has two of them to control the Boom and Bucket. it looks as if you could get very precise movements out of them. This set also takes advantage of the new Tracks Found in the Snowmobile and Bulldozer.

Sixth is set 8295 Telehandler/Forklift. This set also has a Linear Actuator to extend the boom.

Seventh is set 8297 4×4 Hummer. This set includes the newer Power Functions. It looks as if the motor may control the winch in front, from what i can see that it has a clutch. To me this set looks it could be a perfect candidate for making a remote controlled 4×4 with the Power Functions.

By looking at the excavator it looks as if the new Linear Actuators may be of manual control. You could easily convert them to use the Power Functions, however you would just want to make sure that you use a clutch gear so you do not strip the Linear Actuator.