krtwood

In the US, you can get an Amazon Visa card (issued by Chase) that gives you 3% cashback on Amazon purchases and it goes up to 5% if you have Prime. So if you align it with one of their free Prime trials you can get it for 5% off.

As long as the sets are worthwhile on their own, you don't have to make the way they combine together have to accommodate people who only buy some of the sets. For example, I remember the Transformers sets from my youth where some of them could combine together to make one big robot. If you didn't buy all the sets then you couldn't make the big robot, period. Another example is what Bluebrixx did with their Castle Blaustein sets. There you couldn't even build anything else with the expansion sets if you didn't have all the previous sets, but you could stop buying the sets at any point and still have something complete. But it wasn't modular at all and they still sell the base set as fast as they can make them. It's a way of making a really huge set (25,000 pieces) without selling it as one massive set. In the Technic lineup, Lego has made sets where if you buy 2 or 3 sets it's possible to build a larger set out of the combined pieces that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the smaller sets. It's just something extra you are able to do if you buy them all and a bridge towards having larger sets for someone who maybe otherwise wouldn't spend that much all at once. So there's more than one way to break up big sets into small sets.

My guess would be the seams in the background are the problem. Pretty easy to fix in post.

Lego knights with their faces eaten by bananas. Pleasant dreams!

I wonder if Viva La Dirt League's Epic NPC Man would meet TLG's standards. Probably too adult. But it could be a nice little medieval village, though Greg the garlic farmer is the only one who really has a house. Most of the other buildings where they film are too modern. For those who don't know, they do comedy sketches based on a fictional MMORPG where some of the NPCs have become self-aware.

Official sets do the pieces in a bag not used until a later step thing too. The shuttle 10283 has some parts in one of first bags used for the Hubble that don't get used until way later in the build. It would be nice if they did something to actually indicate those parts are supposed to be left over at that point.

There are gloves that work with touchscrreens.

Looks great! So much more pleasing than TLG's cheesy solution.

Is the motor working? If the motor works, does the alternate function of that motor when the lever is flipped work properly? That would help to isolate where the problem is.

I know I am very late to the party, but I finally gave in and purchased this wonderful set. I just finished building the first stage and I was looking at where the fins attached and thought it was a shame the base of it has to straddle the line between the black and white stripes. Then I thought about cutting up some unused stickers I have that have black parts to cover up that side of the base. Then I got to wondering if perhaps that entire side of the tail might also supposed to be black. Well, from what I can find, I think the fin are actually dark gray. The part, 6239, is available in dark bluish gray. So I'm really curious why they chose to make them white! base of apollo 11 saturn v

I didn't buy 8043 for my nieces and nephews, but being able to hand them the set and remote and let them have at it without having to worry about anything is part of the appeal. Those teens have siblings and adults have kids and family.

Okay, I have backed away from the ledge but my tinfoil hat is still on because that kind of stuff has already happened. The lack of a physical and kid-resistant controller is still a big turn off for me though. I'm not going to freak out and assume that one set is the direction they are going, but necessity is the mother of invention. When you can just throw as many motors at the problem and let the app solve the control issues and the sky is the limit on prices, well you get really cool mocs not Lego sets.

If I understand correctly, there is no handheld remote in the box? The only way to operate the motors is through an app on a smartphone? Count me out of this system. S-brick and buwizz are one thing as it's an optional thing you can do instead of the normal controls. But a system that depends on an app is a system that Lego can decide to no longer support at any time in the future. When technology has moved on eventually they aren't going to want to have to keep updating the software for the hardware they aren't making any money off of, and then eventually you won't be able to install the old app on your new phone and the whole system is bricked.

18: 10 9: 6 12: 4 15: 3 2: 2 20: 1

Love it

3. Regicide Cat B - PF IR Signature Move: Kingslayer - From the mightiest king to the feeblest peasant, they were all brought low when hit hard in exactly the right spot. Dimensions: 45 x 44 x 35 Regicide uses a horizontal spinner directly driven by four XL motors on two battery boxes in the superstructure. The XL motors are geared up 2:1 before reducing down through the turntables. The spinner is supported at the top and bottom by turntables. The spinner has two loaded battery boxes for extra mass. The entire superstructure can be tilted by being raised at the back by two linear actuators driven by an M motor. This allows it to target specific areas of the other bot and reach within 6L of the ground. The bracing at the back pinches the spine of the superstructure so there is not very much more flex at the top of its range than at the bottom. It uses skid steering with four L motors on another two battery boxes in the center of the base. The two motors on each wheel pass through an adder. Regicide has a bulldozer-like blade on its heavily reinforced front with 8lbs/3.6kg of high speed lego and batteries behind it. Link to discussion topic

There has to be some amount of resistance that will make it stop but it's hard to tell how much force you are using to stop it. I would suggest you try removing the gears from 4 of the motors and try the same test to see if takes less force to stop it. If it doesn't then the clutch is too weak to be making any use of the other 4 motors.

Ha ha ha! Yes, this is going to happen. I think I have fully addressed the speed issue and now have the opposite problem of it being so fast that it's hard to control. My only experience with RC technic was 8043 and 42030 which are both slow so the bot didn't really seem slow to me before. Now it is fun to play around with. I have been through a few revisions on the chassis. It's hard to do this backwards and change out the guts from the inside rather than build around them. Moved the two battery boxes in the base into the middle which made room for two sets of two L motors for the drive through adders. There was no room for any gear reduction after the adders. The two BBs in the base are now just for the drive and raising of the superstructure. Which means there are now two more battery boxes hanging off the back of the superstructure to power the spinner. It did not turn well until I switched the front wheels to not having tires. The weight is up to just over 8 lbs / 3.7 kg. The back end of the chassis drags slightly on the ground because the drive wheels are moved forward but it does not impair the performance. I moved the spinner up one stud which allowed closing in of the top side and a much better looking bulldozer style front end. The receivers are no longer sticking up at the back. You can't see the two in the base, they are in the opposite corner. There will be one more in the corner that you can see for raising the superstructure. I tried using the small turntables for the superstructure to pivot on but that relied on pin connections to stay together and I had trouble bracing it so it wouldn't come apart. I ended up going back to the pins. I will get proper pictures once I get in my Bricklink order with the extra receiver I needed, that one black #3 connector I was short on, and the skeleton king :) Otherwise I think it's just about done.

8043 is the only official set I can think of that uses remote control to switch functions. The gearbox takes up more space than the motors do so if space is the problem you are probably better off just using motors directly.

Nah, smoke em if you got em. I've got 9 motors and 6 battery boxes (4 for power) total. I was able to run 4 XLs for the weapon off one battery box but it likes two better. I wasn't able to run 4 Ls off one battery box for the drive. They were under too much load. You may find if you go up to 4 battery boxes that 2 Ls are not enough for the drive anymore without making it slow.

And here I thought I was going over the top using 4 motors :) How many battery boxes is that taking?

One advantage of a battery box is you can adjust the weight inside of it without changing anything else. Also the bigger the weapon is the greater the chances of actually hitting something. While you might mainly be only pushing the other bot away (and your own bot in the opposite direction) you are at least getting in a hit and hopefully keeping them away and not able to get close enough to hit you too. Plus there is the psychological effect to consider. A big weapon looks like it's going to do damage and our bots are not actually going to fight each other. So it's as much a question of how people are going to imagine what the bot can do as what it can actually do.

MUAHAHAHA! When in doubt, add more motors! I didn't think four XLs would run off one receiver but it does. I have 2 V1 and 2 V2 receivers and using one of the V2s for the drive so I would have had to use two V1s if it was going to be two. Tried it off of the one V2 that was already there and it worked. It does of course cut out when the spinner gets stalled but I don't see that as a bad thing. It spins fast enough now that you think twice about sticking your hand in the way of it. That's all I really wanted.

I think it turns quite well for what it is. It pivots around the axis of the spinner. If it had wheels out in the front they would reduce the reach of the spinner. If you don't think two motors is a good idea you aren't going to like four motors :) Realistically it's much easier to make a strong chassis that will not come apart than it is to make a weapon that can do any real damage. We would all be better off making solid bricks of liftarms that ram into each other but where is the fun in that? So if you are going to make a weapon then it doesn't make sense to me to put more power into moving the bot around than you do into moving the weapon. I did think about having two motors driving the spinner from the top and two motors driving from below but the way things worked out there was no room. I have some ideas on reworking the superstructure. With the cage removed from around the motors the length of the bot is now down to around 35L. I think if I make the upper beam more rigid and extend it past the back of the bot I can hang a battery box at the end as a counterweight. Then I can either remove a battery box from the base or add two more motors. It's more solid than it looks in the back. I don't think you can see all the bracing in the back in the pictures. The two vertical supports are actually being pulled in so they pinch the superstructure. There is more movement at the pivot point in the front than in the back. I think it would be better to have a couple of small turntables instead of just pins. Honestly I never considered anything else. It got the gear reduction and the motors turned 90 degrees so it would fit. I had been trying to make the battery boxes removable so there is some wasted space in the middle of the bot. I could open up more space but I doubt I will have time to rework the base very much Thank you! I am better at making things in wood than in lego, but it is easier to fix your mistakes :) The weight is about 2.5 kg right now. Thanks. There are some very effective Battlebots, like Minotaur, that have hardly any reach at all. The spinner can reach between 14L and 12L depending on how far off center the other bot is, which I think is pretty respectable. The crown stuck out much further than that but it was really pretty indestructible.

Let's start of showing you where I'm at now, then we'll talk about where I was and why that didn't work. The weapon is a horizontal spinner, driven directly by two XL motors, with two loaded battery boxes in the blade. I tried a couple variations of using belts and clutch gears to protect the motors but none of that really worked. Ultimately it's remote controlled so the driver is the clutch gear, I suppose. Because the spinner is fairly high off the ground, higher than I figure many of the other bots will be, I needed some way to reach out and touch those little guys. I was originally thinking of doing a retractable ramp that would extend out from the middle of the bot and force them up into the spinner. Then I decided to use linear actuators at the back and pivot the whole superstructure down. At maximum lift the blade gets within 4L of the ground. This approach sacrifices a lot of rigidity of the superstructure. Well, it's still rigid, but it is not solidly connected to the body. This means some of the impact when the spinner connects is going to be lost, but I like the idea of being able to target specific heights on the other bot. I think it's a worthy trade-off. When at max lift the bottom front edge of the superstructure rests on the top front of the base to help with this, as well as a lot of bracing on the vertical guides on either side of the superstructure. A side effect is that the superstructure is easily detached from the base with the removal of two pins, two 3L thin liftarms, and one electrical connection. I originally intended all the RC receivers to be in the back of the superstructure but once I added the lifting feature that would have required a ridiculous number of extension cables that I don't have. So I put one on either side of the base and tried to make it not look too out of place. The long panels unfortunately can't be any higher without getting brushed by the spinner. Drive is two L motors through worm gears, so it's not a speedy bot. The three wheel design with a lot of the weight on the third wheel almost directly under the center of the spinner makes it able to rotate almost in place. The plan is keep the other bot in front of you and let them come to you. It just has to be able to spin faster than they can drive around. Lift mechanism is an M motor. The base is pretty solid other than a few decorative fill in pieces. Battery boxes are integral but you can replace the batteries just by removing the black 15L liftarms on the top. Now we come to my tale of woe. The bot's name was supposed to be "The King". Bricklinked a bunch of 3L axles and yellow half bushes to make its crown. Two sets of inverted tracks mounted on springs to soften any blows. The King was quite proud of his sapphire in its bezel. The color cast by the dark trans blue on the yellow was the inspiration for using bright green on the base. There was just one slight problem once all the pieces came in and the crown was complete. Too much weight on the turntables. I guess I should have known. I tried running a liftarm inside the two turntables to support weight very early on in the build but that actually made it much worse. Anyway, without any complex drivetrain to protect the crown was much bigger than it needed to be and kind of pointless so its not the end of the world. It had personality though. So I changed the name to Regicide because The King is dead. Now I have to come up with something much lighter to make the top look finished. I'm not sure if I will even keep the yellow circle. Getting rid of all that would bring the weight down a lot and speed up the spinner. I have a bunch of the shorter bright green panels I could do something with. Oh, it was 45x45x40 with the crown. Now I think it's around 45x40x32.