Alexander Hamsterton

Our conversation is about the implementation of one very specific mechanism. A mechanism that is explicitly not “forbidden” from LEGO because we have assigned them the rights to it. I have no idea where you’re getting this idea. We are certainly not saying individuals should be prevented from building whatever they want. This has nothing to do with the conversation we are having. Levi and I are investing in this (we concur exhausting) conversation because it actually is very important to us to share our honest perspective and try to keep the record straight. The personal impact on us is substantial.

Thanks for your reply and kind words about our project. I’m interested to better understand what you are saying in the specific context we’re talking about. I think it is quite an important point. I want to be clear that all I have been talking about in terms of innovation and inspiration is the bin arm mechanism from our design. Obviously there have been lots of LEGO garbage trucks, and we did not innovate the idea of a LEGO garbage truck. But there have been no functional side-loading arm mechanisms prior. Can you help me understand some of the darts on this metaphorical dartboard in your mind? You’ve pointed out three previous sets: Set 8094 “Control Center” “The Picker” mode: https://youtu.be/8W4vrKUAbMA?t=228 https://lego.brickinstructions.com/en/lego_instructions/set/8094/Universal_Set_with_computer_control (around page 27 to see the mechanism). Released in 1990. This is not a “grab and dump” mechanism, but rather a robot arm “grab and lift” mechanism using a base of parallel beams with a very limited range of vertical motion and no change in the orientation of the grabbed object. The mechanism is about 40 studs in size. The mechanism uses about twice as many gears as our design to actuate the grabbers. Set 8479 “Barcode Multi-Set”: https://youtu.be/svojnVCSXpM?t=173 https://www.lego.com/cdn/product-assets/product.bi.core.pdf/4108410.pdf (around page 47 to see the mechanism) Released in 1997. This is a “grab and dump” mechanism for the front of a truck. The mechanism takes a completely different approach to transmit the force to actuate the grabbers (flexible cable-like linkages) rather than a gear train. The mechanism is about 25 studs in size. Set 9736 “Exploration Mars“ “Robotic Arm” mode: https://youtu.be/Zrwqme9tVP4?t=437 https://lego.brickinstructions.com/en/lego_instructions/set/9736/Exploration_Mars (around page 36 to see the mechanism) Released in 1999. This is also not a “grab and dump” mechanism, but rather a “grab and lift” mechanism for a robot arm with a very limited range of vertical motion. It does not use a gear train to transmit force to the grabber, but rather rigid linkages. The mechanism is about 20 studs in size. So you can see the key and substantial differences and how huge and clunky all of those mechanisms are. It has been 24 years since the most recent of those sets. So back to your dart board metaphor, you could argue maybe these three are sticking in the wall next to the board. Shouldn’t there be many examples of visible intermediate work leading to our design? From my perspective there are actually only two darts anywhere near the center of the board (not counting the clone copies of our design of course): our design and LEGO set 42167. And those two darts do seem to be quite close to one another. For comparison purposes here are views of each mechanism: Our IDEAS project (2019): https://youtu.be/r91TR5qNIhA?t=108. That specific timestamp from the JK Brickworks video shows his standalone model of the arm, but you can see from other parts of that video that the arm is driven from the other side of the truck using an axle through the truck to a bevel gear, just as the set 42167 designer chose. LEGO set 42167 (will be released in 2024): https://youtu.be/S7Ut0gydPjw?t=280 And let’s see both in action. Our design: https://youtu.be/e8N1L0g-lEU?t=33 and LEGO set 42167 https://youtu.be/Y40slDYIllA?t=282. There are certainly differences in the mechanisms. Set 42167 uses the new 45 degree knob gear, adds a rubber band (this seems awesome and clever!), and the driving axle is in the middle of the arm versus the front in our design. But all-in-all I think the similarities are very obvious. We know from our perspective where we started on the bin arm mechanism and the hard work it took to innovate to get to what we released via LEGO Ideas. We are earnestly interested to understand what designs other than ours you think contributed to the supposedly packed dart board of ideas leading to the bin arm mechanism in LEGO set 42167. LEGO set 42167 and the cloned sets show there has been plenty of market demand for a functional bin arm design if one had existed. Although we're always standing on the shoulders of giants (especially the LEGO System and Technic designers when we're playing with LEGO), Levi and I currently have no awareness of any similar side-loading mechanism and had none when we were designing the bin arm mechanism. I want to remind everyone that we have assigned worldwide rights to our idea to LEGO. As they have clearly stated in the terms that we agreed to, they can do whatever they want with our design. What they have done is well within their rights. We are not trying to make any claims of infringement or anything of the sort. We’re just trying to set the record straight to the people that claim things like “any designer given this task will come up with something like this design”. To restate our position: Although the coincidence is unintentional, we believe LEGO set 42167 would not exist in the form it does today unless we innovated the automated side-loading bin arm and shared the idea on LEGO Ideas.

If you watch any of the LEGO Designer Videos, you can see that the LEGO designers are passionate professionals. They do not do “clean room” implementations, but dive into their subject matter deeply and do extensive research. So just to be clear on your position. You believe that a LEGO designer was assigned the job to work on a Mack side-loading garbage truck and had no awareness of any of: Our original LEGO Ideas submission The JK Brickworks video highlighting our bin arm mechanism The Beyond the Brick video highlighting our truck project The Lepin clone set using our bin arm mechanism The Xingbao clone sets using our bin arm mechanism The other clone sets using our bin arm mechanism The intellectual property that LEGO owns (assigned by us) which includes the digital design and building instructions of our truck and mechanism. And that they did no research once being assigned the project that would create awareness of any of those things? And then they created the set 42167 bin arm mechanism in a vacuum? Our position is: Although the coincidence is unintentional, LEGO set 42167 would not exist in the form it does today unless we innovated the automated side-loading bin arm and shared the idea on LEGO Ideas. As the LEGO Ideas terms clearly state, and as we knew at submission time: That has always been clear. So of course we have no claims of infringement. In any case we have assigned all rights worldwide to LEGO through June of 2024. But I am interested to understand your position better.

I’m the father from the father/son team that designed and submitted the LEGO Ideas Automated Garbage Truck project. Your “it could be argued” accusation that we stole our idea from previous LEGO sets is simply untrue. Obviously we did not invent the idea of a lift and grab mechanism. Neither did LEGO. However, it took us over a year and 18 iterations to create and improve a design small enough to work as a minifig-scale side-loading garbage truck mechanism. Achieving this miniaturization required real innovation in the manner of transmission and other aspects of the design. Please take a closer look at the sets you reference and you will notice clear and significant differences in size, method of actuation, and purpose from what we developed. By way of contrast, since we’ve released our arm mechanism design on LEGO Ideas it’s basically been copied brick by brick by Lepin: https://www.ebay.com/itm/363776222759 And directly incorporated in several other cloner’s sets: https://www.ebay.com/itm/314643787837 https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/city/103711/XBA-18016-Garbage-truck-green-Xingbao https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/city/103710/XBA-18017-Garbage-truck-orange-Xingbao Thousands of sets have been sold and we’ve received zero compensation or recognition from any of these clone companies. Many people have praised these companies for their “clever design”. We are not the ones stealing. Please note that I am not talking in any way about LEGO set 42167. We assigned LEGO all intellectual property rights for our Ideas submission until June 2024 as a part of our submitting to LEGO Ideas. We’ve heard nothing recently from LEGO. But until June 2024, LEGO owns the rights to our IP for the idea we submitted and can do whatever they wish with it.

Thanks for the link :-). I'm the father of the father/son team that did the original MOC and Ideas project. To answer a question earlier, we did the design collaboratively over about a year before submitting it to LEGO Ideas. The 8-wide looks great! We aren't releasing plans as the design is still in LEGO Ideas review, but if you've got specific questions let me know.

We're currently giving LEGO Ideas the best shot we can, and as a result haven't shared the design. You should be able to get a really good sense of it from the pictures and videos though. Vote for our project on LEGO Ideas and you might be able to buy one in a store one day :-).

I'm glad you did share! We played around with all of the elements you used for the arm and ended up using the handlebars. The rubber bricks are promising, but we liked how the cans tipped at the top with no rubber. We're hoping a LEGO designer gets a shot at the idea to see what they would come up with!

Great to hear the mechanism is working great, we are very happy with the smoothness and reliability of it as well. Any pictures you can share? Thanks!

Thanks bricksboy, my son and I worked together on the design and the video both. We worked together on the mechanism and refined it from a very big one to something that will fit in a small truck over about a year. You've got a great youtube channel as well! My son is into stop motion, and we've subscribed.

Thanks, yeah. We were really wondering how to show the functions of the vehicle and decided we really needed a video to do it justice.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks, we used the Blender LDraw importer at https://github.com/TobyLobster/ImportLDraw, and then used some three-point lighting techniques to give me more flexibility to get the lighting the way we wanted it.

Hi all, My son and I have been working on a minifig/city scale automated side-loading garbage truck build for the last year or so. We've finally gotten it to the point where we'd like to share it and get feedback. The bin arm is operated by a knob and reaches out and grabs and dumps standard LEGO dust bins with a plate on the bottom. There is also a ram in the hopper that is operated by a second knob. It pushes the trash into the dumper: The inside of the dumper is smooth to allow the trash to dump out: We also made a video that shows the truck and functions in action. The video may show the functions of the truck more clearly than the pictures can: We're interested to get feedback on the build. Getting the bin arm to smoothly and reliably dump trash and integrating that and the ram into a compact build was definitely one of the big challenges. The truck with some "waste" bricks is about 450 pieces. This design was created and refined with bricks on hand over the course of more than a year and at least a dozen different design iterations. We then created a model in LEGO Digital Designer and used digital renders to visualize different colors. The custom printed tiles were created digitally using LDPatternCreator, using Bricklink's Studio tool and Blender with some custom lighting for the final digital renders and some animations. The video is partly digital rendering and partly live filming. For creating actual custom printed bricks, we made color laser prints of the designs, covered them with scotch tape and then gently washed the paper off using water, leaving enough stickiness on the tape to stick to the bricks. This was quick and easy and the tiles were durable enough to play/build with, so that worked very well for our purposes. The cab holds a minifig comfortably, and there is a a hand rail and ladder for another minfig to ride along. There are clips to hold tools for cleaning up as well. There are more photos on our Flickr album: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmu32GeG We have also submitted the truck as a LEGO Ideas project. If you like the model we'd be grateful for your support. You can see our Ideas page at https://bit.ly/LegoGarbageTruck. Thanks!