lkoffel

Yes that's right, they would have taken the risk the information spreads out too early. But they already took the risk by working with Liebherr mining which was finally able to keep the secret. Anyway, they just don't needed to contact me to make their model =)

Indeed, as I said in the MOC description, I used LDD to model it. And in LDD, you can't find cylinders, valves, pumps or flexibles. I did what I could to model them but I could'nt model the flexibles. But I built the skeleton of the arm with reals parts and pneumatic system to try it, check the kinematic, the sufficient force of the cylinder to lift the whole arm. I can assure you it worked like ... a normal technic thing. For the record, I also added a lego spring to tension the track (what is done on real excavators to avoid the track to come off), what Lego has not done on its set and seems to be missing. So don't tell me it's not functionnal ^^ Look at the shape of the track, it is too slack :

This model was posted early February 2018 (I know it because I made it and I'm glad to see people sharing it, thank you :) Unfortunately, it looks like people on Lego Ideas are more interested in Lego system than in Lego technic. The amount of vote never really exploded :( But, 66 days remaining to reach the 1000 votes gate and have another year, who knows ! About the particular timing between the Lego idea and the Lego official model, indeed it is a coincidence. I have contacts by Liebherr Minig at Colmar (former colleagues in fact) who told me when I posted my model that there was already something going one between Liebherr and Lego ... So they didn't "steal" the idea but unfortunately, they never contacted me.