jelockwood

It would likely make a noticeable noise and of course continue to draw power. The answer below seems what I was looking for. I will therefore buy a PF polarity switch via Bricklink and explore designs for pulling the switch back to the centre off position at top/bottom. I will also try and make it harder for a 'guest' to accidently try to use up when already at the top and down when already at the bottom.

I accidently posted originally in the Star Wars theme forum and as advised posted (then) in the Technics forum. It looks like someone kindly then moved the original post also to the Technics forum so we ended up with two in their. (I could not move it myself.)

Thanks, I also found a video demonstrating the PF polarity switch. Its name had led me to believe it only did polarity reversal and not also on/off but the video clearly shows the mid-position is off and top/bottom are the reversed positions.

It would be manually operated. How do I link the leaver to the battery box to turn it off? What parts would be involved? This sounds like what I am looking for if it triggers automatically when the lift reaches top or bottom.

I am intending to use a Lego power functions motor as part of custom lego build and ideally need a way for it to auto stop. The motor will be used to power a lift and when it reaches the top or bottom I need it to stop rather than mindlessly grinding itself to death when it reaches the end. This is different to if you use a motor to rotate something which could rotate indefinitely. For the lift I was planning using either a worm gear with Lego 3743 gear rack bricks or a standard gear and Lego rack and pinion. I did think about using a clutch gear wheel but need something more effective than that as the clutch gear wheel would be not be really suited to fit in the build.

I am intending to use a Lego power functions motor as part of custom lego build and ideally need a way for it to auto stop. The motor will be used to power a lift and when it reaches the top or bottom I need it to stop rather than mindlessly grinding itself to death when it reaches the end. This different to if you use a motor to rotate something which could rotate indefinitely. For the lift I was planning using either a worm gear with Lego 3743 gear rack bricks, a standard gear and Lego rack and pinion. I did think about using a clutch gear wheel but need something more effective than that as the clutch gear wheel would be not be really suited to fit in the build.

I have not watched that video but this is not I feel startup teething problems. As I mentioned overnight several days ago 75% of the bricks I had in my basket changed to out of stock. That means they were previously all in stock or I would not have been able to add them to my basket. This includes common and popular bestseller bricks and not so popular standard bricks. Again as Lego claim Standard and Bestseller bricks are processed by different warehouses with logically Bestseller bricks being the ones that they sell most of and either should be more likely to go out of stock or to be ones Lego work harder to keep in stock. The results I am seeing suggest neither and that vast numbers of bricks of all types have simultaneously gone out of stock.

The examples from František Hajdekr are way better than I thought was possible with consumer level 3D printing equipment but I also share the opinion that technology is not yet good enough for this. I had however thought that Lego should be looking at this themselves as a way of offering a 'print on demand' service for discontinued bricks. Lego would be able to buy industrial level 3D printing systems which should be much better and faster but even there I would still feel technology is not yet advanced enough.

I am surprised no-one else has mentioned this yet. You can buy a product called a 'battery eliminator'. This is an AC to DC transformer but rather than a standard one that might have a USB or mini jack connector, this type of product terminates in a dummy battery and includes one or more additional dummy batteries so as to be inserted in to the standard battery compartment. You could therefore buy one of these for use with a Lego battery case.

Lego (had) two website methods of buying bricks, one was focused on buying additional stock of common bricks, and one that was focused on 'replacing' missing bricks - although I like many also used this as a mechanism for buying additional stock of a wider range of bricks. These have now been merged and whilst it is likely the result on average will be a little more expensive that is not my issue. I had been building up a shopping basket for my next order as I try to buy enough at a time to make the shipping costs etc. more palatable and since the reorganisation this is more important as bricks now are listed in two categories - 'Bestseller' and 'Standard' and each has their own additional shipping charges if you don't order a certain amount. I am also used to and expect that from time to time some bricks will go out of stock. When out of stock you of course could not add them to your shopping cart but previously if you had already added them it was still possible to complete the order although this would obviously delay their shipping the order to you. This time however practically overnight about three quarters of my pending shopping basket was wiped out - that is removed from my shopping basket. This was not a random error but was due to these items going out of stock as I confirmed by searching for them. Again I expect from time to time individual bricks to go out of stock but this time a huge proportion of bricks have all gone out of stock at the same time. This suggests something more significant has happened as there is no way overnight that many different bricks would have genuinely simultaneously gone out of stock. Has their factory or warehouse burnt down? Has Lego suddenly discontinued dozens of different bricks? Is Lego phasing out the entire 'Pick a brick' feature? Note: It was the 'Standard' i.e. less common choice of brick that was most affected but not exclusively so as also many 'Bestseller' bricks are now also out of stock. Supposedly these are stored and processed at different warehouses as this is the excuse Lego use for having two categories each with their own additional shipping charges. As an example Plate 8x16 (part number 92438) is now out of stock except for a single colour meaning eighteen colours are out of stock.

@MaximillianRebo Thanks for the idea for the WED-9-M1 droid. That is a very good start and better than I thought might be possible. Your choice of arms and upper torso particularly look a good choice. It does also inspires me to realise that since the WED-9-M1 is made by the same droid manufacturer as the Treadwell that Luke initially buys from a Jawa in A New Hope before it blows up. Therefore one could use a base similar to the SW0550 Treadwell minifigure. Could you list the parts used for the head and neck? Also what you used for the shoulders - probably 31561 on top of a half pin.

Just as an example of the difficulty in trying to get images to use to help provide guidance on the layout and appearance of Mos Eisley and Docking Bay 94. The following link is to the official site of John R. Mullaney who was an officially appointed artist who illustrated many official Star Wars books. On the page I linked to is an image of Docking Bay 94 in cut-away view. This view is going to be helpful but to me having already done a lot of research it instantly shows several errors. https://www.thetopdraw.com/artwork-galleries/sci-fi/star-wars If you look at the following image which is the official film set plan for the docking bay you can see the staircase skewed in the opposite direction to the image on the above page. Note that even though the following image is an official plan for the film set the actual built set is slightly different, the film set plan also confirms effectively only half the docking ring was actually built. This is the sort of problem I have been facing with the physical film set images, the CGI special edition images, the images from various computer games and various other sources having contradictions. In the case of John R. Mullaney's image one major error is that the staircase shown in the bottom left of his image is skewed to the left i.e. pointing away from the centre of the docking back, in the actual film it is absolutely clear it is skewed in the opposite direction, he also has some storage crates in the wrong side bay and has distorted the size of the large bays to shrink them to the same size as the other bays, as have other existing user Lego models. Going back to the staircase, having closely studied actual film images, I can see that when one goes through the docking bay 94 entrance on the street level, there is a short corridor, then a right turn that is at the top of the stairs, you go down the stairs (skewed the right way) to the below ground level base of the docking bay and enter one of the two large side bays. I have already built all this section and even skewed the staircase correctly. (By stressing alignment of bricks illegally by exactly one stud difference in length between the two sides.)

@Tipsy46@Kage Goomba Yes it is the UCS set @Kit Figsto Yes Bricklink is my backup plan for the goggles, however I am in the UK and only two stores currently list it and the shipping charges vs what other bricks I could get from them at the same time make it either difficult to meet their minimum order level or to make the overall cost justifiable. I am looking in to this though. The helmet and head are still current parts unlike the goggles which are discontinued. I have already bought a number of discontinued parts via Bricklink such as the red forklift arms (although I am using these to represent 'stabilizers'), an extra large door frame (1x6x10) and some wedge plates without stud notches which I am using as part of the pneumatic compressors in the docking ring. @Kit Figsto For the docking bay scene my own research has so far identified the following characters as being present :- Han Solo, Chewbacca, Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett, Beedo (a Rodian), another Rodian, Ront Byrnloo, Boelo, Gela Yeens So I am looking for minifigures to represent Ront Byrnloo, Boelo and Gela Yeens. Neesh was another Rodian inside the cantina, Thuku was another Rodian outside the cantina. I found the following which seems to be an excellent reference for who appeared in the Mos Eisley cantina and indicates some who then appeared in the docking bay scene. https://www.starwars.com/news/meet-the-humans-from-the-mos-eisley-cantina

@Kit Figsto Many thanks for your reply. I will look in to those parts for the CZ-3 droid. That blog article is also a godsend although I am not sure it is totally accurate in using George Lucas material as source but it definitely is a big, big help. I have already bought Luke's Landspeeder and the Millennium Falcon, I did think about getting Obi-Wan's hut but it is located well away from Mos Eisley. I do intend to get the Cantina set. I plan to use many of the figures from that including Garindan. I have already bought Jabba and Boba Fett and a couple of extra Greedos. I was hoping to get character names for the human characters in the Jabba/Han scene and see if any of the other cantina set minifigures matched up. I am trying to get a number of Sandtroopers but these are a lot more expensive than standard Stormtroopers. I will need at least nine I reckon. (For the benefit of others, the Luke Skywalker minifig included with the Landspeeder set includes the 'poncho' that Luke puts on when walking to Docking Bay 94.) I have even bought an extra minifig hand to put on the floor of the cantina to represent the hand that Obi-wan chops off with his lightsaber. I don't intend to build the whole of Mos Eisley and I am only going to do Docking Bay 94. It would be far too big and expensive to do it all and arguably my current aim of doing the major film scene locations is already going to be a major task. At the moment I am hoping to do scenes between the journey from the cantina to the docking bay which would include the droid hiding place, the Landspeeder sale, the walk back to the docking bay including its entrance and of course all of the docking bay including the stairs from the surface and entrance. I would expect these to be at least 3 square metres, maybe four. At the moment the parts I have built are in sub-sections and not assembled together as I do not have a big enough table to join them all on currently. When I eventually do I will contribute some pictures. (Found the white helmet and blank white head, Lego show no stock of the white goggles.)

I am currently working on a massive Mos Eisley scene. I have made a good start and I am using images from Episode IV A New Hope as my main guide - the version shown in the remastered copy of the movie. This therefore includes the fact that Jabba is seen in Docking Bay 94. As people maybe aware the actual Docking Bay 94 in the film as built on the film set was deliberately incomplete because they a) could not afford to build the entire circular docking bay and more importantly b) could not build a big enough one on the set due to the size limitation of the sound set at Elstree Studios in England as used at the time. This means that only half the docking bay and the Millennium Falcon was actually built and depending on the scene in the film versions either it is achieved by a visual trick or in the later remastered version showing an overhead view via a CGI image and to some extent this contradicts aspects of the physical set. I am going to make a full circular version but try and combine that with the physical version layout. The CGI version implies all the 'sides' are equal in length, the physical set shows two long sides, one short segment and implies several medium length segments. The long ones feature much more prominently in the film. Whilst in the film you cannot tell I did manage to find an image of the actual film set plans and there is actually a medium length segment between the two long segments. I have also already built a replica of the infamous forklift briefly visible behind the Millennium Falcon in the docking bay. (Apparently this is technically and more accurately called a 'lifter' rather than a forklift.) None of the existing Lego forklift designs looked similar enough to this. Anyway, the purpose at this point is to ask for some advice relating to various droids visible in the Mos Eisley scenes. Some will be easy enough to represent with suitable Lego minifigures, obviously this includes R2D2 and C3PO but would also if needed include the WED Treadwell droid. It would also be possible to use a Lego R5D8 to represent the actual R4E1 droid as these are similar enough in appearance. What I am struggling with is finding a suitable equivalent for a CZ-3 and WED-9-M1 droid with it being more important to find a CZ-3 droid. I did find the above image which appears to be of a 3D printed minifigure scale model which someone else is using for a CZ-3 but it might also be a minifig made up of mixing various parts from other minifigures. Perhaps someone could suggest which parts to use if this is the case. It would also be helpful to have a list of characters that feature in the scene in the docking bay between Jabba and Han. This obviously includes Han, Jabba, Chewbacca and Boba Fett but also several others. Where there is no correct Lego minifigure suggestions for similar enough ones would be appreciated. For example whilst Greedo is shot by Han in the cantina two more Rodians feature in the docking bay scene with Han and Jabba, one is called Beedo, I am not sure of the name of the other but it would be possible to use Greedo minifigures for both of these. Another difficulty is that whilst scenes show Luke and Ben walking through Mos Eisley from the cantina to the docking bay these have cuts between them meaning you do not get a view showing the overall street layout and it is clear once more that due to filming limitations the way it is presented in the film means views may contradict other views. As an example there is a set of steps that go up between some buildings and at least partially imply they may be to climb a hill but all other views suggest Mos Eisley is quite flat. It should also be noted that some computer games based on the same film and scenes also clearly contradict aspects because of inherent image conflicts in the film and/or misunderstanding. In general I expect it will be necessary to 'guess' the further one strays from the main film viewing points. One also faces the structural limitations of Lego bricks which make doing diagonal walls/streets impractical in many cases. If anyone has a source for a more accurate Mos Eisley street plan that could be useful.