gyenesvi

Actually, I think the animal theme is a good idea, not too festive though, but I think in that case we should go all in with it and not allow a non-animal category as well otherwise entries will be incomparable.

These! We do all loose interest in everything over time, that's natural. But I think there's a big difference in this respect between people who design / build themselves, and people who just assemble sets. The latter is more sensitive to official sets and gets bored much sooner. For the former on the other hand, it is all about the creative process and the challenge of designing their own ideas. And as long as they haven't tried out everything possible (and interesting) with the existing bricks, there is always something new that's exciting (and adults usually have less free time than ideas to try out). And new parts feed this process, because more and more builds / realistic mechanisms become possible, and even rebuilding something that has previously been built is completely different with new parts. That's what I really like about Lego, as long as the possibilities evolve, there's always something new to build.

I second this, taking half of the screen and making things super hard to use. Even the previous banner at the top was already bad because it was making the top menu unreachable..

In that case maybe the Generic Part Discussion thread :) Anyways, fine with me.. Well, that's the root cause of the problem then :) That's a lot of power for the plastic. Probably greasing / lubricating would slow down the process of eroding the components and building up the freeplay, but I guess it would not prevent it totally.

First off, the mods will probably tell you tht this should not be a separate thread but in the dedicated thread for 42160. Second, what are you driving this with? Original technic hub/batteries or is this a Buwizz3 mod? Your wheel hub seems pretty worn, with plastic dust on first image? That's why there's much freeplay maybe? Do you remember if it touched when it was not worn out? Though true that it was probably close enough to start with..

I agree with what @allanp said above. I understand them making models that sell well, sure, but feels like they used to put more effort into making them technically more interesting in the old times, and I don't think that the two would be mutually exclusive. I feel like old models used to push technical possibilities to the limit (maybe even too much and some became too complex / weak?) and nowadays they are not doing that, just settle with "good enough to sell" solutions, instead of approaching "only the best is good enough". And as I said above already, where it really effects us MOC-ers is when that 'lazyness' effects new parts, or rather the lack of them. Though true that some interesting new parts have arrived in the recent past and more seem to be coming in the near future, which is really good, so hopefully these rants do have some effect :)

Hmm, after looking at some videos and the mechanism online, I don't think that's accurate. I think what you mean is that without separation of the links, the actuator head remains parallel (or the pencil perpendicular) to the ground (base) plane. But you can raise and lower the actuator, just as shown in the video of @oracid, so you can move it out of a single plane, and if you want to keep it in a single plane (as you did in your example drawing machine), you have to calculate the right angles for the 3 motors. It seems relatively simple though, I wonder how complicated the inverse kinematics gets, whether there's a closed form for calculating the motor angles, or is there a need for some iterative approximation algorithm. I'll try to look into it. The whole machine looks simple to build as well, so I feel tempted to try this. I have a Mindstorms kit I have never really used for anything, maybe this is a good one :) I think the angular L motors would work fine for this without any gearing needed, and it also seems easier to integrate them due to their shape. And it's interesting to see how rotation and tilting can also be achieved with link separation.

Indeed, I had quite a few situations when that one would have worked.

I have thought about that recently too, and even designed a few parts, I will post them later. I think it would be good with cross holes on the end, rotated 45 degrees, so that things on the two ends can connect in a non-diagonal direction. The length could be square of 2 or the double, as in the part above.

I think that would be kind of useless. True they understand motorcycles, but they probably don't understand what's possible with lego technic and what's not, so they cannot tell how good the lego representation is. All they could probably tell is how good it looks, and things like "wow, cool, it even has suspension and gearbox!". They probably wouldn't say, "oh, it's the same as in the previous lego bike"..

Sure I agree some are and there is progress in that aspect as well, I did not mean to say there isn't, just that there seems to be more emphasis on visual parts. Flip-flop beams are awesome game-changers, I agree, only thing is that the series is getting completed really slowly, even though everyone says it is a radical change, so TLG designers must also realize this, so I don't understand why they don't speed up its rollout if it's so beneficial. New transmission parts and gears are also great, and I welcome heavy duty drivetrain parts as well, though they have a few missing pieces, and some recent pieces could have been designed better as well to make them more versatile. But what I really miss is the more basic structural parts / connectors. A prime example could be L shaped beams / thin beams with axle holes; there is a lot missing there, that if existed could also be quite a change for compact builds. That's just one example, I have listed a lot more in this thread. Why not build your own stuff instead of relying on sets? It does not matter whether the parts come from old or new sets or just Bricklink / PaB..

These are true, I like this point of view. However, I believe that the technical quality of official sets and hence the novel elements and hence the potential for MOC-ing are interrelated. And that's where I could imagine improvement, I don't really care about the actual models made by TLG, as long as I can build what I'd like :) True that there are novel parts, and hence the range of parts is only ever increasing. But it also matters what parts are coming out. The good looking shelf queens imply more paneling than technical / structural elements, and even obvious opportunities are being missed for introducing new technical elements. I'm fine with TLG going with cars, but then at least make the most common technical side of those (suspension, drivetrain) cars good, especially when a model would require. The Ford Raptor was an example of a missed opportunity for 4WD at that scale, and for me the G500 is also underwhelming on the technical side. It's a large scale, expensive set, and yet it doesn't even have a proper (non-steered) floating axle rear suspension, the simplest thing you could imagine; the geometry is unrealistic, the linkage binds, the springs are in the trunk, and the chassis frame is also unrealistically shaped. Lego is even missing structural parts to make simple strong ladder frame chassis, which sounds like a basic shape (just one example, there are other basic shapes that are also hard to build).

Wow, this is pretty cool, I like the fairly smooth movement of the actuator, I did not expect such precision from a lego machine. And if that can be improved, even better. On the mechanical side, I have a question. Does this type of actuator movement guarantee that the head moves in a plane, and does not lift up? I guess that would make sense. Do you have more details of that? On the software side, you say that there is a start/stop pattern due to commands following each other and you wish to improve that. I think a key would be to have an infinite loop in which you are constantly calculating where the head is and where it wants to be and continuously correcting course instead of issuing distinct commands that have a beginning/end. Is that what target tracking does? I have never tried that in Pybricks. As for the XL motors, even if absolute positioning works (I think it should) they are not so precise at positioning in my experience. Did you try the L motors? They are much better in that respect. 42100 has at least 3 of them.

I don't think it's a society thing of the present. The masses always favored the looks, not the details under the hood, in everything; just because most people are not nerds/gearheads. Simple cheap (real) cars for the masses make more profit than nieche cars. Many products or companies start out as a nieche thing, and when it is picked up by broader audiences the product necessarily becomes dumbed down for the broader audience, who does not need the details/complexity of the original. Sure technic has evolved a lot. Older sets were built as a wireframe because panels did not exist back then and that was the only way to go for bigger models back then. Sure the focus was more on the mechanisms, that was the original nieche idea, but also it's a large amount of nostalgia for us who grew up in that studded technic era. I think really few companies can keep things going by sticking to the original nieche product and not broadening for the masses by dumbing down the product. I think one middle ground for Lego could be models that both look good and have good functions. Obviously it is pointless to max functions out for all models, because we need more beginner sets as well, but I think there's plenty of room for improved functions without driving the complexity too high, especially for the large expensive models. Another area I think Lego misses opportunities is realism. Too often they just settle with something technically basic for a function in these good looking car sets. I hope this will improve. At least the F1 cars have better looking suspensions now and some form of a gearbox.. maybe that's good direction.

And what does JCB have to do with submarines?

That was surprising for me too, especially yellow, as that is used in many sets. It is good to see these long overdue yellow parts coming in now. I can understand LBG panels a bit more though as it is less used for exterior, being a pretty dull color. But sometimes it is required as a secondary color for extras.

With whom?

Still don't get what the submarine has to do with the JCB or the backhoe that was mentioned above. Are trying to refer to yellow submarines?

Of course we know those exist, but exactly that is why, because those are axle-pin versions, which is often not what is required (for example a 3L pin needs to go through the ends or a spinning axle needs to go through it).

And what about the connections on the side? Those small parts that look like plates? Do you think that's only a gap filler?

So? What does that explain? Many sets have yellow parts..

Maybe for upcoming sets it's a good idea to just use the generic 2025 sets thread for discussion as long as we don't have images. And then we will avoid duplicate threads.

Actually I'd already be happy with 3 and 4, those would be most useful of these, maybe also 2.

Yeah! First I thought it's a 7L, but right. Now hoping for the 5L to appear next year as well!

The topic is now duplicated. No, the top gear controls the front bucket raising.