[MOC] Excavator

[Ivan_M]

Hello everyone. First of all I would like to introduce myself a little - I'm 28 years old and I recently get back to lego thanks to my children who are slowly outgrowing Duplo and tranfering to real lego. I spent my chilhood with sets like 8480 (it is now 20 year since I found it under the Christmas tree) but I found my way to Technic only now. This is my first MOC after darkage, I have bought 42042 and some loose parts to create this excavator.

About the model:

It is powered by one L motor that drives the gearbox with 4 functions - lower section of the arm with two LA, upper section of arm with one LA, bucket with one mLA and rotation.I wanted to add 5th function as well for drive but I didn't manage to fit it into it. Drive without steering is not really something desireable after all so i think it is OK. The biggest challange was finding out the best gear ratio to move things at acceptable speed and slow enough to have power. Only the rotation remained a little jerky - I guess it is because the center of mass is not exactly in the center of turntable but a little offset due to the arm beeing closer to right side. I was glad for new turntable with bewel gear because I was running out of space due to worm gear. You can see more from the gearings in renders, the pictures are better than words. I build the model in new stud.io, it needs some tweaking but the build in rendering tool is nice. Do not mind the u-joints, they are real pain in the megablocks to work with, some other parts are little off too as aligning them was impossible. There is one "illegal" connection in digital model - the front of the cabin, but it is joined together with real model without any stress at all.

 

Please let me know how would you improve it, I would like to put it on rebrickable once finished, but I don't think it is good enouh yet. Thank you.

btw.: is there a preview before submitting a thread/reply as I cannot see it anywhere and it is very handy to check the topic before posting..

Edited December 30, 2016 by Ivan_M

[kubic]

Wow, it looks fantastic! The color scheme is interesting and the gearbox is impressive. It would be great if you released the digital file - I'd love to build it myself. Also, welcome to Eurobricks!

[Splat]

As your first MOC since your darkages, this is great.  

I'm not an expert, but most excavators that I've seen have the arm centered, and the cab to the side, which would help with keeping everything balanced.

Is it possible to cover up the middle section of the arm with some panels?  The rest of the excavator is nicely covered up, so this looks a little out-of-place to me.

There is a Preview button in the toolbar when creating a new topic or replying to a topic - it is the last icon/button on the right.

[jorgeopesi]

It is a very good MOC, I will save your pics to see everything better, you have used some nice ideas.

[2LegoOrNot2Lego...]

Looks clean, nice! :-)

[nick97]

Looks very good!

It's also fun to see that someone had almost the same idea is I had.
This is what I build a few days ago:

Mine is also not driven, as I didn't managed to fit it.

[MajklSpajkl]

Looks really nice, although the arm offset is a bit unusual. Did you build in real life first or digitaly? Excelent first MOC!

[Ivan_M]

12 hours ago, Splat said:

As your first MOC since your darkages, this is great.  

I'm not an expert, but most excavators that I've seen have the arm centered, and the cab to the side, which would help with keeping everything balanced.

Is it possible to cover up the middle section of the arm with some panels?  The rest of the excavator is nicely covered up, so this looks a little out-of-place to me.

There is a Preview button in the toolbar when creating a new topic or replying to a topic - it is the last icon/button on the right.

Thank you very much. Yes you are right about the arm in center, the first version had it like that but I decided later to move it sideways to save space. Since the whole model is quite compact and minimal width of the arm is 5 studs (to fit two gears) I moved it 3 studs to right to have space for cabin. I could make the cabin sticking out of the superstucture but I didn't liked the looks. The middle part of the arm buges me too, the only solution I was able to come up with is here:

I'm not sure about it, it seems too bulk

2 hours ago, 2LegoOrNot2Lego... said:

Looks clean, nice! :-)

Thank you very much!

10 hours ago, jorgeopesi said:

It is a very good MOC, I will save your pics to see everything better, you have used some nice ideas.

Thank you very much!

13 hours ago, kubic said:

Wow, it looks fantastic! The color scheme is interesting and the gearbox is impressive. It would be great if you released the digital file - I'd love to build it myself. Also, welcome to Eurobricks!

Thank you very much. Yes I plan to release digital file, maybe proper instructions as well, I will see how difficult is it to make them :)

[Ivan_M]

I have made a video of the model, you can see it here (without the modified arm).

I have also uploaded current version of digital buidl to Google drive:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_52o8Yjx1kuNTJ5NUZIZmw4ZzA/view?usp=sharing

The file is for the Stud.io from bricklink. Please let me know in case of any problems with video or digital file. Thanks!

[grimrecka]

Awesome build with a very striking color scheme. It's as if 42042 and 8043 had a child. If this was a real set produced by lego, I'd by it in a heartbeat.

[filsawgood]

Cool-designed excavator! Well done!

[teos]

6 hours ago, Ivan_M said:

I have made a video of the model, you can see it here (without the modified arm).I have also uploaded current version of digital buidl to Google drive:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_52o8Yjx1kuNTJ5NUZIZmw4ZzA/view?usp=sharing

The file is for the Stud.io from bricklink. Please let me know in case of any problems with video or digital file. Thanks!

Awesome model.  I was able to open the file in Studio.  That's about all I can see what to do with it at the moment.  I might build it in orange, if I can make some kind of parts list and instructions from your file.

[pyro690]

I like it! I would build it if instructions were available. Good work!!

[Ivan_M]

4 hours ago, teos said:

Awesome model.  I was able to open the file in Studio.  That's about all I can see what to do with it at the moment.  I might build it in orange, if I can make some kind of parts list and instructions from your file.

You can see parts list in the model info but there are some weird things that are waiting for correction like u-joints that are part of 3L and part of 4L. The motor is also missing as it is not in stud.io at the moment. The easiest way to build it without proper instructions is to follow steps I placed each part, you can see this in studio as well.

Thanks everyone for warm comments.

[J_C]

I really like it. I like that you rather designed complex gearbox, than using more motors.  You chose harder (better) way to the goal.

It is cleaner, better and more challenging design approach. Big clap for that. I personally prefer 42042 design philosophy over e.g. 42030 design philosophy. 

[agrof]

+1 for above mentioned, excellent start in MOCing, and geat detail pictures for the drivetrain!   (I can use them as inspiration. )

As improvement, maybe I would use system plates or the smallest panels  on the arm, to make it look less bulky.

Edited January 2, 2017 by agrof

[Ivan_M]

19 minutes ago, J_C said:

I really like it. I like that you rather designed complex gearbox, than using more motors.  You chose harder (better) way to the goal.

It is cleaner, better and more challenging design approach. Big clap for that. I personally prefer 42042 design philosophy over e.g. 42030 design philosophy. 

Thank you for your kind words, funny thing is that your C models of 42042 made me buy it

[J_C]

Wow.  Thank you. It is such a honour to read this. Thank you. My pleasure.     (I love 42042 set. My all time favourite, if I had to chose one set to take with me to desert island, it would be 42042. I design 3rd C-model now, not sure when will be done.) 

[muffinbrick]

Very nice excavator, simillar to something I am planning. I mainly like, that you used one motor with gearbox instead of more motors, for me its more realistic and more TECHNIC. Well done

[teos]

18 hours ago, Ivan_M said:

You can see parts list in the model info but there are some weird things that are waiting for correction like u-joints that are part of 3L and part of 4L. The motor is also missing as it is not in stud.io at the moment. The easiest way to build it without proper instructions is to follow steps I placed each part, you can see this in studio as well.

Thanks everyone for warm comments.

Were you able to get Studio to create a step view for your model?  I can get it to "fetch" the parts for smaller models, but it cannot seem to load yours.

[Ivan_M]

All parts are currently placed in single step so it is quite a mess. I'm currently re-building it from scratch using multiple steps and placing parts like in real life so you shoul be able to build it without problems. I have also made some small improvements in the inner structure. I guess it will take me 3-5 days to finish it. i will post the updated file here and make a rebrickable page as well.

[teos]

8 hours ago, Ivan_M said:

All parts are currently placed in single step so it is quite a mess. I'm currently re-building it from scratch using multiple steps and placing parts like in real life so you shoul be able to build it without problems. I have also made some small improvements in the inner structure. I guess it will take me 3-5 days to finish it. i will post the updated file here and make a rebrickable page as well.

Excellent.  I'm looking forward to seeing the end result.  I love the fact that it's motorized, but doesn't require all the receivers and remotes (which bump the cost up significantly).  Much like the 42042 crawler.

[Mantarri]

This thing looks great, very clean looking MOC.

Keep up the good work.

[Ivan_M]

The build is done, updated file is available for download here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_52o8Yjx1kuRXVfV1lFdkZKUW8

to start from begining hide all parts and then unhide them step by step. If there is group of parts it means that this group is build separately and then attached to the main structure. I have also published it at rebrickable but it will take a time to get approval since this is my first MOC  at rebrickable. Enjoy.

[teos]

On 1/7/2017 at 6:14 PM, Ivan_M said:

The build is done, updated file is available for download here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_52o8Yjx1kuRXVfV1lFdkZKUW8

to start from begining hide all parts and then unhide them step by step. If there is group of parts it means that this group is build separately and then attached to the main structure. I have also published it at rebrickable but it will take a time to get approval since this is my first MOC  at rebrickable. Enjoy.

Thanks!  I don't find Studio to be very user friendly, but I was finally able to figure out what you meant by hide/unhide.  Time to start collecting the parts!