Tag Archives: technic

Servo Integration for a Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!

I’m pleased to announce several new products but I’m saving the best for last!

First, we are going to begin stocking our most popular items in both unanodized and black anodized aluminum. You can request any aluminum part be anodized at no charge, but if we stock it, you don’t have to wait! Today, I added 23L and the 5×3 T Liftarms in black anodized to my store.
5x3 T Liftarm23L Anodized Liftarm

We also expanded our liftarm line to include a 4L aluminum liftarm. That’s as small as we’ll get for standard liftarms since TLG already makes and sells the 2L liftarm.
4L Standard Liftarm

We’ve also developed a 3×3 L-shaped liftarm with tapped connection holes on the ends and corner. The remaining two holes are standard Technic holes for use with any standard Technic pin or our steel anti-rotation pins. The tapped holes fit standard 10/24 cap screws.
3x3 L shaped Liftarm with three holes tapped

The Long Awaited Servo Integration Kit!

Contents of the Servo Integration Kit

Our servo adapter kit lets you power your MOCs using standard hobby servos. It provides LEGO standard attachment points for both the housing and the servo horn. The kit works with many popular Futaba and Hitec standard size servos.

LEGO Beams attached to a Hitec HS-645MG Servo
Imagine powering your robot or vehicle using a motor with 7x the stall torque of a LEGO XL Motor! Of course, the kit works equally well with most other standard sized Futaba and Hitec servos. Our servo connection plate can adapt to Lego plastic axles or 3/16 steel axles (one 4L sized axle of each material is included. We include set screws for both types of axle.

The plate also features integrated mount points for LEGO liftarms and our custom aluminum liftarms.

You can also attach our custom liftarms or other Technic® compatible elements to the face of our proprietary horn. The horn is designed to mount to either Futaba or Hitec servos (or other brands who conform to their designs). Our unique horn design gives you the option to use either size standard without having to worry about which horn or servo you happen to have available.

Drive Train Tutorial Using The New Miter Gear Set

I’ve been playing with our new Miter Gear Set for a little while now and I can’t believe how easy it is to build a drive train! Following is a short picture tutorial on how I did just that.

Step 1 Using the miter gear box, the middle size steel axle, and one of the miter gears, insert the axle through the gear box and one of the miter gears. Once the axle is centered, lock the miter gear onto the axle by tightening the set screw on the side of the gear. I chose the middle axle size so that my wheelbase would match the other end of my vehicle using a 15L liftarm. If you wanted to use the drive train with the Crossover 19L Aluminum Liftarms for your steering mechanism, the longer axle would be the better choice.

Step 2 Take the second miter gear and slide it into place where it mates with the first gear and then insert the short axle into the top of the gear box. Once it is fully inserted into the miter gear, lock it down as well. Here is the finished result from steps 1 and 2:

Step 3 Attach the wheel hubs to the ends of the drive axle. These wheel hubs are made to be used with any LEGO wheels that support the triple pin connection. In this tutorial, I happen to be using the 62mm wheels from the Silver Champion Formula Racer. 🙂 This is what the wheel looks like with and without the hub:

And this is the assembly with the hubs on the axles.

Step 4 Attach the wheels to the hub. The hubs can be attached to the wheel using standard LEGO pins or they can be through-bolted using the included 10-24 cap screws.

Step 5 Attach the gear hub to either a 24 or 40 tooth LEGO gear. A 24 tooth gear is included in the set. This assembly will drive the wheels through the miter gears. Attach the assembly to the drive shaft locking it down to the axle with an allen wrench. Here is your final assembly.

Overall, it took about 10 minutes to put it all together. It would have been less, but I had to find the wheels. Below, I’m including another example build displaying an entire vehicle frame made with the gear kit and a mix of LEGO and aluminum elements from our shop. The drive shaft is being power by two Large Power Functions Motors. You may notice the gear box is slightly different. This was an earlier prototype. The new gearbox included with the miter gear kit is designed to be sealable to protect it from dirt and grime outdoors.

Play well!

My New Robotics and RC Store

For the last few months, I’ve been reselling some fantastic elements that supplement and enhance my Mindstorms project activities. These elements are made to work with any LEGO® Technic® compatible sets. What really makes them interesting is that they are made from aluminum instead of plastic. All the elements are designed in shapes not available through LEGO. I’ve been selling these parts through my Bricklink store. So far, it’s gone pretty well but I’m having a hard time finding potential buyers. The only real way to promote these on Bricklink is through the Bricklink Forum. I think about 5% of the people who use Bricklink actually visit the forum. Because these elements are custom, they are not tied to the extensive catalog of LEGO parts in Bricklink’s database. Consequently, they will never show up in a search on Bricklink. Other than linking from my occasional forum posts (I try not to be spammy), you have to know they exist and understand how to navigate the site to find them.

Because of this limitation and the little detail that Bricklink is intended for sales only of LEGO-related items, I’ve decided to setup my own store to further promote these great products. Right now, with just the liftarms, everything fits just fine within Bricklink’s guidelines. However, as the product line expands, the elements and kits we intend to produce will become less LEGO dependent and more of a crossover product. Our goal is to let you use your existing LEGO pieces, particularly Technic and Mindstorms and go far beyond what you could accomplish using LEGO alone. By extending their exceptionally flexible system, we will let you integrate more traditional RC and robotics components into your creations.

The product roadmap is fairly straight-forward but ambitious. LEGO liftarms are predominantly made in odd numbered sizes up to 15 holes (or studs-it’s essentially the same metric). Our straight liftarms range in length up to 25 studs and in even numbers down to 6 studs in length. Having the larger sizes lets you create larger structures without the need to bridge as often. By using a single, aluminum beam, you’ll have far stronger frames with fewer weak points. We’re also producing a number of angled and T-shaped beams to extend your building options.

Another unique feature is the offset holes. In a traditional liftarm, the holes are equally spaced the length of the beam. On a number of our designs, holes, or groups of holes are offset by 50% from the adjoining hole. This lets you create gearing trains with ratios not otherwise possible. On a traditional beam, you can mate the 8, 24 and 48 tooth gears fairly easily since their center holes align conveniently with the standard hole spacing. However, if you want to mate any of these gears with LEGO’s 16 tooth gear, the teeth won’t mesh without introducing a lot of complexity and building your gear train into a second dimension. Using our beams with the offset holes, you can make any combination of gears work. In the example below, a 16 tooth gear is sandwiched between an 24 and a 48 tooth gear allowing both outer gears to turn in the same direction.
Example of gearing using offset holes

Getting back to new product development, my manufacturer will soon release a steel gear and axle kit. There will be gears of 10, 30, and 50 teeth. There will be steel axles up to 38 studs long. This kit also has adapters to connect the steel axles directly to Lego 43 and 56mm rims allowing the usage of most LEGO Tires!

Additionally, ball bearing embedded liftarms will also be available separately to accommodate the higher torque. We will also offer adapters to use with Lego XL motors and higher torque motors like Futaba or HiTech. Of course, this will also facilitate integrating the RC industry’s remote controls and receivers. By providing this level of integration, remote control vehicles will be usable outdoors without the problems of limited range and infrared interference from the sun that LEGO IR controls have.

However, first you will see an aluminum “Screw-on” kit hit the shelves. This will logically precede the gear and axle kit so that customers can experiment with the solid screw-on connection between the aluminum liftarms already available in my store. This is something that steel gears and axles definitely need.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty excited about all of this! By marrying the flexibility of LEGO with the world of RC, I think we’ll have a system that gives unprecedented usability and offers a form of rapid prototyping for hardware that takes things far beyond the bounds of simple toys.