Bulk Brick Buys

 

Over the summer I made several trips to buy bulk parts.  Right now I am not sure what is next for the space outpost.  One thing is a lot more detailing or "greebling".  This approach requires no more space or does it add to setup/tear down time.  The above picture shows one box that I started going through.

This actually came from a Lego store brick wall.  The brown bushes were expensive on Bricklink, so I got quite a few.  The olive green leaves are for landscaping.  The coral leaves are for another project that will include UV light that will make them glow.

This is group that has just been washed.

  

Here is a group that is drying on a towel before sorting.

 

Loose Ends #8

 

Here is the right side (standing behind), without the space port.  It may be hard to see, but above the power well on the plateau, there are two exhaust ports for the garbage collectors.  You get a better look in this blow up.

Below are some pictures of the detail in Maintenance Control and the Cyber Cafe.

 

Ore Processor - Part THREE

 I am including a few pictures that I took during the build.  This is not done yet.  The conveyor belt in the front does not always hold the crystals securely when operating.  So there is more work to do here.  I have been leery about running it full time at shows.  If the crystals fall off, then the conveyor belt could jam.  To get them out, requires to disassemble the front part.

 

I also want to add some mechanism at the end of the back conveyor belt to intimate that there is crushing going on.

 

 

 

Garbage on the Space Outpost

As past of the effort to detail the space outpost, garbage handling came up.  There are two approaches to detailing, fun action related things, ie building walkers, attacking the aliens, etc.  Or you can work on the "hum drum" that makes any large complex run, ie, maintenance support, food service, gym, showers, sleeping quarters and garbage handling.

My idea was incinerators and maybe a garbage crusher.  These two pictures above show the beginnings as I play with incinerators and the openings.  I saw these circular openings elsewhere and decided it was perfect for this.  It gives the illusion there are doors in them that will close when needed.  The bottom picture shows three different possibilities.  I settled for the one on the right as the basis.

Here is the close to final design, without the circular openings.  There is an incinerator on either side and the garbage crusher in the middle.  There is a control panel for operation.

The circular openings have been installed.  There is still detail to be added inside each compartment.  The circular opening makes it hard to see the garbage crusher.  The is something that will have to be worked on.

This is installing the lights.  I went with cool white on the incinerators and RGBW Led on the crusher.  Except I only connected the RED and BLUE.

Here it is with the LEDs on.  You can also see some of the detail that is included is included in the incinerator rooms.  After seeing this, I am going to look at putting the small LED controller in to varying the lighting.  The garbage crusher also needs work.  Unfortunately, there is no place to put a motor, that would be ideal for the crusher.

 

Loose Ends #7

 

This is the first attempt at the fueling station for the Space Port.  Still needs some work.  I did this at the last minute before Brick Days, using only the parts I had on hand.  Thus there is room for improvement.

Here is another perspective while fueling the cargo transport.

What follows are some random ideas that came up while building with the grand kids.

I am not sure what these creations will lead to.  But one of the overall treatments needs to the so called greebling, and that is probably where this is eventually heading

 

Exploding Speeder

 

 The new theme at the Space Outpost is the attack of the native Flash Mob.  One vignette, was a speeder attacking a Flash coming up out of the abyss.  But the Flash got the better of him and the speeder exploded.  But the crusty Blacktron soldier goes down shooting.

 

I used the standard transparent clear bricks to indicate open space and a series of flames and the flat orange burst to show the explosion.  Finally there are several hinges to allow for the separating pieces to be at different angles.

Unfortunately the pictures don't really show the model as it would in person.

At the other end of the Space Outpost, three speeders are lining up for an attack run on the three Flash that are attacking the space port. Again I used hinges to get the leaning in turn on the first two.

 

 

 

Ore Processor - Part TWO

 

The basic layout of the Ore processor is this:

1. The stones come down from the cliff side onto a conveyor belt on the back of the module.  This conveyor belt runs right to left.
2. Goes through the crushing facility.
3. Then out of sight, the stones are processed underneath into small energy packets.
4. These energy packets then show up on another conveyor belt at the front of the module, that also runs right to left.
5. At this point they would be removed and ferried over to the space port for shipment.

 The conveyor in the back is a complete conveyor part, part number 92715c01 as shown here.

This provided the best choice for he stone movement and here is a video of what I was trying to do.

 

 

Here is the initial placement of the controller.

 

This shows the motor placement and the second conveyor.   The conveyor is built using the Technic link tread, part number 3873.  The back conveyor is using a standard M motor with a worm gear box to convert the direction 90 degrees to the large gear.  Then a chain will drive a small gear and then the conveyor.  As the video shows it runs at about the right speed. The front conveyor is using one of the small motors I found and then gear reduction section to slow it down.  I had to use the small tread links because there was just no room for the larger ones.  It all fits, but there is not much room left over.

 

 

 

 

Ore Processor - Part ONE

This has been in progress for a very long time.  For almost two years all that existed was an empty module base and the small crane on the cliff lowering in things.  Now there is something there.  Not sure this is the final version, but here is what got built.

 

This is the crushing facility.  The first conveyor belt takes the stones from above and moves them to this facility.  For now there is a red LED on the front that shows when the conveyor is about to start.  On the roof is an RBGW LED.  For none working, the light is white.  When the crushing facility is working the, light is red and blue, with a random PWM pulse applied independently to those two LEDs.

The red LED on the front is shown above.  There is a headlight brick on the side.  I used a small SMT style LED with the wires attached.  I bend the wires very close to the LED, to form a right angle.  Then I stuffed cotton into the hole to hold the LED in place.  It takes a lot more cotton than you would think.  The goal is to hold the LED and the wire in place, so stuff away.  Then a transparent red tile goes on the front.

You can see a fair amount of the inside of this small building and there is nothing.  What needs to happen is some kind of crushing mechanism will need to be built.  The problem here will be I have no more motor control channels.  so not sure how that will work yet.