On Liberty

                                                                                                                            Image by Gallant890 from Pixabay
 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Birck Days 2025 Lights

Here is Space Outpost SL ONE at night.

 

Small Detail

 

 One of the things that changed in this module is what is behind the two front towers.  There always was something behind the towers.

This was intended to be something like the warp core on Star Trek star ships.  But it was never more than a lot of transparent light blue bricks that you could see at certain angles.  

Now it is a little more than that.  Here we have the control panel for the energy core with one the Outpost personnel managing it.

And here is a short video of the Energy Core running.

I will have more on this in an upcoming post.

 

 

 

Cliff Module Build Part 3

 This video is Part 3 of a Lego Cliff Module Build for the Space Outpost SL ONE.  This video will show how the rock face is constructed.  I also talk about how the wiring is hidden behind the rock face.

Cliff Module Build Part 2

This video is Part 2 of a Lego Cliff Module Build for the Space Outpost SL ONE.  This video will show how the the wall structures and floor/ceiling structures are assembled.  Since a portion of the floor/ceiling is cantilevered, there needs to be some thought in this assembly.

Cliff Module Build Part 1

 

This is Part 1 of the video series for building a Cliff Module. This video is Part 1 of a Lego Cliff Module Build for the Space Outpost SL ONE.  This video will show how the base is built, then modified to run wiring and finally the first floor wall structure.. This video will show how the base is built, then modified to run wiring and finally the first floor wall structure.

 

 

 

 

Loose Ends #6

First I am adding a set of videos of how this was built.  In general it shows the base, the infrastructure and then the cliff build.  This was the second build of this module, where I added the first horizontal sediment layer.  This was all dark tan.  The video will show the third build, which is dark tan and medium nougat as shown in these two below.

In the picture directly above, there are two things to point out.  One is the use of filler brick, different colored 2 x bricks.  I have been picking these up along the way.  As long as guarantee they will not be exposed, they are great and inexpensive solution.  Second is the wiring.  The wiring enters/exits the first floor area near the ceiling through a 1 x 2 technic brick.  Then enters near the ceiling of the second floor through the same technic brick.

This is an expanded view of the wiring and the technic bricks.

This shows the method for containing the wire.  First is a 1 x 2  brick with channel, part number 4216.  Then is use 1 x 1 round bricks.  As I have shown many times, there is a gap formed by two round bricks, that is sufficiently large for the wire.

This picture highlights that I am alternating the round bricks and the 1 x 2 brick.  This is strictly for stability.  Unfortunate you cannot use any other type of brick or the channel that is created will be blocked.  It would be nice to tie this column into the rest of the build, but given the parts available, this is not an option

Some different views of the rock formation build.

And what it looks like finished.

One thing I added was this electrical conduit and panel control center.  There is still more work to do here.

Brick Fest Live Pasadena - Videos

 

Here are some video fly bys of the display as it was in Pasadena in 2024.  They are also on YouTube.

The one above is the complete fly Around.

This one is just the top.  This was the first showing of the top detail once the plateau was finished.

Finally this is a detailed view of the front only.

Brick Fest Live - San Diego

Setup at the San Diego convention Center.

 San Diego is different.  The local LUG attends this event, so there are lots of other displays there.  

Here is a scan of the display from right to left.  This is the first show where we had an Easter Egg list for people to find small but detailed items.  Also the crane has been moved for the ore processing facility.  The ore processing facility will be next to the space port.

Here we have two ore carriers leaving the vicinity of where the ore processing will be.  Right now it is all done by hand.

The beginning of a possible conflict.  One of the native inhabitants has climbed on to the space port as is fighting with the Blacktron Empire guards.  The alien was done by my middle grandson.  We will be adding another one soon that looks like it is crawling out of the abyss and on to the space port.

In Nov of 2021 was the very first Brick Fest Live that we attended and it was in San Diego, though that year it was a Del Mar.  Here is the display from back then.  There was no back, only the front.

Finally a videos from the event.

SandLUG

Brick Fest Live - VLOG

Brick Fest Live San Diego 2024