Pikey

The arm is all 4mm motors with screws on, driving an intermediate shaft with a z12 and another screw, driving the output shaft which has another z12 and the cylinder on the end. The cylinder rotates and there’s an M1 nut in the end which drives up and down a threaded rod to produce the motion. It’s a good design, everything’s nicely hidden

Well its been a while! Mobile excavator, might have been worth a topic all by itself, but I've nearly finished it now so its too late for that. https://www.shapeways.com/product/ALGKTDDJE/mobilbagger-1-87-rc?li=shareProduct I'd been meaning to tackle one of these for years, but the control methods I'd previously seen were somewhat clumsy, and it was only when this kit arrived on the scene that I finally decided to take the plunge. I've put together kits before (the Das87 4WD LandRover you may have seen on Luke Towan's youtube channel) but they always seem to have brass components which never fit together properly without hours of work, so I was a little worried that this might just be a load of money wasted. And it is a LOAD of money: the kit looks like its £53 on Shapeways, but you have to buy an additional 38t gear which is another £6, then VAT is added, plus processing and extortionate shipping costs, so in the end it comes out at about £100. Then you need £120 worth of motors, gears and bearings. Then you need a receiver and 2 separate ESCs (another £75) plus some other stuff like a steering axle, battery, servo, flashing LED light. And you need to buy the model to convert as well, which in my case was £45 by itself. So total cost runs to something like £350 😬 Mind you, it is a very good kit, with useful instructions, albeit in German, so still takes a bit of lateral thinking to understand what to do even after it's been translated. Even better now you can get it printed in the self-coloured tan resin rather than mine which was clear and needed to be primed and painted, and on the last bit of the digger arm the paint has really suffered just with handling it to install the bucket motor transmission. I've enjoyed making it, and while it definitely is NOT for beginners, it is perfectly attainable if you're really careful and patient. I'll post a video of it working shortly, but for now here are a few build pics: Drive motor and steering axle: Slew motor on top of completed chassis: Slew motor/base inserted into model: RX and one of the ESCs installed: both ESCs, cab with flashing light and battery installed: Digger arm with rotating cylinders: The finished article:

Update - the tender was on the closest of the two coupling holes, moving this to the other hole has solved the derailing issues. Weirdly there is nothing about this in the manual! It sounds and looks amazing! The firebox lights up when you operate the sound for shovelling coal, and turns off again when you’ve finished 😀 I think I can put the chimney back on to a satisfactory standard, if that’s the only issue then I’ll just glue it back on 🙂

Does anyone else’s not run properly/at all around curves? Mine arrived yesterday in a box that looked like it had been stamped on quite hard from the top and the side as well (the side had been taped up to try and hide it), inner plastic packaging was very distorted and it derails on every curve on my layout - none of which are even remotely close to R2. Also the chimney broke off when I touched it!

Any idea when the EM gauge wheelsets will be available? :)

I've been absent from this forum ever since it completely changed and now half the page is covered in adverts, with additional adverts and videos popping up all over the place. What a shame :( Anyway, I have a facebook page, so if you'd like to keep up to date with what I'm doing just search for J P Models. I'll be exhibiting at the Cheltenham model railway exhibition at the end of October too :) I'm doing a couple of tractors just now, one with a bulldozer blade and one with a front loader, and I'll be tackling a reach stacker and a wheeled 360 excavator in the near future.

That looks good, well done :-) Where did you get those plastic bevel gears from? I'm using brass ones from Sol Expert which cost about £15 a pair (!) I've used motors like that with a gear ratio of 1:50 on a bus, it seems to go at about the right pace.

https://teknikart.eu/en/290-miniatuura-p10044.html and https://teknikart.eu/en/291-dccar-dip8-l6.html

Over the last few weeks I've been doing some work on the Faller Car System I've got on my garage layout at home. I now have 5 vehicles - three standard Faller vehicles plus two I've modified myself - and the latest one is a Scania timber lorry which I've chopped all the timber stuff off and made it into a simple flatbed. With a home-made route choice and stop section (servo pulling a bit of fishing line to bend the wire, and another servo-operated magnet that operates the reed switch on the underside of the vehicles) I can now bring in a flatbed truck and load it with my telehandler. It stops and starts abruptly, but its just a bit of fun

Recommend the Orange TX6 or TX10 for around £80/£90. The adjustments possible on the channels are extremely useful for fine-tuning the speed of motors that do (for example) ramps at the rear of my beavertail truck. These can be operated at 10-15% of full speed just by adjusting a menu on the transmitter, allowing you to get exactly the speed you want. You can also flip channels if you wire the motor up wrong and it goes backwards, or if you have to install the servo backwards and it goes left instead of right Also, you definitely need a hoist at high level on the warehouse to lift something on/off the lorry.

The axles they come with tend to be far too short for 1:76 wheels, especially bus and lorry wheels. I have found that 1mm pins intended for circuit board use (I think) are suitable longer alternatives, and I just drill a 1mm hole in the model's wheels, insert the axle so there is a tiny amount of free play, and add a tiny drop of superglue to the outside. You can see this from the outside, but I am happy with this small visual intrusion because of the amount of work it saves doing it the correct way (ie your way). This has worked very well for the 20+ models I've converted thus far.

Excellent work making the front axle! You can buy plastic ones at whatever width you specify from KKPMO, if you fancy doing it the 'easy' way. They're not without issues, but it saves making the whole thing from scratch https://shop.kkpmo.com/product_info.php?info=p927_steering-kit-a-in-small-0-5mm-steps-milled-1-87-or-smaller.html

Yes, its three LEDS in the beacon, which are operated in sequence by a tiny chip.

I've only found suppliers in Holland for the rotating LED beacons so far, and they're not cheap - the beacon and the chip to control it I think came to about £25 including postage (!) but they do look very good.

Still not got around to the actual crane - its all prepared, just need to find the time to do it. In the meantime, I fitted a 'rotating' beacon to the Green Goddess I did earlier:

My second HIAB crane lorry is driving and steering, with emergency beacons, test video below. This is the same chassis that my yellow one is based on, a Cararama Mercedes box lorry with the back chopped off. Pleasingly, the inside of the box is detailed with a slatted base which looks great as a flatbed by simply painting it brown, and it covers a slim 350mAh battery which I think is a better way of doing it than disguising a battery as a tarped load on the bed. The last part to do is the crane itself, you can see the white blue and green pairs of wires sticking out ready for connection to the three motors.

Here's a quick video of a Green Goddess I did just before Christmas:

Still nothing to report, mainly due to the fact that my garage is the same temperature as outside (due to zero insulation and an inadequate heater), so when its as cold as it has been recently, I just dont go in there. I've got another crane lorry that I'm working on at the moment, which I'll post pictures of when I've made some decent progress

I think the ones I've seen on Youtube from Germany are controlled like that, but I cant for the life of me see how there's room for 3 of them - one to control the steering and another two to control the arm and bucket! The next pair of loader and logger are finished and in the hands of their delighted new owner You might just be able to see I did manage to cram the driver figure back in the cockpit, although he's a lot further forward than he should be. The logger is loads of fun I seemed to be pretty rubbish at driving it, hopefully new owner Bob will get the hang of it. So I can now FINALLY work on my own loader, and I feel like putting some extra effort into the lights - they have work lights at the front and rear, plus extra lights at the top of the cab and possibly tail lights and reversing lights as well, need to do some research. I've also ordered a 'rotating beacon' - which is actually 3 LEDs inside which flash in turn to simulate a single light going round and round

Realised I havent updated this thread for ages! I now have the first loader working and it will be off to its new owner very soon: I had to use the next size up servo, 2.2g, as the smallest one that I use for everything else just wasnt powerful enough to move the steering. So any hope of retaining the driver figure / cab detail went out of the window - the cab is now full of servo and wires, in fact the wires are bursting out of the window a little bit as well. I crammed it as hard as I dared, but there just isnt quite enough room in the engine compartment! The next three, including the one with the logging attachment, are about 50% complete and I'm going to add lighting effects to the last one which is going to become the new star on my layout whenever we are able to do exhibitions again :-)

I've not long received mine, and I have to say its really good - quite a lot better than the Carson VW offering, and I think a lot of that is down to the controller - these have a small trigger style controller much like the type you'd expect for a bigger RC car, with both trim and range control for steering and throttle channels, plus a button for a third channel (which is spare on the mini) They cost around the same as the Carson VWs, once you've paid for shipping and VAT / customs charges, and they both look better (being the right scale) and drive better too.

The parcel finally arrived at the weekend Progress pictures on loader #1, I'm about 4 or 5 hours in so far (including thinking time - the other three vehicles will be much faster as I know what I'm doing now): Make hole for motor/gearbox, also drill holes for micro switch and charging socket I think the servo is going to sit approximately here, I want to get it as low down as I can because I want to retain the driver figure if possible: Make space for battery and receiver in the engine bay. I'm actually going to use a smaller battery because the servo location will eat ever so slightly into the space at the front of this piece: Take apart the arm/bucket - harder than you'd think, because its fitted together with steel rivets that need to be drilled/Dremelled out very carefully to avoid damaging the arm. Enlarge the holes to take 2mm diameter brass tube bearings (the ones on the end broke as the metal is too thin, but superglue should be strong enough for this to hold together in operation (I hope), and make space for the central cogs:

So in actual fact the parcel had the wrong address on it - so it made it all the way from Germany to within about 100 yards of my house, before being returned back to Germany!

Haven't got a lot to show here for the moment, but I have picked up a few commissions - to do three near identical loaders (so I'm going to make a fourth one for myself at the same time) and a crane lorry But my order from Germany has been delayed - on the UK side (obviously) so I haven't done much other than cut holes for the motors so far. Hopefully my motors and servos will arrive soon and I can show some progress.