Chinkes At Home

Category: Family

stuff about my wife, kids, and extended family

  • Mech WIP

    I left my dark ages with the advent of Exo-Force and the ‘giant’ mecha that was the basis for that theme. So I built the sets, particularly getting 4-5 of the Grand Titan. From that I made a few different versions of my own, large, red, mech.

    lego robot

    This is one that survived a few moves and lots of playing and roughhousing. I basically kept the legs from the Titan. The arms a little more modified and then mirrored as I wanted two hands vs. hand+weapon.

    Lego robot

    This is the work in process that I have titled this post about. It looks rather complete, especially as I reused the arms and legs again. The torso is together but feel like I could do better. Particularly the seat for the minifig is strongly tied to the legs but that’s not so strongly tied to the torso.

    I also like to refine all the pieces in use the least necessary, so there is a lot of optimization to be done. I think the leg segment, which is at 33deg from the torso, could be connected better with clips and strengthened internally.

    I’m pleased with the ‘head’ of the mech, I’m calling this a Medium Armored Aardvark. The winking eye really ties it together for me.

  • Spaceport #2

    Once again, I had the small, yellow ship laying around. It was from 9 years ago and uses some interesting parts.

    Once I upgraded the stand for another little ship, I thought I should make something for this one too. I had tried this before, using the Technic #3 angle connector with a girder, this time I suspended the whole platform from it. Inspired by the tensegrity stuff from last year I only added the chain at the back to balance the whole thing out. Without the weight of the ship on the front, the platform flips up!

    Once I had that figured out it was just a matter of adding a few things to make it a spaceport. The tanks seem obvious but didn’t throw the balance out, some technicians to manage them with a fireman to inspect it all. I found some interesting non-human minifigs and made a walkway for them on the other side. With some more tanks and a ladder, the base was complete too.

    Now to see how long the connection holding everything up will last…

  • Transport Truck

    With a Firetruck, and a Fast Car, I wasn’t quite done with the floating vehicle idea. I wanted to try again, a different way, to get the wheel-arch on top and bottom. Once I had a chassis, it seemed like a box van was the way to finish it off. A small cab and a nice sized container behind. I found the flip up doors and that part started to come together. After building it once, I decided to try and get a brick-built diagonal color in there. The two slope pieces don’t quite join up as I would like but don’t seem horrible.

    I seem to have found lots of plants while sorting so I put a few flowers in there and crates of carrots to make this a vegetable delivery truck. The fancy guy in selling (or buying?) isn’t happy with the delivery driver though.