Cool! I vaguely remember playing with this concept years ago but never really did anything with it. Using a larger control cylinder seems to work really well! Can't wait to see what you do with it!
You're not the first person to do this, trust me. I'm not either, considering Lego Pneumatics were released in 1984 and I was born in 1989. I used to experiment using water. Water doesn't compress like air, but then you have a problem with rust. A perfect real world application is the braking system in a car.
@@magnumsalyer That was 20 years ago, unfortunately a career in Lego was discouraged. I sold everything and pitched a lot of ideas. I vaguely remember surface rust happening overnight, if the cylinders weren't dried thoroughly after testing. Some types of plastic and rubber don't fare well with oil, but it might be a better idea to try. Messy, but no risk of rust.
What about variable position control? Is it possible to linearly change the pressure from one cylinder to another only halfway in order to move the gearbox to center, instead of one side or the other?
It is possible (I just now tried it), you just move the gray lever until you see the gear box get into the position you want it to be in. This set up has pretty fine control, but it could be improved to have a finer control. If this was, say, in a truck model, you'd want to put either a stepper to insure that the gear box remains in one of the 3 positions, or at the very least put a position indicator to show what gear you're in
First!!!
Really well done, and a very interesting concept!
Cool! I vaguely remember playing with this concept years ago but never really did anything with it. Using a larger control cylinder seems to work really well! Can't wait to see what you do with it!
Thanks 🤩
You're not the first person to do this, trust me. I'm not either, considering Lego Pneumatics were released in 1984 and I was born in 1989. I used to experiment using water. Water doesn't compress like air, but then you have a problem with rust. A perfect real world application is the braking system in a car.
I'm not surprised that other people have thought of this. The thing about water rusting the cylinders, do you know how quickly it happens?
@@magnumsalyer That was 20 years ago, unfortunately a career in Lego was discouraged. I sold everything and pitched a lot of ideas. I vaguely remember surface rust happening overnight, if the cylinders weren't dried thoroughly after testing. Some types of plastic and rubber don't fare well with oil, but it might be a better idea to try. Messy, but no risk of rust.
What about variable position control? Is it possible to linearly change the pressure from one cylinder to another only halfway in order to move the gearbox to center, instead of one side or the other?
It is possible (I just now tried it), you just move the gray lever until you see the gear box get into the position you want it to be in. This set up has pretty fine control, but it could be improved to have a finer control.
If this was, say, in a truck model, you'd want to put either a stepper to insure that the gear box remains in one of the 3 positions, or at the very least put a position indicator to show what gear you're in
@@magnumsalyer I have so many ideas, I’ll have to share them later!
@@GearsAndBricks I do too! Though I still have to build the ideas. You'll hopefully see the ideas come to fruition in upcoming videos 😉