One of the many items (see last entry) I received for Christmas was this Lego technic crane set:
I opened it the other day. I was going to build it during the downtime between waiting for World of Warcraft PvP battlegrounds to start. But it was immediately obvious this model would require more than occasional attention, so I put it aside for a while.
Yesterday I built it. It took more than five hours, during which we watched the marathon of Cash In The Attic on BBC America (a great show, BTW). Here are a few shots of the in-construction and finished product:
The crane has three independent adjustable cables, which adjust the height of the ‘hook’, the angle between the primary and secondary boom and the angle of the entire trio of booms (with respect to the cab). I particularly like how these are engineered in such a way that they click when turned – a trick achieved via use of rubber pieces!
The finished crane is massive. In the rightmost picture, the height is about 60cm, and it is about that long as well. The cab can rotate 360 on the tracks, and clever counterweight pieces (I suspect they are normal lego bricks filled with metal) prevent the crane from tipping over.
A very impressive kit indeed 🙂