42055

Technic: Bucket Wheel Excavator (42055) – Part 4

Saturday, 30th December 2017 By Caz

Time for another final hit at the Bucket Wheel Excavator (42055) set. Bags 7 & 8 produced the final pieces to finish the model.

And after more hard work, here it is!

I wasn’t expecting the finished thing to be so huge. It barely fitted on my white photographic background foam board!

And of course, it is motorised, so here’s a quick video showing it in action. The forwards/backwards motion is VERY slow because the thing is so damned heavy, but the conveyors tip rubble into the truck quite quickly.

Technic: Bucket Wheel Excavator (42055) – Part 3

Thursday, 28th December 2017 By Caz

I’ve had a break from Technic for a few days, while I enjoyed building the Architecture themed sets I got for Christmas. But today it was back to the Bucket Wheel Excavator (42055), which I still haven’t finished yet. It was time to attack the biggest stage – all those bags numbered 6.

This gave me the eponymous bucket wheel and another bit of conveyor, mounted onto a frame. It’s still not done yet, but I’ve run out of time for today.

Technic: Bucket Wheel Excavator (42055) – Part 2

Friday, 15th December 2017 By Caz

Having successfully built the Tipper Truck yesterday, I set about making a start on the actual Bucket Wheel Excavator today. I started with Bags 2:

These held the parts to build the lower frame of the thing, which took shape quite quickly. The circular yellow rack will guide the rotating turret once it is in place.

Next up, bags 3:

These contained the bits to make some guides for the caterpillar tracks:

These fitted to the frame chassis and then the caterpillar tracks were laid over the wheels to give the desired shape and form. They are driven by the big toothed black cog in the picture above, which joins to the main transverse drive shaft at the front of the chassis (the yellow connectors at each end).

Bags 4 contained the parts to begin the turret mechanism:

The turret also connects to the linear actuators which incline the main conveyor at an angle as desired. The gearbox here (all the red cogs) is quite complicated and when I had nearly finished this bit I realised I had one gear left over! Oh no… strip it down again (thankfully in quite big chunks) and find where I had missed inserting the extra cog. Eventually it went back together, but not without a bit of swearing!

Once attached to the main chassis the build is really beginning to take shape:

Next onto the relatively small Stage 5 bags:

These constructed a pair of vertical supports on the main turret, which are used to anchor the big conveyor structure. It didn’t take long to add them to the build.

Fitting the first conveyor to the uprights…

After the fiasco with the gearbox, and having seen the number of bags involved with Stage 6, I decided to call it a day for the moment. I will continue soon, hopefully.

Technic: Bucket Wheel Excavator (42055) – Part 1

Thursday, 14th December 2017 By Caz

I’ve never built any LEGO Technic before, but thought I would start as I mean to go on and acquired the biggest Technic model available as my first build, set 40255 Bucket Wheel Excavator. AFOL friends had advised me that it would be a versatile parts pack for my Great Ball Contraption modules, but I wanted to build it properly first to see how the model went together, and indeed how Technic builds work, as there are some significant differences in methodology from regular System bricks. I manged to find a second hand copy on eBay at about half price, whose box had been water damaged but all the parts were safely stowed in their plastic bags and had sustained no damage. Here’s what I was greeted with when I unpacked the box!

This huge pile of bits looked quite daunting as I’ve never been much of a mechanical engineer, and the instruction manual was almost in inch thick. But I realised I wasn’t going to get it built just by looking at it, so set to work.

I opened the bags numbered 1 and was pleased to learn the first thing we were making wasn’t too complicated, it’s the tipper truck which catches the “rocks” thrown off the conveyor.

A little while later I had this – at least it looked like it did in the pictures!

And turning the knob to the rear of the cab makes the back tip its load. That bit isn’t automated but I was pleased to see I had got the mechanism right.

That’s all I had time for today, but I will carry on tomorrow and let you know how it progresses.