While Joe Meno from BrickJournal has been uploading tons of new photos to his Flickr photostream, he took from the LEGO booth at New York Toy Fair, he also confirmed to TBs
there were no Fall 2012 Technic sets at display. 
Don't know whether it is this way that TLG pretends to boost their LEGO Technic sales in US market, but for sure it was one chance less to get extra info about the upcoming new sets, parts and functionality.
Lets hope for any news coming from LW Copenhagen, later this week. Although as far as I remember there were also no new Technic sets in there, the last year...
Posts
3 comments:
Perhaps The Lego Group is "tweaking" the design of the larger 2H2012 Technic sets a bit, based on feedback on this (and other) AFOL forums. As an American who grew up in the New York area, I know that Lego Technic is not a big seller compared to other Lego themes; there are just TOO MANY OTHER CHOICES for kids' toys.
Which is why I keep saying technic must focus on being technic and not just another kids toy. By this I mean making all the mechanisms yourself. By this I mean not having anything mechanicly done for you. By this I mean NO GEARING DOWN INSIDE THE MOTORS! So yeah, I hope if there is/was internal gearing inside the new L-motor, they are "tweaking" it so that it won't have any! 8^)
@Dave: I'd be interested to hear about any time that's actually happened. I wondered if TLG was disappointed by now that we AFOLs know 9398 and 9396 inside out to the point of replication, reducing the motivation to buy?
@Allan: I agree to some extent but I wouldn't want to go back to belt drives (limited torque, poor reliability - wear-out mechanism)! A 4000rpm motor with more torque than the previous 4.5V or 9V ones would be good for propellers - I use 4x 9V ones on a dual propeller demonstrator at 1.3 Amps total and it still needs more power at the high speed. Harnessing a 135W 10-33,000rpm drill didn't work though - melted the axle ;-) http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=3865118
I think a motor of 1000-1500rpm that would give 10Ncm of torque when geared down to 300rpm would be good for driving vehicles. Much faster than that and LEGO gears wear out quickly. The 5292 motor is close to that torque level (7.5Ncm at 9V), which is one reason why I wonder if the L-motor is a derivative of it (same motor unit, different gears and case).
9398 features 4 or 5 gear stages from each motor to the wheels - you should be happy :) But seeing how the hubs can take 8:24 instead of the fitted 12:20 means there is a possible doubling of motor speed at the same torque, resulting in the same vehicle speed at double the torque, an increase that hasn't been achieved by the L-motor.
TLG did great with the XL motor - it was the more powerful motor we wanted for 20 years, except that its speed is low. Perhaps the L-motor is designed to address this - torque x speed of a 5292 derivative motor should be a little better than the XL motor.
I think TLG need to go half way to RC car and aircraft motors for some serious power and speed. Maybe not 40 Amps but certainly 5-10 Amps rather than the 1.7 Amp maximum of the XL motor. Give us 1000rpm from internal (low friction) gearing under 50% load and we'll do the rest. Need to sort out heat management, connector capacity and stuff though - LiPo batteries are up to it but it would far exceed PF cable capability :-(
Mark
Post a Comment