Flare Sci-Fi Forums: LEGO Defiant

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Posted by ScottKey on :

OK people. Here's how it goes. I've got this wild idea to make the USS Defiant scale to the Lego minifigure. Yall probably think I'm crazy right about now, and rightfully so. This project will eventually cost several thousand dollars and will take years upon years. I've been stocking up on the Legos for a while now, but I've still got nowhere near the amount I'm going to need. Here's the plan so far. It will be built in modules so that it can be taken apart if need be. Each module will have several decks whereas they come apart similar to the fashion of Lego's Millenium Falcon. The model will eventually be about 16 feet long and about 12 feet wide. I believe it will also be about 2 and a half feet high.

Now here's the tricky part. Where do I build such a large model? The idea to use my garage has surfaced on numerous occassions. The only problem with this idea is that it is currently a mess, and I'd have to clean it, which could conceivably take a very long time. Hey, I never said i was the cleanest guy out there, just the laziest. Once the garage is completely clean, I feel I can really get to work. Right now, all I've really been able to do is do some rough mock up models that have actually turned out pretty good.

Anyways, if any of yall have any ideas that I might incorporae into this undertaking, feel free to respond. I know I can use all the encouragement and advice I can get on this project.

Scott

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

I think all you're really looking for is people to volunteer to come to your house and clean out your garage, eh? *L*

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Posted by ScottKey on :

Well, that's not a bad idea, but I'd never ask anyone to volunteer to clean this mess. What I really want to know is if anyone has any tips on how I might be able to bild some areas of the ship. I just want to keep my options open and get as much input on this so that it can be the best that it possibly can be.

Scott

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :

I've done several lego trek Bridges in my time, and they're tough, especially with the circular nature of most bridges. The Defiant's a bit more linear than than the others, but it's still a good challenge.

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can build two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Isn't it true that the larger you build your lego model the more circular you can make it... has anyone here been to any of those lego exhibitions where they make entire animals out of legos?

Andrew

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"This is cooling, faster than I can..." Tori Amos "Cooling"

Posted by Mikey T (Member # 144) on :

I've been to Legoland near San Diego, and I've seen how large those suckers are... If you plan to build a Defiant, I suggest you have at least half a million bricks.

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If you fancy a threesome at this time of night, you can't get start getting choosey about which particular three!
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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :

So thats. . . five replies, and no-one's mentioned WHICH size he's gonna make it. Or - what height is your basic Lego man meant to be anyway? Because he looks kinds short. Are we loking at your median starfleet crewman size of 5 foot? Or shall we just say "what the heck" and take it all the way up to 6 foot? In which case, given the waistline you get from that scale, I'd say he'd fail his yearly physical, be declared unfit as an Escort vessel crewman, and reassigned to a Starbase (and ordered to go on many long walks while there).

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Posted by ScottKey on :

I believe each minifig would be 6 feet tall. I'm not sure if I did get the dimensions of the ship correct. It was just a guess based on some measurements I took a while back.

One great idea I recently had for turbolifts was to incorporate the lagre circular pieces from Lego's Droid Escape set. I was never quite sure how I was going to make the turbolifts, but now I've got an idea where I can start from.

Also, I have created the Defiant's bridge before, however do to a slight accident, it was destroyed. That's really not that big of a deal though, because now I can do it again and incorporate a lot of new ideas into it.

Scott

Posted by Austin Powers (Member # 250) on :

Very interesting. I have built LEGO models of several starships as well as the Ent-D bridge.
Although the bridge was in scale with the figures, the starship models were not. (I never had so many bricks.)
Still I have built models roughly in scale with the large AMT Ent-D. (Nebula class, Akira class, Sovereign class, Excelsior class and Miranda class; also Vorcha and K'Vort class)

Do you have pictures of your earlier models?

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RIMMER [as Ace]: "Stoke me a clipper, I'll be back for Christmas."

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :

I did a scale runabout once... Or at least a reasonable facsimile. At the time, I didn't know what went into the middle part, so I built a few custom interiors from a lab, to a sick bay, to a jacuzzi bar and pool table set. *That* was peanuts compared to Scott's proposed Defiant. Wish ya luck, boyo.

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can build two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

Now, that's a Runabout I'd like to serve on ... pool rocks.

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :

Hehe, I liked the pool table module. I used toothpicks as cues for the minifigures to hold, and Nerds candy bits for the balls. Didn't put actual water in the jacuzzi, though.

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can build two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

Posted by ScottKey on :

No pics from my previous models as my camera's battery always seems to be dead. I went and picked up about $150 worth of Legos over this past week, not counting what I got for Christmas, so I've got a good deal more Legos to work with now. I've got to get everything organized first before I can actually get back to work on it.

I never did make a Runabout, how large was that? I did however make one of the Defiant's shuttlepods. It came out to about 6 inches long if I remember correctly. If I still have it build I'll have to find a camera around here.

And your microfig scale starships, do you have any pics of those?

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :

My Lego years are long past, I'm afraid. With luck, my collection is still in use by the childrens' charity they were donated to.

Runabout size? Hmm... It was more than a foot long, as I recall. Not exactly to scale given the materials I had, the removable dorsal section sucked, and it was blue, but it wasn't terrible.

I used to make lots of Lego bridge "sets" though. Nothing as curvy as an E-D bridge, and again it was blue, but I had some nice configurations every now and then. Unfortunately, I've never taken pictures of any of them. However, I assure you that the people who saw them were impressed enough.

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can build two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

Posted by Right on :

Are you going to try and actually "crew" the ship with mini-figs? Are you going to custom paint 'em or something, because, last I knew, Lego doesn't do "Trek" uniforms ...

This could be solved if you could get ahold of some yellow, red, and blue solid "shirt" pieces with black-legs. It'd be a TOS style uniform, but I think people could overlook that.

This would be VERY VERY cool, and I'd love to see it. I'd like to see some pics of what you're working on, even if they're nothing but just rough "sketches" (so to speak) of corridors or the sets.

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

I was wondering about the uniforms too.

Are you going to get the turbolifts to actually WORK? Whereas, you can push them through the turbolift tubes themselves or ... ?

Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :

Or with Right's idea, just paint the top of the shirt black and you'd have TNG uniforms. Or paint the bottom part of the shirt and have Voyager uniforms.

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Posted by Austin Powers (Member # 250) on :

Mark: Funny, my bridge sets are also blue! Must have been because I used all the white, grey, etc. bricks to build the ships. I've even got two yellow (!) Mirandas (1 Lantree type, one Reliant).
Mind you, I might also be way past the age of building with LEGO, but I've still got the models on show and even the bridge set is sitting "under wraps".

I've got Windows95 and my digital camera connects to the USB port which is all right to me as I've got two of them. But the camera SOFTWARE unfortunately needs Windows98 for a proper installation!
Anyone know how to get around that problem?

As soon as I have got Win98 I can finally post pics as promised months ago when I first posted a thread about my LEGO ships.

About the uniforms: I used the method you described, painting plain red/gold/blue "uniform" tops with black markers. I even used stickers (painted grey) to imitate the First Contact style uniforms.

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RIMMER [as Ace]: "Stoke me a clipper, I'll be back for Christmas."

Posted by ScottKey on :

OK, as for the uniforms, I was just going to find some Lego minifig torsos that look as close to the DS9 uniform as possible. I don't really like messing with any of the actual pieces. However, once I actually finish the ship, I might suck it up and do a little painting.

Now for the turbolifts, I do hope to get them to work. This will probably be the trickiest part of the building process. I've got to make these things go vertical and horizontal. It could be interesting how I actually solve this loittle problem. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear em.

Scott

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Well, if you want them to work at the push of a button, you may be thankful that the official separation between decks in the Defiant is close to 4 meters even when the corridors themselves are only a little over 2 meters high... The extra space is where the turbolift horizontal-motion machinery goes!

I once did something like this as an experiment. I didn't want to do an "alpine train" style thing with gears and sawtoothed tracks, nor a cable-based conventional elevator. Essentially, I went for a conveyor-type belt running along the wall of a vertical shaft and the floor of a horizontal one. I first tried building the conveyors out of actual plastic Lego tracks, the sort used in bulldozers and the like. That didn't work at all. But a long rubber band did the trick for both the vertical and horizontal movement: I made it run in a groove at the side or bottom of a simple rectangular shaft, so that it touched the side or bottom of the lift car. A single motor could run the system, coupled to all the belts with more rubber bands; a more advanced system should use separate motors for separate belts, or a gearbox system for giving power to only a single selected belt at a time.

I had to reduce the friction between the car and the shaft somehow, too, and experimented with tiny wheels running either directly on the shaft walls or then on railroad tracks mounted there. Eventually, I just glued a dozen little plastic beads to the walls of the car so that these tiny points were the only things touching the corners of the shaft walls. Using two conveyors, on opposite sides, to support the full weight of the cab would probably also work - but it was hell to make the pressure of ONE belt against the cab even roughly constant along the length of a shaft, and two might be a big problem.

The hard part was making a transition between vertical and horizontal movement. Going from vertical to horizontal was easy in the end - at the end of the horizontal conveyor, the lift would just plop into the vertical shaft (not very elegantly, though, but with proper guiderails it would work). The cab would shoot upwards past such a junction when traveling vertically, simply by giving it sufficient speed to clear the beltless gap. The beads would run along the four corners of the vertical shaft all the time, so the cab wouldn't be without support even in the gap - it would simply be without propulsion.

The opposite direction was far more difficult. Finally I settled on building a set of rollers (Lego axles) emerging from the vertical shaft wall below the cab after the cab had reached a junction. Then the cab would drop back onto those rollers, which would move it sideways to the horizontal shaft and its conveyor belt. It was all manual, moving the axles into the shaft and then turning a crank at a carefully controlled speed to roll the rollers so that the cabin wouldn't tip over, but it worked. With the modern pneumatic Lego components, this should be easier to arrange, and it could be motorized, too.

In the end, the system featured an ugly lift cab which couldn't house a single figurine, no workable door system, and machinery that vastly out-bulked the little cab and the meager few shafts (one straight vertical shaft, one horizontal L-shape, one junction). But in theory, it could be built in a more elegant form. The conveyor belts are a good starting point, and designing smooth, possibly smoothly curving shafts with functional junctions is The Real Big Problem.

Perhaps in the flat Defiant, you could do the horizontal conveyors only, and use a separate pneumatic or mechanical platform for moving the lift vertically across the mere four-five decks. Not very elegant, but then you wouldn't need the rollers at junctions, just that single platform.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by spyone on :

Lego will sell you bulk Legos. This can work out to save you quite a bit of money. If you will let them use your model in future promotions, they might even send you some Legos for free.

When I was younger, I lived in Connecticut (US home of LEGO). One year long ago, a kid wanted to make a scale model of the Goodspeed Operahouse out of LEGOs. Not only did LEGO sell to him in bulk, they actually made LEGOs for him in colors that were not then available, like grey, to make his model more exact. After he finished it, they put it on display at the Eastern States Exposition.
While the Defiant is Paramount's property, and thus a little harder to use for promotions, LEGO might be interested in helping you.

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Posted by Teelie (Member # 280) on :

I think legally you're allowed to do something like this, as long as it's one of a kind and not used to promote another product illegally. Paramount may give you permission too if you want to be on the safe side. Although they're a bit idiotic when it comes to fan stuff.

Posted by Doctor Jonas (Member # 481) on :

Waaaaah! You finally made me register!

I've been lurking for three months, trying not to post. But the line must be drawn here...

Okay, I'l try to help you. There is a computer tool called MLCAD that is specifically designed to do 3D models of LEGO. It's excellent for outlining these kind of modular projects (you can construct several parts separated, and then merge them all in layers)

Look for it at www.mlcad.org.

For further assistance, visit www.lugnet.com. They have LEGO forums for almost everything.

Play well...

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Caught in a landslide, No escape from reality

Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :

Doctor Bashir I presume? Welcome to the Jungle.

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"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking"

Posted by ScottKey on :

Hey Bashir,

I've got MLCAD. The only problem is I want to actually build the physical model. I don't want to use ldraw to do it. It just doesn't seem as real to me.

Posted by MIB on :

I agree I also have MLcad, but building a Lego model on MLcad doesn't seem nearly as forfilling as building a model with real legos.

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[This message has been edited by MIB (edited January 11, 2001).]

Posted by Doctor Jonas (Member # 481) on :

Of course. I can say that myself. But it's a good way to test the structures and everything, then planning how much pieces of each kind you need. In that way, you can organize your collection and buy the almost exact amount of blocks you need for the final building.

Hey, every construction needs a blueprint! Especially one that is so important

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Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, No escape from reality

Posted by trekfan2k on :

I've got mlCAD too, but I think making large scale models, such as the Defiant, would take longer than building. It's a good program, but it seems a little complicated.

Also, if you have any pics, sketches, or .dat's, I'd love to see them.

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