Brickbuild Factorio Designs

[aka13]

Very erotic! Now I wanna order one as well
Although, despite the ingame-model having pin-ended legs, you totally should flesh the pins out.
It screams of sinking into the ground

How much would the spidertron cost, did you calculate already?

[SauerkrautPudding]

Hi - Its not a pin in the end. Those are "technic steering CV Joint narrow with 2L axle" (92906). Havent had this part in my fingers ever. They seem to be larger than normal technic pins and I just choose em for the looks. Screeching might be an issue however, good call!

I will keep em for now but if its a thing I might need to convert the legs a bit. I think its possible to stick a bar into an axle hole so mby a round bar connector might fit. Or those "lightbulb" thingies... We will see.

Price is calculated (I just changed some parts a minute ago while doing the instructions, but the difference are just a few cents).
See my last post for the pricetag and check out the difference between blue and pearl gold.

[aka13]

I somehow managed to completely ignore the last sentences of your post, sorry.
Very interesting, looking forward to seeing it assembled.

[SauerkrautPudding]

Made some progress:

Steel furnace is completed - instead of the module slots it got a liitle coal/fuel bunker. Nothing fancy and the overall look didnt really change so no new render.

Completed all Instructions for
- Steel Furnace
- Assembling machine
- Spidertron
- Wodden Chest


created alll other inserter types (to be fair, those are only 3 variations - rest is color)

InserterFamily.png (294.75 KiB) Viewed 790 times

Reworked the belts as well. Otherwise it looked weird... Shaved off a whole brick from the overall height.
See new model -comparison old/new and with inserter.

OldNewBelt.png (183.87 KiB) Viewed 790 times

BeltWithInserter.png (239.54 KiB) Viewed 790 times

Need to work on the splitter next to adapt it to the new belt-model. But then I want to work on something cool again. Thinking about Mech-Armor or the Tank....

[SauerkrautPudding]

Worked on the "Version 2" Splitter design so it matches the new inserter and belts:

Splitter_Yellow_V2.png (315.58 KiB) Viewed 652 times

The main mechanism stayed intact and I was able to make some improvements:
- the "play" feature can be put on both sides and it is also possible to completely hide it if other modules have to be attached left and right
- the yellow flaps are now solved with bar elements. This improved the look (subjective, but to me it looks more slim) and I was also able to tilt them back ever so slightly as they are in game
- Worked in some regular 1x4 black bricks inside the base so they can be exchanged with the technic bricks outside for a cleaner look on open sides where no other modules are planned to be added. This is something I also did on the bigger models.

- improved stability but with a cost: The whole thing is now 1 brick-height smaller but has nearly the same piece count.

One downside I was not able to fix however: The gears stick out about half a stud on the back. Some modules like the steel furnace might not fit there without some modifications. Even though it sometimes makes sense in the game to have a bigger machine behind 1 side of a splitter I highly doubt someone wants to to that for a Diorama anyways so I just leave it like this.

After uploading the parts-list, the shop tells me that this costs 8,22€, so thats around 5,27 cents per piece and its more on the expensive side. But it has a lot of gearwheels for its size so its still reasonable.

[SauerkrautPudding]

Something small for today - I wanted to make a medium electric pole so I dont end up with 3 wodden ones in my 2 dioramas:

MediumElectricPolePearlGold_FlatSilver.png (174.77 KiB) Viewed 619 times

pretty much the same color palette as in the Spidertron but I am a little in love with those.
Unfortunately those big support thingies are very limited in color so flat silver it is...

Here I was able to put in the flexible hoses as well but the store does not offer those - I will try to work with my colored 1,75mm filament remainders in combination with some heat...

[SauerkrautPudding]

Happy New Year!

And yes - I am not doing much else currently (besides spending time with my family of course).

MechArmor_1.png (386.21 KiB) Viewed 533 times

MechArmor_Interior.png (397.4 KiB) Viewed 533 times

Not sure if it is able to stand upright with this big "backpack" but it has some articulation (knees as well) and hopefully there is a way put it in a nice pose.
It was designed with Minifigure dimensions in mind so it actually can fit one it. The pistol our Engineer landed with also has a place inside along with the uranium fuel cell to power the armor.

Intentionally used Minifigure scale to not loose too many details - Using my "standard" 6x6 Studs per ingame tile seemed to hard or even impossible for me.

[SauerkrautPudding]

Forgot the price / part info for the Mech-Armor:

463 Pieces - The store sells those pieces for 21,51€ so we are at 4,65 cents per piece and totally in my desired region

[aka13]

Do the knees bend? I'd say it looks like they don't.
I say this is the best color palette

[SauerkrautPudding]

Thanks - Happy that you like it.

I wont forget delivering the Instructions and BOM for all my sets - I guess I will upload them to rebrickable and mby I will do a little Video for each set also explaining where and how i got them.

The knees can bend indeed +/- 30 degrees. There is a Ball joint inside (so also small amounts of tilt might be possible) and the covers can be adjusted via hinges to close the gaps

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KneesWeak.png (130.34 KiB) Viewed 392 times

[SauerkrautPudding]

Yes - I know that I wanted to create a different colored building now but when looking at the ingame buildings I stopped at the gun-turret...
So another Pearl-Gold model it is!

This was by FAR the most challenging model I did so far:
It has to be the same scale as the other buildings (6x6 studs per in game tile).
The head should be able to move from Idle-Position upwards to a firing position as in the game.
And of course it should be able to turn 360 degrees. On top of that my stupid brain told me that it should only be able to rotate in its firing position.
I do not need to say that it also should look good enough - as a standalone goal this seems easy but combined with all the functions and the scale it was hard.

Here is the result:

Gun-Turret.png (328.77 KiB) Viewed 286 times

Gun-Turret_2.png (283.2 KiB) Viewed 286 times

415 Pieces - 19,98€ (4,81 cents / piece)

I am super happy how it turned out. Unfortunately there are no curved racks and matching gears so I went for wheels and a brickbuild ring made of 2x1 round plates and tiles. Sticking them together in the Software was really tedious - Hopefully its easier in reality.
The next big task was the mechanism underneath in the base. Lifting the thing up with a lever was not hard, but fitting in bevel gears that only connect to the knob when lifted up was the challenge.
Every little space was used - if not used for the lifting and rotating elements I had to use it for bricks acting as rails that keep the whole thing in place.

Next I had to solve the issue with the wheels that serve no functional purpose - The should stay at the same vertical position no matter if the head is up or down.
But they needed to rotate along with the turret. In the end the solution was simple: Some 2x2 bricks in the middle connecting the head with the base lifting mechanism. They can traved freely up and down but as soon as they start to rotate they simply take the wheel assembly with them.

Then the hardest part I never thought of: The wheel-cross must be turned 45 degrees referenced to the gun. Since I had the wheels first it had to be the other way around. There are some ways to create a 45 degree angle with bricks I know of, but they are way bigger - I basically had to do this on a very small footprint and it has to be as flat as possible. No turntables allowed since it will loose the connection to the rotating function.

Finally I was able to do this in a 4x4 footprint and I am very proud of figuring that out. I hope it will be rigid enough however: only 3 studs connect the base with the head but at least some tiles support the structure as well.

Since I cannot animate all the functions in Stud.io we will see if everything works when I get the pieces physically...

[aka13]

I'll just HAVE to have a similar dioarama now
Will you try your hand on the fluid buildings as well? I.e. Refinery and stuff.

I'd bet the ring will be as tedious irl if not more, as in software.

[SauerkrautPudding]

Yes I will try to create those bigger buildings now.
I have some time now because I am still waiting for the first order and already have 19 more sets in my cart to order as soon as I am happy with the first one.
So thats another 2 months of waiting it seems.

The Problem with those buildings is that they either can only be seen from one side only (as all the Furnaces for example) or they can be turned but are not consistent. The Refinery always has this "Fire Tower" on the closest side, no matter how you turn it. So other elements do move around or disappear depending on the side you are looking from.
I see it as creative freedom to imagine whats on the hidden sides but of course it will take longer than trying to copy whats already there.
This also gives me a chance to add more interesting features into the build (stairways - controls, etc) - otherwise the buid itself might end up kinda boring.
In the game it fits but if you break it down it basically consists only of tanks and pipes in various sizes.

Another problem will be the price - I just created a 5x5 tile base for the Refinery (so 30x30 studs) and this alone already costs 22€ with all those 6x12 plates that are pretty expensive.
I guess at this time I can just dismantle existing models to save some money...

So don't expect a render of a big building the next few weeks.

[Brathahn]

Very cool designs!
Maybe you should contact kovarex to make them into factorio merch!

[SauerkrautPudding]

Your comment honors me but lets see the models in reality first...
I think its easier to keep the designs as MOCs (just instructions and parts-list) since all the "work" is outsourced to the customer.

Otherwise you need somebody to make the sets (pack parts, print instructions, boxing, etc) for you and also you need some kind of customer service for missing/broken parts.
Target audience might not be big enough and I am also sure my designs are not the best for making them official.

As far as I know its usually the other way around:
Brands like Lego and Bluebrixx pay for a licence and sell the sets - They have all the logistics and knowledge behind. And better designers than myself for sure!
But I dont know who is approaching who in that scenario. I just discovered this hobby 2 months ago...

[aka13]

You do some fairly unconventional stuff in that case, if you only know the parts for 2 months

[SauerkrautPudding]

Well maybe watching a big german Youtuber for years without even having a single brick pays off now...

[Brathahn]

to make it cheaper, you can also order the parts from bluebrix or any other lego clone