LEGO Technic Excavator Construction Toy 42055

Product Information

Step 8 completes the model with the cabin, railing and other small stuff. The cabin is a little too small for a minifigure. Bags #8 add the cab, bodywork, walkways, lights and other cosmetic details. Overall, the build time for the entire model is around 7 hours. Following on from that, the rear end of the digging arm is constructed which includes the control panel/gear box. Here you can see the innards before they are hidden by the top panel. Relatively cheap (yes, I’m dutch). In this set the parts are about € 0.06 cent per part. In for example the Porsche this is € 0.12.

This is definitely a set that benefits from a video review so I encourage you to watch Sariel's. You can skip past the unboxing and construction to 17m 30s to see the machine in operation. The 1x1s often just sit on the agitating plate and sometimes never exit. This is because (a) they are not spherical and (b) the plate is not completely smooth, so depending on how they land, they don't always roll down it. The plate's up and down movement is not sufficient to encourage them to move! Having now built it, I can confirm that it is indeed an impressive machine, but it's really pushing the limits of what is possible with the Technic system and one motor...It's entirely possible that I was not careful enough during construction and mounted gears or connectors too tightly thus causing too much friction but if I -- a Technic veteran with 20+ years experience -- can do that, what hope do kids have of building it any better? Note: I took the pictures outside in the garden this morning so they have a nice 'warm' tone to them.) A third conveyer sits at the bottom of the input chute. It moves much slower than the output belts. Upload an Image in the specific color if you have one and the one in the above listing is not available. It's a great set to build and to behold but its operation lets it down a bit. Also, its size -- while impressive -- will make it difficult for many people, myself included, to display. It's not something you could take into work and put on your desk, for example!

The box is the biggest I’ve ever had (42009 and 42030 being the largest yet for me). It measures 57.8 x 47.8 x 16.8 cm and weighs 5970 gram. On the front the main model. Occasionally, 1x1s will exit with the 2x2s. It seems to happen if they are carried along inside on top of multiple 2x2s or land sideways on the three axles. If that happens they invariably drop into the depths of the mechanism rather than travel along the belt because it's not been designed to stop them doing so. The first thing to bear in mind is that you will need nearly all of the parts to hand to build it because, unlike the main model that's built from numbered bags, to build this you need to open all of bags #2 - #8 and sort the parts before you start. Consequently you'll need a very large area to work on. Fill out an Inventory Change Request ( ?) [ Show Inv Item IDs ] if you found an error in this inventory.

The model uses something like 75% of the parts and, crucially, the new parts in it are used only for cosmetic purposes so if you have enough Technic laying around you might be able build the actual mechanism without resorting to dismantling the BWE or buying another set. After 225 steps and about 3.5 hours of building the chassis and lower part of the body are complete. So, how does it work? Quite cleverly as it happens, but unfortunately the mechanism is buried deep inside the machine so is impossible to photograph without a major dismantling. (Yes, I should have photo'd it before finishing it, I know...)