Quickie of the Week #19: Trainformer work in progress

Hmm.. I'm not sure  I had announced this project before in my blog.Anyway... this is the  LEGO TF I am currently working on since the beginning of this month (July 2016).

Initial Draft

The sketches above where quickly drafted (in 10 minutes!)  earlier this month when I had an eureka moment after surfing the net for new inspiration. I never made a trainbot before so I guess , why not? And I've decided to make him a triple changer just to add in a bit more challenge there =)

After weeks of building and rebuilding, I found out my initial design on these sketches only looked good on papers. Things pretty much have changed then. 

Progress so Far

This is the first time I build with parts from  random colors, just to save  time from finding the right colored parts. I am focusing more on the core design /engineering . 

I insisted on using LEGO wheels 3 weeks ago. This proved to be a costly mistake, time-wise. I tried hard to adapt these wheels into my design and complicates everything (read: over-engineering) with too many hinges and swivels.

Then I undo all these and use LEGO round plates as wheels, and reduced the number of hinges used by about 40%  so far.

So as you can see, the middle segment of the train is almost done but the battle has just started . Although I foresee the work on the other 2 segments (train heads) will not be as challenging as the middle segment /body above, the middle segment  will require extensive rebuilds to crank out the 3rd mode for this LEGO TF. 

Shall post more work-in-progress in the near future. Thanks for viewing!