Lego / Lepin: Millennium Falcon UCS / Big Set

Discussion in 'Lego and Other Building Bricks' started by purr1n, Dec 24, 2016.

  1. TMRaven

    TMRaven Friend

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    I have one of these, I remember taking upwards of 60-100 hours over a month during my freshman year in college completing it.

    Fast Forward 9 years, and my new cat eventually stood on it too much that she basically dismantled it. This is not the most sturdy lego model, the front two wing gun things were already slightly drooping to begin with, because the inner structure wasn't rigid enough to hold all the weight.

    I guess I'll enjoy building it again someday, but this time I won't have the luxury of having pre-labeled bags with groupings of parts.. just one huge pile of random legos in the middle of a room, that is the true lego way.


    [​IMG]

    No furniture in the living room, only a (at the time brand new and state of the art hdtv and ps3). It's clear what my priorities were when I was a freshman. Go to architecture classes in the morning, come home and build the falcon, then stay up until 4am playing cod4. Those were the days.
     
  2. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I just noticed that the two front "mandibles" don't seem to be as well reinforced and sturdy as the rest of the frame. Maybe some mods and extra pieces to reinforce them in case the cats sit on top of them.
     
  3. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Day 5.5. The sheer number of different parts made these two sections the most unpleasant experience yet. We can see that these mandible pieces don't have anywhere near the same level of reinforcement as the main chassis.
    20161228_215100.jpg

    It's now taking starting to the shape that we are all so familiar with.
    20161228_220406.jpg
     
  4. Colgin

    Colgin Friend

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    Well, I guess we now know how you have been spending your holiday @Marvey . And I thought I was good doing this 1,000+ kit Millenium with my 7-year old:

    [​IMG]

    What you are doing is at a whole other level.. Would never have the patience and as a New Yorker definitely don't have either the build space or storage space for the builds you have been doing. Looks awesome though.
     
  5. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    I was contemplating ordering this set. I have the ewok village (was $50) that I need to put together as a starting point. The eldest is only 6 so I only have so much help with these kinds of endeavors.
     
  6. TMRaven

    TMRaven Friend

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    Yes it's the two front mandibles that my cat sat on that is what broke apart. They will droop on their own as well. Reinforcing them will be a safe idea.
     
  7. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    DAY 6
    20161229_223336.jpg
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  8. jexby

    jexby Posole Prince

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    Exit stage left....
    No! We're not interested in the hyperdrive on the Millenium Falcon, it's fixed!
     
  9. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    DAY 7
    20170101_180233.jpg
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  10. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    20170101_193515.jpg

    Page 77 out of 153. This is nuts.

    I used replacement parts (see some images up there with dark grey instead of medium grey color) because I couldn't find a few 6x1 bricks. I thought the kit was missing them, with it being Lepin (not Lego) and all. It turns out the 6x1 bricks were inside a bag with curved pieces. Go figure. I'm not going to bother fixing it since these bricks are on the underside of the Falcon.

    I think my son has had it. The Lepin pieces have finally worn him down. Totally understandable given this eight year old hands and fingers. He insists on authentic Lego going forward.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2017
  11. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    There's not much inside detail on the rest of the set. I've seen various "mods" out that do take care of this and I have some ideas myself.
     
  12. Rotijon

    Rotijon Friend

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    Whats the difference between Lepin and Lego, should be pretty much the same no?
     
  13. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Larger tolerances with Lepin resulting in some parts fitting too loose, some parts fitting too tight, and binding / gaps when parts are put end to end together. Also the Lepin plastic material and finish is of inferior quality. The edges are sharper than Lego, yet at the same time, the pieces have a more rubbery feel and don't quite "snap" together like Legos. Some people might not notice the differences. Just as some people don't hear a difference between O2 and Ragnarok.
     
  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    DAY 8

    There were actually some errors in the manual. Lepin actually made their own manual rather than blatantly copy the Lego manual. It's hard to see with the angle of this photo, but the long grey beams are attached incorrectly. The Lepin manual has them attaching to only one of the two black pins. This was obviously an error and I confirmed this was so by looking at the Lego manual.
    DSC_1008 (Medium).JPG
    DSC_1009 (Medium).JPG
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    These are panels in the back and back quarter on the bottom. I build them in parallel at the same time because they are mirror images of each other.
    DSC_1023 (Medium).JPG
    DSC_1029 (Medium).JPG

    It's starting to come together now.
    DSC_1031 (Medium).JPG
     
  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    DAY 9 Mods!

    Now this is where things get really interesting. So who would be crazy enough to mod a Lego kit? Maybe someone who mods headphones. @TMRaven was absolutely right on the mandibles being flimsy. It's not just a matter of cats stepping on them, they are simply too flimsy period! I took a few days thinking about how to solve the problem, given that my spare parts bin is limited. Here is my approach. I built a support structure using two two-pin bricks to sure against the inside corner of the mandible where it would be most effective. This is the area of the mandible that shows the most flex. It also happens be the only area that could be used for a quick fix (without major modifications).

    DSC_1035 (Medium).JPG
    DSC_1036 (Medium).JPG

    There is a dark grey piece to the left of a white 4x2 block. A black 4x2 block is to the right of it, rotated 90 degrees. This black block helps keep that smaller grey 2x3 plate underneath it secure. All three of these pieces lock into the bottom cover structure. When we slide the rest of the support structure over it (the long rectangular plates with the blue 2x1 brick with pins).
    DSC_1038 (Medium).JPG

    Here is how the completed support structure looks like, but from the other side mandible. I would have loved to add another long plate to the top of everything, particularly the blue 2x1 brick with the dual pins, but there would not have been enough clearance for the top plate structure.
    DSC_1039 (Medium).JPG

    For a proper fit, the top cover structure actually requires a small modification. The long dark grey 16x2 plate needs to be replaced with a 14x2 plate where the one row of the right most edge is is left bare to allow clearance for the blue 2x1 brick with the dual pins as seen above.
    DSC_1037 (Medium).JPG

    This mod actually does wonders for the structural integrity of the mandibles. What happens is some of the force gets transferred to another part of the ship, namely the parts of the ship underneath the front frame (as seen in Day 4: http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...llennium-falcon-ucs-big-set.3576/#post-107248). This requires additional an reinforcement job to prevent these parts from falling off. I will show how this was done in a later post.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2017
  16. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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  17. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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  18. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I wish there was a public ask a question to seller spot like on eBay.
     
  19. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    DAY 10

    Following up on the post above regarding reinforcement of the mandibles: these two sets of pieces were added to provide extra support. The mandibles proper don't flex as much anymore, so the flex ends up being transferred somewhere else where there is a weak point, which are the two front bottom structures that attach to the frame from below.
    DSC_1042.JPG
    Some extra parts added for reinforcement and some slight deviation froms the manual. I like the bricks to stay on and not randomly fall off from the wind, or cats.

    DSC_1045.JPG

    It's really starting to come together now.
    DSC_1047.JPG
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2017
  20. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    DAY 11 and DAY 12

    I'm fast forwarding a bit. The rest of the top plates took me two days because of the greebling and extra reinforcement I would add. I was hoping that I could finally get away with a Lepin kit that contained all necessary parts, but this was not to be. I can give Lepin partial credit for wrong, but compatible parts (as seen in the landing gear); but I can't give Lepin credit for missing parts necessary to complete the kit without glaring gaps. I as worked toward finishing the set, I started to get that horrible feeling that I would run of out of certain parts. My fears became true: Lepin was short about a dozen 2x6 grey plates and two "telephone" or "dumbell" greebles. A 3x6 triangle plate was the opposite orientation. I actually ran out of authentic Lego grey 2x6 plates from my reserve stash, so I ended up using different colors. Not a big deal. The Millennium Falcon is supposed to be a "a piece of junk" or "bucket of bolts" after all.

    DSC_1049.JPG

    There could have been more triangle plates missing, but I am not sure because I used a lot of authentic Lego parts for the top exterior structures. The larger Lepin plates have a tendency to bind and bow upward when put together end-to-end. Overall my feelings are mixed because I would have preferred to buy the real thing. (I had already bricklinked about $150 of real Lego parts before I was made aware of Lepin). Unfortunately Lego stopped making this kit and the only way to get it is from porkers who bought five of them and are now listing them on eBay for $3500 to $5000. I don't know why Lego didn't reintroduce some of these UCS sets, maybe with an update (Rey, Finn, new sensor dish) along with new movies.

    DSC_1052.JPG

    Here it is finally finished. It's going to be a while before I take on another 5000+ piece Lego set.
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    There is Chewie taking a nap on Han's shoulder. It dawned on me that Chewie is Han's space dog. A space dog that can rip your arms off their sockets.
    DSC_1056.JPG
     

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