The Big Black Tank

Focus of project: Suspension capability, firepower, design as if it was bought off a shelf

It's been years since I posted on here, and I have yet one more creation to tack onto this blog. Life has changed completely since my last post about the World's Most Advanced Lego Gun, so as a nod to documentation completion, and a bit of nostalgia, I have before you my last Lego creation: The Fatboy Tank, also named the Black Tortoise. She's quite the monster, she's heavy, she shoots, and she demands all those beneath her to kneel before her. I invite you to enjoy the video below.

The tank was built before I moved to a different country in 2015, where I unfortunately had to leave my entire Lego arsenal behind. The Black Tortoise was my bode to farewell to Lego, the best creation I ever made, a culmination of the craziest mechanisms I learned from previous projects, and probably the funnest Lego model I ever operated. Unfortunately I did not take any good photos of it, only video content, but thankfully the video above displays almost all its features quite well.

Here are just a few nuances of the mechanisms used in the Fatboy that aren't clearly expressed in the YouTube video,

- The cannon uses a mechanism very similar to my "Lego Airsoft Gun", just on a much smaller scale with thinner bullets.
- The turret spins with a turntable gear loaded with a clutch, in case the turret is physically blocked from free rotation.
- Both battery boxes can be removed with great ease, as I strove to do with almost every motorized creation.
- The suspension system gets its spring force from a series of tiny rubber bands meant for dental braces. But don't worry, they were unused rubber bands ;)
- There came two points in time where I had to reinforce the suspension with extra rubber bands because the tank got heavier as I added parts to it. Each reinforcement took quite a long while because I constructed that part of the body in a manner that was impossible to destroy by external forces, requiring a delicate dismantling.
- The remote control has a physical trigger to fire the cannon.

As of now, like all my best Lego creations, the Fatboy lives on in digital form:

And for those curious, I did indeed personally graphic-design the Black Tortoise logo:

My main source of inspiration to build this thing came from YouTube user Gyuta97's White Tiger Tank:

Yes I stole the remote control assembly design ^-^
His tank has a much more sophisticated driving mechanism, but my cannon has 10 rounds as opposed to 4, and shoots with 10 times the strength.

Lego Fatboy / Black Tortoise
PF Contents:

2 Battery Boxes
3 XL Motors
2 M Motors
3 Receivers
2 Remotes
1 Speed Control Remote
1 Pair of LEDs
1 Mini Linear Actuator

I extend a special thanks to my long-time and best friend Yoel, who composed entirely the music in my video.