1 Why?

Ever since I delved into this stabilizer technique, I was eager to make a MOC with it. Preferably a dragon. That was over a year ago. Then lots of life stuff happened. Like I migrated from Costa Rica to Spain. Now finally, I can carve out some time again for my favorite hobby. I can not remember why, but recently, I got inspired to make an ant instead of a dragon. I guess it seemed easier. Since I own the 42009 mobile crane, and I learned that it is one of the most owned ( and registered ) set among Rebrickable users, I decided to use it to create an alternate build. The set has a substantial number of parts, so there should be an ant in there. It also includes a Power Functions motor and battery box, so I might be able to add some moving parts to the ant, and perhaps even make it walk. That would be awesome! The crane has a sophisticated gear box – at least for it’s release year in 2013, and I might be able to use it.

2 The overall plan

First step. Build at least one mock-up MOC that is pose-able but has no self moving parts. If I fail to make a motorized version, I will at least have something.

The mock-up should be big enough to house the crane’s gear box, motor and battery. This will probably be decisive for the MOC’s overall size.

Second step. Modify the mock-up to insert motorize functions. Besides that the MOC might be able to walk ( slowly probably ), there are plenty of other moving parts to an ant. Moving the head, opening/closing the jaws, moving the antlers and hinging the body. The crane’s gearbox allows 4 different functions ( in the crane, one of these is split up in two functions elsewhere in the model ) which could all find an application.

I’d like to keep it simple and not plan in too much detail. After all, things may change. Perhaps I will end up making a wasp, because the crane has many yellow parts whereas ants don’t. Or I will make a spider, because it has 8 legs, which might be easier for balance.

3 Preparations

There are a few things I need or want to do before I can get going: sorting out the bricks/elements of the crane, and finding some images of ants, because the end result should unmistakably look like an ant. Well, except for the color. Maybe.

3A Sorting the parts

Firstly, I need to get the crane’s parts sorted out. Like I wrote above, the crane has many parts, about 2600, so it should be possible to build an ant at a big scale, but I still want to know which parts I can use a bit better. I know, there is a part list, but having the actual parts in front of me somehow works better, at least for me.

My copy of the crane was parted out into my collection of parts, so I spent maybe five hours collecting its parts and then sorting them out. I will spare you the details of that, at least for now, and just give you the end result.

I live in a small apartment which I share with my partner and our dog, so I am using this system of little bins, which I can clean up in 5 minutes when the table is needed for dinner or work.

3B Finding ant pictures. How does it actually look?

Thinking that I know what my calendar for the day looks like, usually gets me into trouble. I should better look before assuming. The same goes here. I think I know what an ant looks like, but do I really? Also, there are many different species of ants and they have different shapes. Even within one species, there are varieties. Think of the queen, workers and soldiers or guard ants. Also, there are periods – or there is one – in their lives when ants actually have wings.

Finding pictures of ants is very easy nowadays, and there even are plenty of schematic drawings around. The latter usually give a better insight into how big body parts are compared to other parts. Here is one.

Ants, like many, if not all insects, have a head, a thorax and abdomen. The head holds mandibles, eyes and antlers. The thorax or alitrunk holds their six legs and the abdomen ( or gaster ) holds their guts and has a sting at the end. Between the thorax and the abdomen there is a small connecting part called a petiole.

As with all models, an important thing to look at are the relative part sizes. From most images ( admittedly not the one above ), I gather that the thorax plus petiole are more or less as long as the gaster. In worker ants, the head including the mandibles is somewhat smaller than the gaster but not a lot. In soldier ants the head plus mandibles seem to be as big as the gaster, or even bigger. The thorax tends to be thin compared to the gaster and the head, but how thin it is varies a lot between images. In the image above, the thorax does not seem to be thinner than the gaster.

The fact that relative sizes of the main body parts differ, offers me a lot of flexibility. After all, in my plans I eventually need to store a sizeable gear box, and a somewhat less sizeable battery box somewhere. If I want a walking mechanism, that will have to go inside the thorax. That will be a puzzle anyways, let alone if the thorax needs to be thin-ish. Maybe a spider is not such a bad alternative after all. It has a much bigger thorax ( if it has one ). On the other hand, it needs to house eight legs instead of six. I will stick to my ant plan. For now at least.

The legs also need some attention when it comes to their size: they are not all equally long, and the different segments also are not equal in size. There is also the little matter of how they can bend and hinge, but I will leave that until later when I will be making them in bricks.

The image above shows that there are many more body parts and details that could be included in the MOC, but for the time being, I will just focus on the parts discussed here. If, towards the end of the design process, I still feel like it, I can still add some of them.

On to step 1. That will be another post. Thank you for reading so far. If you have comments or questions feel free to leave them below.

 

Frank van der Most, 6 September 2025