LEGO Tips and Techniques - Roller Skates

When the Roller Derby Girl came out I saw some great micro MOCage done with the roller skates.  Mainly tiny trains.  I'm really surprised I haven't seen more done with it yet though.  I've got 4 of the little wheel pieces and I spent some time playing around with them to see what they were capable of.

For starters there is a stud on top and an anti-stud on the bottom.  Great planning already as these can be stacked in a variety of ways.  The wheels stay within the height of a plate so there is no conflict in stacking them.  Since they are plate height of 3.2mm that means the wheels must be bar sized.  Indeed this is the case as you can pop it into clips.  The coolest thing about the wheels is the spacing.  It's just perfect to fit on minifig binoculars.

This spacing would tell me that the roller skates should also fit into the underside of a 2x2 Modulex brick.  It will with a bit of force but it stresses out the Modulex brick and the wheels get all scuffed up.  Best to avoid it.

There is a nice touch of an open space between the front and rear wheels through the skate.  This helps visually but also gives a half plate gap that will clip with decent clutch over the lip of a plate or brick.  Older brick, not the newer ones with skinnier walls and clutch buttresses.

Due to the geometry of the anti-studs under a 2x plate, the wheels will slip in with a bit of clutch, more depending on exactly where you place them.  This can of course be used for stud reversal as another plate will do the same action right on top.  Once connected, the plates are exactly 1.5 plates apart.  Considering that the stud is what limits the plates, this makes sense.  A stud is 4.8 mm which is 1.5x the 3.2mm plate thickness.

 This can be proved with a Travis brick which is 2.5 plates thick when used sideways.  Skate stud + 1 plate = 2.5 plates.  If those skate studs were actually usable in this position, you could do some fine tune half-plate studs-up offsets.  What's that?  If a jumper stud gives you a half stud offset of 4mm, the half-plate offset would be 1.6mm giving 2.5x more fine tuning.

Of course my favorite aspect of the skates is the size themselves.  I am primarily a micro-builder and have recently discovered the joys of the micropolis standard.  These skates represent the perfect size for a set of wheels under a semi-trailer.  The wheels end up being about 36" tall at scale.  Given that the micropolis standard is fairly loose, all else looks very nice.

What else can you do with these skates?