My book available now
My book on building with LEGO Technic is available now at Amazon and elsewhere! Update: list of reviews included.
I’m happy to announce that my book: The Unofficial LEGO® Technic Builder’s Guide is available for sale now. You can buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, directly at No Starch Press website, at BookDepository.co.uk, or you can check the distribution network to see who sells the book in your country.
The book is also available in:
Reviews (in English, unless stated otherwise):
- Amazon reviews
- Brick Fanatics
- BotBench
- Eurobricks 1
- Eurobricks 2
- Gimme LEGO
- ItLUG (Italian)
- LUGpol (Polish)
- Mao de ABS (Portuguese)
- MicroBricks
- Model Building Secrets
- Robotica recreativa y educativa (Spanish)
- Seaside Book Nook
- SeTechnic (French)
- TechnicBRICKs
- The Brothers Brick
- UtahLUG
- What is best, review by Jennifer Clark
- Wired.com GeekDad
- Yahoo! Voices
The book, published by No Starch Press, focuses on explaining the theory and principles that rule the world of LEGO mechanisms, while providing plenty of practical examples. With over 350 pages printed in full color, showing more than 500 figures and 40 building instructions, the book should be helpful to any LEGO Technic enthusiast, regardless of his building skills.
While the book uses vehicular LEGO models as primary examples, the theoretical knowledge and working principles it describes can be applied to any sort of mechanism. The 20 chapters start simple for first-time builders, but quickly move to advanced material. The book covers subjects like:
- gear wheels and gear ratios
- levers and linkages
- pneumatics and custom pneumatic devices
- LEGO motors and their characteristics
- suspension and transmission systems
- the modern LEGO Power Functions system and its elements
- reinforcing your builds
- studfull system vs. studless system
- methods of scaling and modeling of various vehicles, from bikes to helicopters and airplanes, including challenges and opportunities that come with different types of vehicles
What the book does not include are complete instructions for any models that I have built. Instead, it introduces you to a vast array of mechanisms and provides examples of how to use them in your own constructions.
Eric Albrecht (Blakbird), the world-renowned collector and expert on LEGO Technic, has provided technical review of the book, and it comes with a foreword by Fernando Correia, the TechnicBRICKs editor-in-chief.
@philou
This October, according to my publisher.
@Sariel
You are talking about a second edition. When do you expect to publish it ?
Congratulations for all your creations.
@Sbkvsigwdh
It was in early 90’s. We never knew Lego before 1989.
I bought your book in German about a year ago and have thus far found it to be a very handy guide for a number of things. In the acknowledgements (ger. Danksagung) in the first few pages you thanked your parents for introducing you to Legos. Did this happen before or after 1989? I can’t imagine that Legos were easy to come by so long the iron curtain was closed.
@Miro
Thanks, I’ll fix that in the 2nd edition.
Hello Sariel,
I just got your book as a present and I really like it. Many useful information and ideas. However, page 63 with differential pulley system is completely wrong and you should definitely put it on errata page at http://www.nostarch.com/technicbuilder
I am surprised that after so many years the error has been reported by numerous people since 2012.
Great work, otherwise!
@DEPHi
Sorry to disappoint you. I may need to look into that when doing 2nd edition.
Hi,
I really enjoyed reading your book. But only till page 63. I’m sorry to say that, but chapter “differential pulley system” is an unfortunate fail. As Forrest Gump said: “shit happens”. I guess you did not try to build that … too bad … this is the tax that we need to pay for Wikipedia and copy-paste buttons …
Keep up the good work … and leave Wikipedia out of it … you are better without it 🙂
@kev
Well, just as the book tells you, you can get all of them at Bricklink. Start here: http://www.bricklink.com/catalog.asp
@kev
Which parts are you looking for?
Hello
Book was great
I want to make all of your instruction
But I don’t know brick’s numbers inside of your book
Can you give me an answer?
I bought him!
It’s a very great book and now I have a lot of ideas!
@Jose Vte.
I don’t know of any.
Thanks,
There are currently some Spanish publisher interested in the book?
Thanks for the answers.
Greetings.
@Jose Vte.
Only if there is some Spanish publisher interested in it.
Hello
I would like to know if this book will be translated to Spanish.
Thaks,
Jose.
@TheMindGarage
Congratulations. Keep in mind, the book was mostly written in 2011, where more than a few very useful Technic pieces were not yet available.
Sorry about last post. Glitch. Here’s complete post
I have looked at your “Steered Independent suspension”, and it claims to be the “narrowest possible”. But I have made a suspension with the same features, and it is just 9 studs wide without wheels.
I have looked at