Poor man's 10179 printed instructions

[sp1tf1r3]

I've bricklinked a 10179 Falcon, finally got all the pieces bagged and tagged.

What about the instructions ? The price of the real stuff is around 300$, no way I'm paying this.

What I ended up doing is take the official PDF and remove the useless background on every pages, so that I can print it at home without wasting too much ink.

I should have asked the question earlier, but how do you print the instructions when you have to ? Does anyone know a printing service where one can print 300 color pages (duplex) at an affordable price (and get it shipped by Post) ?

[BrickieB]

I live in Belgium and looked at Prijsprinter.be . They should be able to do it for about €80 in A4, full colour, ring bound, incl. shipping. So I suppose it depends on the country you're in... By the way, it doesn't matter if you remove the background colour, price doesn't change if there is more or less ink required (Nice work though).

[Lobot]

If it's printed in A4, you might as well just view it from a laptop & save yourself the money!

When I bricklinked the 10143 Death Star II I used my little 11" notebook & it wasn't too difficult.... I know the Falcon's a larger build but the .pdf quality is very good & you can always increase the zoom level if you need to for the odd bit here & there.

I'll admit I'm using the official manual for my Bricklinked Falcon, but I'd cope without one if I didn't have it.

[Mr Bill]

I print on both sides, two pages per side. I tried 4 pages but they were just too small. If you have a cool boss you may be able to print at work.

--Mr Bill

[sp1tf1r3]

Nice to know. I live in Switzerland and what I've found is the MPrint-Shop located in Geneva, you can send the file to be printed, but you have to go there in person to get the stuff. And it's not that cheap. So that's a no-go for me.

The reason why I removed the background is to print it at home and consume less ink.

[CisFran]

Nice to know. I live in Switzerland and what I've found is the MPrint-Shop located in Geneva, you can send the file to be printed, but you have to go there in person to get the stuff. And it's not that cheap. So that's a no-go for me.

The reason why I removed the background is to print it at home and consume less ink.

Hi spitfire, nice to know someone living in Geneva too. I'm collecting Technic and certain starwars sets.

Goodluck on your 10179 build!

Edited March 21, 2013 by francisalmario

[BrickieB]

The reason why I removed the background is to print it at home and consume less ink.

I think 'printing at home' with ink will in no way result in a cheaper alternative for a print shop - but please let us know what you ended up spending in ink, paper, binding, and possibly a new printer at the end of the line :)

Also keep track of your time, I can imagine removing the background on 300 pages would be pretty time consuming.

[hachiroku]

For cases like this one, I view the instructions in a tablet.

[kibosh]

I've tried printing this thing several different ways, and it's just to small. I put it on my iPad so it's easy to resize and zoom. I'll use that as my instruction manual!

[TWP]

I've tried printing this thing several different ways, and it's just to small. I put it on my iPad so it's easy to resize and zoom. I'll use that as my instruction manual!

I do do that too sometimes, but I think it is cheaper to print a manual once, than buying an iPad :)

[Bricknblue]

If it's printed in A4, you might as well just view it from a laptop & save yourself the money!

I agree, if you have an iPad or anything, that would be best and must more useful than $100 on one book.

Tablets are cheap used, probably can get one for only a little more than 80 Euro.

Edited March 25, 2013 by Bricknblue

[jamie75]

Maybe I should start renting out instructions?! :)

I ran into this problems when I bricklinked 10190 and 10182. Luckily I found a seller who had them both and cut me a deal. Otherwise I would have built them from my computer as well.

But, I just built 10179 last week and the instructions aren't that hard. It is a big model, but, it is built alot of smaller sections. Should be pretty easy to built using something smaller than the instructions.

Good luck, Jamie

[Mlorimer]

I'm planning to use my iPad! PDF was free!

[streifen]

I have just bricklinked an Eiffel Tower. For the instructions, at S$179, that was too much for my fast depleting finance, so I viewed the instructions from a laptop.

Printing in colour would have been quite costly too.

[Lego Otaku]

I used my Asus Transformer to build 10030 Star Destroyer. I did have the original instruction book but it was huge, heavy, and worth more intact so I put it aside and used my tablet (with keyboard dock to hold it up), I could see just fine plus I could zoom into specific area if I'm having trouble figuring exactly where a piece goes.