New Lego Technic Idea Books by Isogawa Yoshihito

[daftendirekt]

Thought y'all might want to see this. New Technic idea guides by Isogawa Yoshihito. They are available for pre-order now.

http://nostarch.com/technic_gears.htm

http://nostarch.com/technic_walkers.htm

http://nostarch.com/technic_vehicles.htm

Edited October 10, 2010 by DLuders
Augmented the title of this post

[DLuders]

Isogawa also has made the free "Tora no Maki" booklet available for download on his website http://www.isogawastudio.co.jp/legostudio/...troduction.html . Scroll down 1/2 of the way down that webpage, and click on the button at the bottom of the "Tora no Maki" paragraph. The 82.1 MB (wow!) PDF document contains many clever little Lego Technic assemblies that are elegant and simple to understand.

[scj]

Isogawa also has made the free "Tora no Maki" booklet available for download on his website http://www.isogawastudio.co.jp/legostudio/...troduction.html . Scroll down 1/2 of the way down that webpage, and click on the button at the bottom of the "Tora no Maki" paragraph. The 82.1 MB (wow!) PDF document contains many clever little Lego Technic assemblies that are elegant and simple to understand.

It is not free. Author wrote it on 3rd page : "If you plan to continue using this book, I would appreciate it if you could pay $10."

[phool]

The title is a little misleading as it sounds like official idea books being released by TLG. Perhaps it should read "Unofficial Idea Guide Books".

[Jetro]

Hope someone in Europe will carry them in their catalogue (Amazon...) because shipping is pretty steep

[roamingstop]

Ask him if he would be willing to use a service such as lulu.com - it allows PDF's to be uploaded (by the author) and people can then purchase copies from the store... the author receives a commission (he can specify the ammount) and the items are printed local to the purchaser (e.g. USA or Europe). I used it for my PhD thesis - 200 colour pages with ISBN number... and been very impressed with the end result.

[Jetro]

I've used similar services before, but they are always a lot more expensive than larger print runs. It would be great to be able to purchase the books in PDF though.

[Jetro]

Great news! The books (3) will be available through Amazon as of September 15.

[DLuders]

Isogawa Yoshihito posted six YouTube videos to illustrate his three "Lego Technic Idea Books". There are three of them:

"

" video for the book http://nostarch.com/technic_wheels.htm . The video features a clever "piggyback vehicle" and "piggyback" animal:

"

" video for the book http://nostarch.com/technic_contraptions.htm :

for the book http://nostarch.com/technic_machines.htm :

There's a discount if you get all three in a set: http://nostarch.com/technic_set.htm .

Edited October 10, 2010 by DLuders

[Jetro]

New Technic idea guides by Isogawa Yoshihito.

Although I have already ordered the books (and am really looking forward to receiving them) I asked Yoshihito about the contents of these three books. He confirmed they contain "only" the material already available in Tora no Maki and the fact that the page count is considerably higher is due to Tora no Maki being A4 and the printed books quite a bit smaller. Even so, it will be a delight to have a physical copy of these idea books on my LEGO bookshelf. (they'll probably spend more time on my desk than on the shelf though)

[Meatman]

Are everyone of those little contraptions creations of Isogawa Yoshihito? Some of them look like variations of creations that I have seen before. Of course he could have been the original designer. Are any of these books available for download or just hardback books?

[Jetro]

Are any of these books available for download or just hardback books?

The 'hard' copies are paperbacks. As I mentioned in my previous post, they contain te information from Tora no Maki and that is a PDF book available for download.

[DLuders]

Yes, the downloadable PDF versions are still available, but one must pay for them: http://www.isogawastudio.co.jp/legostudio/toranomaki/en/ .

"If you are enough just to look at the PDF book on the screen of the PC,

please get "Tora no Maki" from the Download page.

Then please pay for it from the Payment Methods page, if you like it.

If you would like to look at the printed books,

please purchase them from "no starch press".

Edited October 14, 2010 by DLuders

[DLuders]

I just received my set of three "LEGO Technic Idea Books" from No Starch Press. They are very nice. Each measures 8" x 10" x 3/8" (20.5 cm x 25.5 cm x 1 cm), and are in full color.

Bill Ward has done a review of them on his Brickpile website. He wrote:

"These books from Yoshihito Isogawa are a great guide to all the wonderful ways you can combine LEGO Technic gears and related elements. I’ve always been a little wary of Technic myself. Even though I got an Expert Builder parts pack as a kid, I never did a lot with it. (I was probably too young, since I was only 6 when that set came out in 1977.) I’ve built a number of modern Technic sets, most recently the Lego Technic Crane Truck 8258, but I’ve only done minimal work with designing my own Technic machinery. Mostly what I’ve done is simple gearing such as my Scrambler amusement park ride, but I always seem to have trouble getting the gears to do quite what I want without either destroying the gears, skipping teeth, or woefully misjudging speed and/or torque.

"The first book is The LEGO Technic Idea Book: Simple Machines which shows a myriad of different ways to combine LEGO gears and pulleys to achieve particular gear ratios and directions. If you’ve ever scratched your head wondering how to get a certain speed or torque out of a LEGO motor, your answer is in here. Even the most experienced builders will certainly find something new they can use. For example maybe you know how to get the gear ratio you want, but the mechanism you’re thinking of is too bulky to fit into the model you’re working on. Take a look through this book and there’s a good chance you’ll find a better way to get the same effect in the space that you need to fit it into.

"The LEGO Technic Idea Book: Fantastic Contraptions is full of clever ways to combine gears, pulleys, springs, and magnets to create models that move. There are ideas for shooting projectiles, building shock absorbers, and even using magnets to animage LEGO minifig scenes. The only problem is that the magnets shown have been discontinued (due to fears that a child might swallow magnets which would get stuck in their digestive tract and require surgery – for example, the new train sets have a redesigned coupler with a magnet permanently affixed), so that might be frustrating to some people without extensive collections of older parts.

"Finally, the The LEGO Technic Idea Book: Wheeled Wonders is full of great ideas for LEGO vehicles. Drivetrains, steering mechanisms, and other vehicular ideas are illustrated in full detail.

"The examples in these books are purely pictures. There are no verbal explanations, which you would think would be a problem. But the pictures are reduced to such a level of simplicity that it’s easy to understand the mechanism without any text, and if you build them you could easily understand how they work. There are a lot of tips that show ways of combining gears that I had never thought of, and as I was flipping through it I kept thinking “Oh, that would be good for X” type thoughts. The lack of text would also be helpful for younger kids or people whose primary language is not English (or Japanese, in this case).

"I think the one area where this could have been improved would be to show more complex ideas – instead of just showing the simple combinations of parts to achieve a particular kind of connection, show ways to combine these together to create more intricate machines. Some of the examples in the Fantastic Contraptions and Wheeled Wonders books do this to some extent, but I’d prefer to see that taken to a higher level. Also, instead of just showing each model from a variety of angles, I’d like to see step-by-step building instructions or to see some of the simpler modules combined together to create more detailed ones.

"One area that isn’t explored very well is motorizing the sets. There are some examples that use motors, but they are largely built using the older 9V motors instead of the current Power Functions parts, and with the Power Functions remote control system, there are a lot of things you could do that aren’t covered by these examples. Hopefully they will come out with a fourth book featuring Power Functions.

"All in all though, these are excellent books showing a lot of great ideas for LEGO mechanisms. Even if you’re an experienced builder, there are surely some ideas in here you’ve never seen."

[rjk1977]

nice stuff,cool ideas