Bill Ward’s Brickpile

Thomas Johnson has done it again. The creator of the LEGO knitting machine has a new masterpiece, a braiding machine built using LEGO Technic pieces which creates a three-stranded braid. You can see photos and a really cool video (nice music, too) of the machine in action.
I’d show you a thumbnail, but the […]

Yoshihito Isogawa, author of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT The Orange Book, has just released a new PDF book jam-packed with pictures illustrating a lot of Technic tips and techniques. It’s called LEGO Technic Tora no Maki and although the author and title are Japanese, the book itself consists almost entirely of pictures, so there’s no […]

When my father left the Navy and joined United Air Lines in the late 1950’s, he flew this plane, the DC-3.

Like my Lunar Mobile Lounge, this has been at several BayLUG meetings, and now I am finally posting about it here.
Also like that model, it is motorized. There are two motors, located in the […]

Maker Faire sure was a lot of fun! We (Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group) had a great time showing off our LEGO train layout to the public and other Makers at the event.
I uploaded my pictures of the LEGO layout as well as other things from Maker Faire up on my Flickr account.
One […]

Have you ever tried building a scissor lift in LEGO? I’m working on a project that calls for that kind of mechanism to lift it up, like those food service trucks at the airport. It is based on an “X” shaped arrangement, which, like the two parts of a scissors pivot at the […]

In 2003 (or maybe 2002) I built a bridge for the BayLTC train layout. But it wasn’t a train bridge, it was a road bridge (for cars and trucks).

The road pieces came from LEGO’s 6600 Highway Construction set, and the bridge’s structural elements were built of Technic bricks.
Most of the angles in […]