Make: Minecraft for Makers - Minecraft in the Real World with LEGO, 3D Printing, Arduino, and More!

Really good!!!!!

This is a great book for do-it-yourselfers. It makes me really want a 3d machine and a laser cutting machine. The book guides you in making Minecraft objects. You will find 9 different projects to make. Some require traditional materials and tools and others require Legos or 3D printers Then you have others that teach you how to program using Arduino. You will also get lessons in building objects with lights and power and computer boards. If you have a 3D printer, you will find links for printing Minecraft pieces that are available on the internet. John Baichtal starts you off on the easiest projects for beginners and goes forward to the intermediate and then to the coding and board-making pros. I can satisfy my itch with the Lego beginners, but I am still itching more for a 3D printer. Next on my list.

The most disappointing aspect of this book is the number of projects that are done with laser cutters. Yes, you can fabricate many of the projects using a scroll or jig saw, but realistically this would be fantastically tedious. For example, the Minecraft chess set, which is pretty cool, really is optimized for laser cutting. You could but the figures out yourself, but if you are doing that much handwork, you might as well design pieces that are suited to hand fabrication. So, if you've got a multi-thousand dollar laser cutter available, this book is perfect!I think the best parts of this book are the simple electronic and Arduino projects. If you or a child are a Minecraft fanatic, these projects offer an easy way to develop hands-on familiarity with circuits and programmable controllers. Where this book would probably find its best use is in school libraries and school technology labs where it could serve as a kind of project cook book.

My son thinks this is a pretty cool 'idea' book. He's not going to make a lot of the projects here, but he has some ideas of how he wants to make something like some of the items here and use some of the techniques he's learning from this more than the projects themselves. I like how it doesn't just say here's a project to do but teaches you how to think critically about doing a Minecraft project. One of the first simple ways it does this is to explain that the Minecraft block sides are a texture that is a 16x16 grid and then talks about the colors and thinking about how many shades of a color you need to represent the colors in Minecraft. Then when it talks about making Minecraft in Lego, it talks about how the shapes of a Lego brick can translate to Minecraft when considering the sizes and shapes in Minecraft. Many of these things seem basic to an adult maker like me, but I have a hard time realizing that my son needs to learn the basics first. I really like how this book teaches how to think through a project and not just to follow instructions.Too many craft books or craft projects just say 'here's what you need' and 'here's what you do'. This book does a great job of teaching why you do things. It does a great job of setting my son up with what he needs to make his own Minecraft projects and not just the ones in this book. Minecraft is a game that says you can do whatever you want and that you are only limited by your imagination. This maker book sets you up to translating that type of ideology into real world projects. I really like that and I like that this makes my son excited. I think it's a good book, and I suggest it.

I am a huge fan of MAKE and their magazine and books. This book on Minecraft projects was an easy buy. It does require access to a laser cutter and 3D printer for most of it but is a good primer for even young kids on thinking through projects. Highly recommended!