I’m a Lego Technic enthusiast. I like to build robots and other interesting contraptions in my spare time … like this fully motorized AT-AT Star Wars imperial walker. (Instructions here.)

My Technic collection is relatively small, but growing thanks to sites like bricklink.com.

But as my collection nears completion and I scour peeron and rebrickable for pieces I don’t have yet, I noticed that there are some very useful pieces that simply do not exist at all.

For example, if you look at how Lego gears work, you will notice that each gear has 8 more teeth than the preceding gear …until you get to the 32-tooth gear. Because it doesn’t exist.

If it did exist, perhaps it would look something like the piece below. I made this in photoshop. In this article, any pieces that don’t exist will be shown in color.

You can see the same trend in the double bevel gears. Each gear has 8 more teeth than the last, but there is no 28-tooth gear. (A single bevel version does appear on the very useful 62821 differential, but nowhere else.)

If the 32-tooth and 28-tooth gears were manufactured by The Lego Group, it would open up all sorts of new building possibilities. These two gears are the pieces that I want most for my collection.

While we’re on the subject of gears, a few more clutch gear types would also be great.

Right now, the only piece like this is the 16-tooth clutch gear, which I use all the time. You can also get a 24-tooth clutch gear (not to be confused with piece 60c01) by physically cutting it off a differential – but I know many Lego purists will dislike this idea.

Almost all the gears could benefit from a clutch variant, because a pin hole is useful for transferring power AROUND an axle rather than through it, and the clutch aspect would allow gears to be engaged and disengaged with a driving ring, which is very useful for transmissions and other devices.

The larger of these gears might not be too useful, but some of these would undoubtedly come in handy. (Note: It is probably possible to convert a 12 tooth double bevel gear to the pinhole version using a drill.)

Now, onto beams.

Ever since the introduction of the new “studless” variety of Technic, building has been a bit different. There are a number of advantages to studless beams, but to me, the biggest annoyance is the fact that they cannot be stacked without additional support

To fix this problem, The Lego Group ought to introduce double or even triple-wide beams. (Triple wide might be going too far.) That way, studless creations wouldn’t have to rely on L-beams to maintain a rigid grid.

Speaking of which, there’s also a missing L-beam piece.

Now, there are a few interestingly shaped studless beams, as you can see here:

Continuing along with this idea, these alternating beams would no doubt be useful:

I also believe these 100% axle hole liftarms would be good to have:

Following the same pattern, here are some missing pinhole studless beams.

Following another pattern, we find four connectors which don’t exist. Though, realistically, I think only the piece with the arrow pointing to it would be useful. This one seems so obvious that I checked many, many times to see if it existed. It does not.

Here’s an axle / pin combo that I have wanted for a very, very long time. (With and without friction, of course.) Sometimes, you can substitute a 6587, but it’s just not the same.

A 4-stud long pin would also come in handy. (Again, with and without friction.)

Many of these non-existent pieces are so small, or so specific, that there really can be no substitutions. Often, an entire mechanism must be rebuilt to compensate. Other mechanisms are simply impossible without these pieces.

So, what’s a Technic enthusiast to do? Well, I could petition The Lego Group to create them. Perhaps I could design a set with all these pieces and submit it to ideas.lego.com/

Another option – far more likely – is to create them myself with 3D printing… which is exactly what I have done.

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