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Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

thewave.engineer

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Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#201

Post by serallak »

onlypassingthru wrote: post #94
mmustapic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lego was always expensive, you can compare prices adjusted for inflation. For example, the 1979 Galaxy Explorer https://brickset.com/sets/497-1 > was around $32, that's $144 today. The reimagined set from 2023 https://brickset.com/sets/10497-1 > was sold at $99, $106 today. Not only it is cheaper, but much larger and with many more pieces.

Wow, childhood memory unlocked. I had set 497. And, yes, it was a very expensive toy in its day.

I still got it. Has been in storage for a long time.

My child did build it some years ago, now it's in his room.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#202

Post by bombcar »

dismalaf wrote: post #138
scatbot wrote: post #12

Lego is one of those companies that is simultaneously amazing and kind of sucks. On one hand the core product is incredible. The tolerances on the bricks are micrometer-level precision and the fact that pieces from the 70s snap perfectly into ones made today is mind blowing. On the other hand, a lot what the company does today just sucks. Set prices are outrageous. Printed bricks get replaced with stickers and many s…

Basic Lego is actually decently affordable. It's the collector's sets that adults would buy whose prices are jacked sky high, based on demand it seems. I've bought a decent amount of Duplo and Lego kits for my son (currently 3 years old) and it's great value.

The fact that "10$ a pound for used, 10¢ a piece for new" has remained true as a good rule of thumb for 20+ years tells you something.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#203

Post by cruffle_duffle »

maxglute wrote: post #187
kjkjadksj wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use your imagination. I had a tub of random parts from a bunch of old 80s and 90s sets that were since put into the blender that is a family of small children. I would build space craft. Big freighters with internal bays to hold smaller ships. Huge bases and compounds for my other toys. Various other vehicles and structures. I was basically constantly building for 10 straight years of my life. No sets. No plans.…

My point is lego has ceiling on imagination. Different in analogue world where most of building was physical. I grew up with buckets of mismatched lego and lots of technic sets, it was more interactive relative to other toys at the time, but now snapping bricks vs running server for minecraft city seems like baby mode.

And that is the thing about raising a kid these days. Those damn machines have replaced so much… because yeah Minecraft is like a souped up version of Lego where in creative mode you have every part you need. And you don’t have to dig for it or anything. And it has survival mode and a whole huge thing on top of that.

It’s so difficult to know the boundaries. People from older generations giving advice about screen time and stuff simply don’t understand… “screen time” for me growing up was broadcast tv and a limited set of video games. If you didnt like what was on tv, too bad. Do something else. If you were bored of whatever Nintendo game you had… too bad, do something else. But now… you can get literally anything. Plus the iPad gets used to make videos of playing with the cat, or she will have tea parties with her stuffies and make them tea using some weird cooking game. Etc.

No previous generation had to face this. It’s an order of magnitude or more shifted from when they raised us. Tablets basically can replace almost every single toy from growing up besides ones that require being physical (rc cars, bricks, digging in the yard)… but books, cameras, light brights, etc… all replaced.

It’s completely uncharted water us parents are facing. Anybody that claims to “know the right rules” for tablets and technology is lying to you. They don’t. Nobody does. All we can do is use our best judgement and try to give ourselves credit for doing the best we can.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#204

Post by vidarh »

normie3000 wrote: post #119
voidUpdate wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean between black and light grey? Light grey pins have always been the kind you use for rotating connections (low friction), whereas black was for non-rotating ones (high friction). Newer blue pins are also high friction, IIRC. I haven't bought new lego technic in a while, so I don't know if there's been any new colours added EDIT: I think I also had some dark grey pins, but I don't remember if they were high…

> Light grey pins have always been... I think the black ones were a later addition, likely late nineties.

Per the article I linked to, '93.

Which is presumably why I didn't notice until my son started playing with it, as I'd stopped playing with mine by then.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#205

Post by johnisgood »

Aurornis wrote: post #113
utopiah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia... Lego was amazing decades ago so we want it to remain so. It's not anymore though. The whole raison d'etre, namely infinitely recomposable bricks to be creative, was lost the moment they realized they were a LOT more money in custom sets. Sets become collectible, perishable, trends can form, secondary markets exists, etc. It's simply about the baseline, not the principle. Sorry.

The existence of specialty sets doesn’t subtract from creating building. My kids get some of the specialty sets, build them, then hours later they’re either taken apart or heavily modified. The specialty sets can provide some interesting unique pieces too. My kids have a photographic memory of each of those special pieces and which set they came from. They’ll remember them and search until they find that exact piece.…

Off-topic, but:

> My kids have a photographic memory

How do you know it is photographic memory? More than one of your kids have it? Do you know why or what may have contributed to its development?

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#206

Post by Tossrock »

rob74 wrote: post #70

Was this written using AI? It does contain some interesting information, but the same information is repeated (with small variations) over and over again in a mind-numbing way that made me stop reading after about half of the article...

It certainly feels that way. Some tells:

"Precision, for LEGO, isn't an engineering choice, it's a brand promise." - The classic "It's not just x, it's y", just minus the "just".

"One philosophy optimizes for cost, the other for perfection." - Again we see the x/y structure; AI writing often features these forms, eg comparisons (x vs y), conversions (x into y), negated emphasis (not x, but y), etc.

"When you have multiple parts in an assembly, use statistical analysis for tolerance stack-up rather than worst-case math. Traceability matters. Track your defects so feedback turns precision into reliability." - More x/y followed by a short stinger ("Z matters"), and the closing sentence again follows the "x/y" pattern.

For funsies I tossed the whole thing into a purported AI detector and it said 90+% confidence of AI. I don't trust those types of things very much and suspect they have high false positive rates, but I have read that AI writing generally has measurably lower entropy, so maybe it's plausible, and in this case it aligns with my existing beliefs, so it obviously must be true.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#207

Post by ralferoo »

bena wrote: post #145
SoftTalker wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely had lunar/space themed sets in the '80s, but they were generic (at least the ones I had). I don't recall when the Star Wars sets came out, they might have been one of the first cross-promotional tie-ins that Lego did?

Star Wars sets started coming out in 1998. They weren't the first licensed sets, but the first fictional license. Prior to Star Wars, they had Shell, Exxon, and Esso branded sets. I think sometimes they licensed the Ferrari brand as well. And yes, Lego has had a Space theme since the late 70s. But it was a general "Space" theme. They would later make Space Police, Blacktron, Magnetron, etc. But actual Star Wars was 1…

Very interesting. Googling shows some generic space themed things from the 80s like you say, but no Star Wars. I guess my old age is finally catching up on me and my memories have all blurred into one. I did find a Millennium Falcon from 1983, but it's definitely not Lego.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#208

Post by StilesCrisis »

gmueckl wrote: post #190
StilesCrisis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a set recently which was definitely padding its piece counts. The interior structure of a solid shape was constructed out of dozens of small 1x2s and could easily have been a handful of much larger pieces with no downside. I didn't consider the "more pieces = more perceived value" logic until this comment.

I had a weird build recently with the Luxo Jr model. There are a couple of cavities in the model that are partially filled in with very small parts. These parts don't connect in a way that makes then structural. I'm still puzzled why these parts are there.

That's the one I was building too!

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#209

Post by mytailorisrich »

autoexec wrote: post #197
mytailorisrich wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that has only kept up with inflation over the last 50 years is cheaper today than it was 50 years ago relative to people's incomes, which is the relevant definition of "cheaper". Not sure exactly how Lego prices have evolved but, as others have said, Lego is a brand and is unique. Their sale prices have little to do with their costs.

For most people anything that has only kept up with inflation over the last 50 years is more expense today than it was 50 years ago because wages have stagnated while prices have soared.

No, that's not the case.

For instance, the median household income in the United States in 1976 was $12,686. That's $72,857.55 today based on inflation (Google/Census Bureau Data + online inflation calculator).

However, Google's AI overview says "As of early 2026, the median household income in the United States is estimated to be approximately $84,000."

So the the median household income in the US today is about $11,000 ahead of inflation since 1976. People in the US are richer now that they were then.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#210

Post by robertfw »

roelschroeven wrote: post #189
arkh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still buy basic brick sets. With lot of nice color nowadays. Like the CLassics or Creator lines: https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/classic And for $100 you get a lot of bricks to play with and let your imagination go wild. Just don't buy sets aimed at adults and IP fansumers.

The point is: when I was a kid, all Lego sets consisted almost completely of general bricks. You could, and would, start building different things from the moment you got your first set, and the possibilities would increase exponentially once you got a few more sets. Any set contributed to your collection of building blocks to create new things.

I really don't get this sentiment. The only sets that I think didn't contribute like this were the bionicle stuff. Getting a few more unique parts with a set gives you more options, not less.
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