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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)

#271

Post by jacquesm »

FarmerPotato wrote: post #265
jacquesm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They suck because instead of buying the rights to the bricks they outright stole the design, the packaging and the marketing materials from the original inventor. And then they sued the pants of everybody that tried to do the same thing to them.

That's a simplification of the Kiddicraft story. Yes, it was a shame. After Lego lost in court (to Hilary Page's heirs I think by then) I believe they finally atoned for that. Still, Lego didn't just sell the Kiddicraft brick unmodified. Lego patented the tubes inside, which gave it superior clutch power. (I have a lot of 2x4 bricks with "Pat Pend" molded on them!) As I've heard it, Ole Kirk Christiansen had seen Hil…

He took them back to Denmark and copied them.

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/02/l-is-for-legos-...

The tubes came (much) later. Even the boxes were direct copies.

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

#273

Post by runxel »

novaleaf wrote: post #259

> The 66-year-old brick will have the exact same interference fit, the same clutch power, the same 4.8mm stud diameter. Pretty sure this is false. Old bricks had way higher clutch power, so high that it was deemed too difficult to separate. Sometime in the 90's the grip strength was reduced. This false claim is underpins the entire article :(

I concur. I had "inherited" the sets of my 10 years older brother, and they where a pain to play with. It was sometimes impossible to separate the pieces, especially if it were plates with no leverage and nothing to grip.

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

#274

Post by CapricornNoble »

tokai wrote: post #176
CapricornNoble wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value proposition of the Chinese knockoffs is off the charts IMO. For what I spent buying JUST ( https://www.brickeconomy.com/set/60229-1/lego-city-space-roc... ) last year for my daughter, I've since bought her a 3-floor hospital, a firehouse, a pink villa with pool, and about 2 dozen doctor and engineer minifigs for the same ~$120 outlay. Only disappointment is the legs on the Chinese minifigs, they are difficu…

You trust the Chinese knockoffs not to leach out poison?

Yes. What "poison" do you think they are leaching? Has anyone ever done any instrumented/lab testing that has shown ABS plastic toys to pose a threat?

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

#275

Post by Freak_NL »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #240
roelschroeven wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don’t think this is true at all. What do you mean by “general bricks”? If anything there is more brick-built stuff nowadays. For example the Creator 3-in-1 Castle (which I got for my son for Christmas) is pretty similar to castle sets I had as a child but basically way better and with brick built horses rather than large mould ones

The 3-in-1 sets (where the set numbers actually begin with 31) should really be the first thing you look at when choosing a set for a child, and they deserve more praise. There are a lot of cool 3-in-1 sets out there. That castle (31168) is really good (and those horses are too!), and the haunted mansion (31167) is just cool with minifigs which are a hit with any kid.

For a small and cheap present that hamster (31376) is just too cute to pass up too.

It feels like those sets are where the Lego designers get to do their thing and do it right, without the weight of licenced IP (of which there is so much) and the trite offerings of the City range.

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

#276

Post by jjk166 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #220

Something that took me years of working with custom plastic injection part experience to notice still kind of shocks me… Legos don’t have draft. That means nothing to 99% of you, but someone else here must understand what the implications of that are for releasing from molds at a mass scale.

Actually they do have a draft. The bricks are designed so you don't notice it, both by the draft angle being quite small, and the parting line is moved up slightly so by the time you get to the bottom of the brick you're back to the original width.

https://medium.com/@bsather/breaking-down-the-perfect-design...

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

#277

Post by jjk166 »

Zanfa wrote: post #43
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #2

"that familiar click is the sound of a carefully engineered interference fit designed to hold firm but still be easy for small hands to pull apart." My recent experience calls bs on pulling them apart.

Having grown up playing with LEGOs, I can still distinctly remember the feeling of sore fingers pulling tiny pieces apart after a long session. It wasn't until a few years ago I learned there's an official brick separator tool [1]. Would've changed my life as a kid. [1] https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/lego-...

> It wasn't until a few years ago I learned there's an official brick separator tool

You mean a little brother?

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

#278

Post by Freak_NL »

awkward wrote: post #28
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…

The decline of technic sets is such a shame. There's so little support for anything but representative models of specific cars, despite the platform being able to support a ton of mechanical creativity.

My son inherited (well, we're co-owning it I guess) my Lego, and that includes two sets of Technic aimed at educational use (1030 and 1032) which come with a stack of instructions for fairly simple mechanical models to build — each demonstrating basic mechanical principles like gear reduction and pulleys. Those sets used the 4.5V motors which have all broken down, but we also have the 1990 Technic Control Centre fully working and use those instead. That Control Centre is a simple controller used with 9V motors. It is brilliant for explaining the basic principles of computerised automation.

No app. No Bluetooth. Just wires and a simple controller built to be used and understood by children.

https://rebrickable.com/sets/8094-1/technic-control-centre

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

#279

Post by Freak_NL »

bombcar wrote: post #180
rkangel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the push towards smartphone-dependent toys feels weird I haven't seen this push? The new Lego Smart stuff is explicitly "screen free play". There is an app but it's just for firmware update and configuration and you can't even connect it unless the brick is on the charger.

Lego has been testing modern sets without instructions and instead tell you to download an app for your phone. The ones I know of are the Mario ones, but they apparently need a phone anyway to setup the little characters.

All normal sets still come with a booklet don't they? They offer the option sometimes though.

Plastic parts bags are getting replaced by paper ones, but the booklets aren't going anywhere.

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

#280

Post by rfrey »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #209
autoexec wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 $…

Now what about the change in the number of earners per household? Houses don't earn wages, people do.
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