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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)

#41

Post by bdunks »

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…

Agree. They seem to have a “price per piece” equation. Perhaps as a result, the 5+ sets are made of hundreds of small pieces.

Older sets had larger foundational and platform pieces which gave a good starting place for new creative builds.

Today, airplanes fuselages, wings, and car chassis are instead built up piece by piece.

It’s hard for my 6 year old to start creative builds that are stable when he hardly has any pieces larger than 2x6 across dozens of sets.

My wife found a huge mixed bin from the 80s and 90s at an estate sale. It really helped.

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

#42

Post by xattt »

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…

They’ve basically adopted the Nintendo model. People have strong emotional connections for both, which can then be exploited for money.

It has momentum because they haven’t let quality and innovation slide. They know customers will be out with pitchforks if quality drops.

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

#43

Post by Zanfa »

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-...

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

#45

Post by flatline »

throw310822 wrote: post #19
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 fact that pieces from the 70s snap perfectly into ones made today is mind blowing Is it? It's not like it's hard to keep producing the pieces to the same original specifications. If they snapped then they snap now.

I think it's more the consistency of product design than the manufacturing process. Everything around me, especially in the software world, seems to change for no good reason on a frequent basis. Companies change products all the time for reasons other than utility/functionality. A consistent specification over 50+ years is an outlier.

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

#46

Post by Thlom »

wek wrote: post #18

For me, the beauty of Lego was just a huge bin of interconnectable parts that I used to make whatever my imagination came up with. For my kids, Lego is pre-built model airplane set that they build one time and then display. I liked my Lego better :)

You can still buy LEGO Classic which is just a bunch of bricks.

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

#48

Post by pubby »

Lego's original moat was their patent. This expired in the 80s, and so their new moat became their manufacturing tolerances. None of their competitors could match the quality of their product. This lasted until about the 2010s when clone brands in China finally caught up, and coincidentally, Lego's own quality started slipping. Thus, they needed a new moat, and the choice was obvious: licensing.

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

#49

Post by lich_king »

This is an LLM-written article. It also doesn't say anything. I get it that it's a cue for us to reminisce about childhood and say that LEGO isn't what it used to be, but we're being played for clicks. Open the article and look for a single statement that actually tells us something meaningful. It's just a sequence of impressively-sounding factoids like this:

> A 2x2 brick can withstand over 4,000 Newtons of force, which lets children build tall structures.

> But in an assembly system like LEGO's, small errors accumulate. Stack ten bricks end-to-end and the cumulative tolerance is ten times larger. This is why LEGO models larger than 1 meter become difficult to build

> The lesson isn't that everyone should match LEGO's tolerances. It's to understand what your product actually requires, then build your manufacturing system to deliver that at the scale and cost your business model demands.

I know I'm tilting at windmills, but come on.

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

#50

Post by kspacewalk2 »

We use a Lego phantom[0] to control for geometric distortions in a few of our MRI studies. The tolerances are so tight that it works really well. Especially important in multi-site studies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_phantom

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