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Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 3D print these suckers? Famously, LEGO has an extremely tight manufacturing tolerance that's around 10um [1]. Your 3d printer is much better than mine. :) 1. Page 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego#cite_ref-Companyprofile_3...
SLA printer could do it, they even mention using it for prototyping on the wiki page
They released a new generation not long ago (last year?). Sounded like it wasn't warmly received initially but later they were sold out. Something to do with that?
Any alternatives that anyone could suggest for young children looking to get an introduction to robotics?
While I'm saddened by this news for nostalgic reasons, I personally believe that today's young learners are better served by the proliferation of hobby robotics platforms like Arduino/Raspberry Pi. Every summer camp I worked at would claim that Lego robotics teaches real-world engineering skills, while in reality the students were just happy to stay within the comfort zone of playing with Legos and using a block-based programming environment (one that has quite frankly gone from bad to worse to absolutely horrible with each product cycle). Also, FIRST Lego League does nothing meaningful to prepare students for FIRST - when I donated supplies and a few weeks of mentorship to my former high school's FIRST team, I was dismayed to see how much dead weight the team was carrying in students who participated in the middle school Lego league, who did not have even the basic coding/engineering skills to make any contribution to the high school team other than paying the membership dues.
RIP My Robotics professor developed ROBOLAB with Lego + LabView. In return, Lego funded part of the robotics department. We had the most amazing Lego lab. Bins of every shape piece you could ask for. It was really a childhood dream come to life.
When I was in a freshman engineering class that used version 1 mindstorms kits a few years later, my fellow students were amazed at my understanding of how to build with the kits. It also help with another lab used LabVIEW.
As others have noted, they still have an education focused robotics set, it’s just not called Mindstorms: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-education-spike-prim... As a now-successful robotics engineer, I was the target age when the first Lego mindstorms set came out. Due to the cost it had to be a combined birthday and Christmas present (still obviously very privileged). The simple scratch-like programming sys…
Can they at least open source all the CAD so we can 3D print these suckers?
> 3D print these suckers? Famously, LEGO has an extremely tight manufacturing tolerance that's around 10um [1]. Your 3d printer is much better than mine. :) 1. Page 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego#cite_ref-Companyprofile_3...