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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)

#81

Post by embedding-shape »

jiehong wrote: post #52
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…

Maybe one last thing that sucks is that it’s all plastic.

At least LEGO is probably the toy that gets "passed down" the most, my own LEGO parts who I got from an older cousin, is now on its 4th generation (first my sisters children, then some family-friend to theirs), and I'm sure the pile(s) will get further passed down as time goes on.

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

#82

Post by double0jimb0 »

butILoveLife wrote: post #10

After working in automotive, this is less impressive than it appears. Tons of dimensions on 100k/yr injection molded(and otherwise) parts have similar dimensions. (Although admittedly, after testing in pre-production, I don't know if they are tested again and have drift) Lego has been making the same parts for decades and their parts are extremely simple. I imagine their 1-off parts for intellectual property based se…

Agreed. Same or greater injection molding challenges for bottle caps, small plastic containers, things that also are in the hundreds of millions of parts annually. More challenging as they are often using polypropylene which is harder to mold due to its high anisotropy (shrinks in different rates depending on if it's flow or cross-flow direction).

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

#83

Post by iso1631 »

wongarsu wrote: post #78
bluGill wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard your same rant in the 1980s - only small details have changed (not mindstorms then ...) But kids who want to build have always been able to, and most sets mix and match for those kids.

> I heard your same rant in the 1980s The two options would be that either the perception is unsubstantiated but persists, or there has been a continuous decline for the last 40 years. I'm strongly leaning towards the latter. I also having the same issues in the 00s looking at old sets from the 80s, and looking back now the 00s look much better than what we have today. Obviously not in every way, and not all recent s…

Nostalgia 'aint what it used to be

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

#84

Post by wongarsu »

antonyh wrote: post #76

This is why Lego has nothing to fear from 3D printing.

Not in terms of people printing lego bricks. But at least as an adult, designing things in Fusion and printing them scratches a similar itch as building lego. And 3d printing is now pretty accessible to the 14+ age group. I doubt this will completely replace legos, or that it's even their biggest threat, but I'd be surprised if it had no impact

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

#85

Post by em-bee »

antonyh wrote: post #55
jiehong wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe one last thing that sucks is that it’s all plastic.

True, but at least it's not single use. Is there a viable alternative? A non-petrochemical plastic that has the same qualities? It's not like they can whittle them out of wood or cast them with metal so it'll always be some form of polymer, and I'm sure they would jump at a more ecologically sound option.

lego compatible bricks made from wood do exist. they probably don't last as long though.

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

#86

Post by ryukoposting »

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…

Call me names, but I'll go to bat for stickers.

Even when I was a kid, I wasn't keen on graphic designs on the pieces. I liked the uniformity of consistently-colored pieces. Most graphics only make sense in the context of the set they were packaged in. Stickers give the customer flexibility. Use them when you build the set, and remove them later if you take the set apart and don't want them anymore.

Killing Mindstorms was a head-scratcher to me. Hell, there was an entire international tournament built around Mindstorms. I know FLL still exists, but why kill that darling specifically?

NXT still kicks ass by the way. I have a backup of the NXT programming environment somewhere, it can be coaxed into running on Windows 11.

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

#87

Post by wongarsu »

iso1631 wrote: post #83
wongarsu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I heard your same rant in the 1980s The two options would be that either the perception is unsubstantiated but persists, or there has been a continuous decline for the last 40 years. I'm strongly leaning towards the latter. I also having the same issues in the 00s looking at old sets from the 80s, and looking back now the 00s look much better than what we have today. Obviously not in every way, and not all recent s…

Nostalgia 'aint what it used to be

Maybe my perception of 00s models is colored by nostalgia, hard to know. But I haven't been alive in the 80s, so my perception of them during the 00s should be pretty uncolored

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

#89

Post by aaron695 »

lich_king wrote: post #49

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,…

[dead]

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

#90

Post by operation_moose »

herpdyderp wrote: post #58
pubby wrote: post #48

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.

What knock off brands come even close in quality? Everything I’ve tried that isn’t name brand LEGO is hot garbage.

I've ordered 2 sets off of AliExpress (the Stargate BC303 and BC304 MOCs) and was quite impressed. No box, digital instructions, and a few minor color swapped pieces; but complete and everything went together very well.
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