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Last month, I was extremely excited to find dark blue corner bricks in PAB at the Schaumburg LEGO store. I picked up 30-50 or so of them as I packed a holiday box. When I got home, I took them out and noticed immidiately that they were at least two (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) Here's some of problems that I ran into... I bought a bunch of 2x10 white plates, stacked the neatly to fit inside a PaB cup. After stacking about 20 of them together, I realized that the sides of the plates didn't all line up smoothly. (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) Can we all say Flextronics. What bothers me more is that Lego does not seem to care about or respond to this ongoing problem. John P (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) John, What would you like LEGO Group to do about the quality? They no longer manufacture plastic parts. They have contracted with a third party to manufacture parts who would try to pass as many parts as they can. LEGO might, by contract, be (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) That is a silly question. INSIST on quality. Would you buy a car that had three fenders one shade off from the rest of the car? Do what they did before, the highest quality in the toy industry. They did it once, why not put their inspectors in (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) This is misleading. The following is a statement from the LEGO Community Development Team: "Product safety and product quality are factors of the utmost concern for the LEGO Group and have been so during our entire 75 year history. In order to (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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(...) Yes. I wish I had the article I'm thinking of-- I'll hunt for it. But according to Jorgen, people at Lego were using quality 'as a crutch'. They refused to do any cost saving measure because it might sacrifice quality. And supposedly it was (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) I have found that the newer sets have a problem. Others have seen the difference in colors in several sets. I have had a hard time puting some bricks and other elements together because of the tolerences. I began collecting in the 70's as an (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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Interesting points raised. As to LEGO quality not decreasing, and us just noticing it… I don’t buy that at all. I don’t ever remember stacking new bricks (even a few years ago) of the same color atop one another and seeing clear color differences. (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) It's dropping-- not by huge leaps and bounds as people might lead you to believe, but it's dropping. But there's not much I can say other than "it's worse than it was before". I compare elements molded in roughly 1999 to elements molded today, (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) Here we go: (URL) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) I believe I read somewhere that the ABS pellets are now transparent, and color is injected during the moulding process? Whereas before, the pellets came colored prior to being used. I could be wrong though. But as for the color variations that (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) The keynote speech at Brickworld 2007 by Richard Stollery, the head of LEGO community, contained these points and specifically mentioned the orange garbage truck with pieces you could almost see thorough. They had the choice of not producing a (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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As I have commented before- At least as long as I have been dealing with LEGO bricks, there have been variations in the color. But, I polish almost every brick I use in my little engraving business and one can see the variations more clearly when (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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::snip:: (...) ::snip:: I'm sure that packing errors are devastating to kids (who start a model but can't complete it), but I don't mind so much, in light of how I received at least 2 bags of extra parts with my new Town Plan! It seems that (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) Ross, Thanks for this! I appreciate someone representing the truth of what's going on, and I admit my statement was over generalized. I would like to point out two things though. Mold making and parts making are being moved out of Denmark. (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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(...) I find very few, if no packing errors which always amazes me. Thousands of parts in a set and they are always perfect. When I build sets with my Grand daughter she will say this piece or that piece is missing. I tell her to look harder, she (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) I'll echo Tommy's comments on colors. I've got four years experience working with injection molding machines, and about 8 years experience in manufacturing processes. It is true that where LEGO used to receive color-molded pellets for molding, (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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It is true that where LEGO used to receive color-molded pellets for (...) Scott, a question, why is it more difficult to control the color with clear plastic than it was to control the color in the older method of using colored plastic? Is it not (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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<snip> > At some point in its (...) As someone who has had the dubious pleasure of maintaining a piece like that, I can tell you that it had gotten damaged. (Little curious fingers, pulling, pushing, etc.) When something like that receives damage, (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) Hi Rich I don't think that is the problem in that it is random all over the piece and there is no way these could have been damaged. There will be a row with 30 pure white and 20 yellowed and the new row is both also. This is from the bottom (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) I've been told this is common among white elements especially-- that they're more susceptible to light damage (or perhaps just that it's more noticeable in white). I was told (IIRC this was from master builders in Enfield) that even the (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) Thanks David, that makes sence John P (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) ABS in and of itself will yellow. With white the yellowing is just more evident. Yellowing occurs in blue and red and all the other colors but is masked. It is analogous in paint to the fact that certain resins will yellow with age. Acrylic is (...) (16 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) Is there any consistency of fading by brick type, that could be explained by different molding batch? I have huge constructions of white and yellow bricks which were not consistent from the factory. The 1x4s and 2x2s were obviously differently (...) (16 years ago, 14-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) Scott: You pretty much nailed all the points I was thinking about making here. I've worked for a specialty thermoplastics compounder for 7 years now both as a product development/formulation engineer and as a computer aided engineering (...) (16 years ago, 14-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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(...) Thanks, that makes sense too. I wish I could replace these as this is a great display piece. It is so large I have it on the patio. John P (16 years ago, 14-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) John, Adding color dye to clear ABS is like taking a bowl of flour, and adding food coloring to it. You will find that as you mix the flour, some of the flour will wind up being tinted a little darker than other areas. It depends on your (...) (16 years ago, 15-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) Thanks for the explanitation. I still would think that if the supplier of the pellets starts off with a clear plastic and then adds color, it would be the same for Flextronics starting with a clear plastic and adding color to make the pellets. (...) (16 years ago, 15-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) I believe that although the chemical coating prolongs the life of the model, it doesn't mean it will last indefinitely or will never yellow. It just means it takes longer to do so. I wish I remembered the stats, but I think it's something like (...) (16 years ago, 15-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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(...) John: Not quite. Flextronics is a molder, while the suppliers they would buy precolored pellets from are compounders. The difference is all in the method and intensity of mixing. When a compounder colors a resin like ABS, they do start with a (...) (16 years ago, 16-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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(...) Thanks, it is starting to clear things up for me. Would a solution be to make the bricks from one batch, or at least put bricks into the box from the same mixture? I am somewhat familiar with dye lot variations as I worked in the needlecraft (...) (16 years ago, 16-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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(...) Excellent lesson. This kind of material would have been welcome in this group a couple of years ago. Better late than never. Thanks for the info. Doug (16 years ago, 16-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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(...) John: That might work if you were using precolored pellets...but honestly...if you were using precolor, you wouldn't see the variation. :-) With both concentrates and liquid color, there can easily be shot-to-shot variation if (...) (16 years ago, 16-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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(...) It is useful, thanks Dave John P (16 years ago, 16-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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(...) It is absolutely impossible to create a clear coating that will shield the uv light forever because of the fact that one has to incorporate some uv absorber in the coating that will absorb the energy. And transparent ones are not nearly as (...) (16 years ago, 21-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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SNIP Granted, liquid color has it's place...I just (...) Very interesting article. I think the molded plastics business is in the same state of affairs that the paint industry was in the 50's and 60's in that they now need to respond quickly to the (...) (16 years ago, 21-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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(...) Do you mean the 'swirl' effect seen on some metallized bricks? I actually like that effect. :) Steve (16 years ago, 21-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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