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Subject: 
Re: LEGO Quality Control
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.events, lugnet.ambassadors
Followup-To: 
lugnet.ambassadors
Date: 
Tue, 2 Sep 2008 06:04:15 GMT
Viewed: 
22818 times
  
In lugnet.events, Timothy Gould wrote:
   I’m not sure why you think any LEGO Ambassadors will see questions in a thread which has nothing to do with LEGO Ambassadors but since I’ve spotted it I’ll respond with my LA hat planted firmly on my head.

The quality control issue has been brought to LEGO’s attention through the LA programme on many occasions and there have been many responses from LEGO to these queries. I’m really not sure what you want added. It’s on repeated public record that LEGO weren’t happy with Flextronic and that they’ve had quality control issues over the past few years.

I’m not going to waste my or TLGs time taking it over there again. It’s already been answered.

Here’s my thing. The Flextronics deal was announced just over two years ago, in 2006. Jake responded to issues raised over part quality just over four years ago, in 2004. That says to me that while Flextronics might be largely responsible for the inconsistent colors, and part breakages over the last two years (I’ve had a few black cheese wedges crack at the base of the sloped surface recently, so I’ve seen some of that), there’s still an underlying issue in mold allignment, and it’s been around at least twice as long as Flextronics was involved in the process. If you build a stack of bricks and look at it from the end, you will see that some of the bricks look like they’ve been pushed over to one side. If you look at the bottom of some bricks, you will see that one wall might be twice as thick as the opposite wall. The cited allowable part variance is supposed to be no more than 1/10mm, which should not be visible to the naked eye. While the interior dimension and exterior dimension might both fall within that range, it is evident that the wall thickness does not. The only way those could both be true is if the mold halves were not properly alligned, and I’d like to know if this is an issue that they are aware of, and if they are doing anything to address it.

As for the history of this specific problem, I believe I posed it to Steve Witt at NMRA-07, and I also believe that he had not heard of that possibility before (it’s been over a year now, the discussion happened at a bar, he’d had a few drinks, I was tired from a long day, and I could be mistaking this discussion with the one I know we had over my theory on the reason behind the infamous color change). What I do know is that I have never heard any sort of official comment on mold allignment. I’ve heard about unspecified physical quality issues, inconsistent coloration of parts, and how they were unhappy with the whole Flextronics deal, but not a single word about the possibility of sloppy mold allignment. So, since the LEGO Ambassadors are supposed to be representing the fan community at large, I hereby request that someone represent me on this issue, or point me to a place where it has been made public (which I have been unable to find).



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: LEGO Quality Control
 
In lugnet.events, David Laswell wrote: --snip-- (...) Passed on. I'll be sure to pass any answer back as soon as I have access to one. Tim (16 years ago, 3-Sep-08, to lugnet.ambassadors, FTX)
  Re: LEGO Quality Control
 
I actually had a pretty long and very interesting discussion with Bjarke Schønwandt at BrickFair about the whole color issue. I am pretty much of an expert in color quality control-it was my job for many many years to make sure batch to batch color (...) (16 years ago, 4-Sep-08, to lugnet.ambassadors, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: LEGO Quality Control
 
(...) I'm not sure why you think any LEGO Ambassadors will see questions in a thread which has nothing to do with LEGO Ambassadors but since I've spotted it I'll respond with my LA hat planted firmly on my head. The quality control issue has been (...) (16 years ago, 15-Aug-08, to lugnet.events, FTX) ! 

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