Subject:
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Re: LEGO Inside Tour (New theory on color change: stock dyes)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.color
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Date:
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Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:34:54 GMT
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Viewed:
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788 times
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“I really, truly, honestly have a friend that works at LEGO company. She has
been with them a long, long time! (She is much older than me) I was asking
about what it was like when parts were made in the US and she got to see the
production factory. She was telling me about huge silos full of different
colors of ABS plastic, and how neat it was to see parts made. I told her how
I would love to go, but she said that it won’t ever be the same again. I
asked why. She said because they no longer have stock of color pellets,
they now stock only clear ABS and inject it with color before it is molded.
She has not told me anything about the color change when I ask her, but she
unknowingly gave me a huge hint.”
“So it seems like LEGO changed their manufacturing system, and couldn’t find
a stock dye that came in the old gray, yellow and brown colors. They took
what they could, and checked with the focus groups to see if there would be
a problem. If there would have been a problem, they probably would have had
to custom order for the right color dyes, but why spend extra money when the
focus group says it is OK?”
The above is of course only a theory, but it’s the first explanation (that
I’ve seen at least) that actually makes sense. Despite explanations to the
contrary, the color changes were most likely a cost-cutting measure by TLG.
Up until now, I couldn’t well envision how the new colors would save TLG
money, but the above explanation seems quite plausible.
Does anyone here have any thoughts or insight on this?
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Having seen the production line recently in person, and having checked this
theory with several colleagues from manufacturing, this is not at all true.
ABS still comes in pellet form by color.
Jake
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I have to second Jake on this--I’ve worked in plastics production before (I’ve
personally mixed color combinations before), and that’s not how you injection
mold plastic--you can’t “inject” color into pellets when making molded parts
that are one solid color. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve worked with Lexan,
Polypropelene, and the process of injection molding is all the same, it’s the
temperature, humidity, drying time and clamping pressure of the mold that
differs. Sometimes, you can reuse older or defective parts that are ground up
(called “regrind”, but there’s a certain percentage that you can’t exceed.
Sure, when making black parts, you can add a small percentage of almost any
color--Black is a color that dwarfs all others. When you do a color changeover
on machines, you have a period where the colors will come out mottled. Gotta
hand it to marketing--if you’ve ever seen those “designer” bathroom trash cans
at Wal-Mart, the ones with the “interesting” patterns on them--that’s exactly
what parts look like as you get one color out of the injection molding screw
barrel and start feeding a second color...
But I never “injected” a color into clear pellets---the pellets HAVE to be
color. You may put a certain mix of clear ABS with a percentage of colored ABS
pellets to get your final color, some of those color pellets are quite strong!
Usually a specific provider makes the color pellets and sends them to the
manufacturing company to make parts. I know when I mixed color, there were
specific weights and percentages we had to keep track of for color consistency
(making window latches and other items used in replacement windows and
semiconductor etch equipment).
So, maybe the term “inject” was incorrectly termed?
Scott
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