Subject:
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Re: Bulk Ordering - Secrets Revealed.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Wed, 20 Sep 2000 03:01:46 GMT
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Viewed:
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2316 times
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In lugnet.general, Jason S. Mantor writes:
> > Hope I'm not stealing Steve Chuck's thunder, but I was browsing the • Brickshelf
> > Gallery and came upon this picture:
> >
> > http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=14552
> >
> > It was taken on a LEGO factory tour. It's a picture of a retired mold • which
> > makes 8 2x3 bricks. There is a little caption plate which said it made
> > 120,000,000 bricks (thus was used for 15 MILLION cycles). If that mold • cost 10
> > times as much as the mold Robert describes, it still comes out to less • than 1
> > cent per brick, and 10 times the cost of the mold Robert describes is • probably
> > an exageration).
>
> The mold in the picture has a number of removable parts that make up the 8
> chambers for the 2x3 bricks. These have to have been replaced a number of
> times to have made that many parts. And to maintain it to the tight
> tolerances required to make LEGO(R) bricks lock with the exacting fit we've
> all come to expect may indeed cost ten times what it would cost to machine
> the relatively simple mold Steve describes :
Somehow I doubt it. If it actually cost a penny a brick for the MOLD, there is
no way that the cost per part for a set would be 10-20 cents, and certainly no
way that you could sell tubs for close to a penny a part.
What's possible is that the way the removeable parts which actually make up
the brick mold (and I agree, it does sort of look like that part is separate
from the main mold body) are produced in such a fashion as to cost much less,
and then the mold body with all the injector, ejector, and cooling channels
which don't need quite the same tolerances can be used for more cycles. Also,
if the parts with the actual brick mold are separate, they actually could
start to get volume efficiencies in producing those parts. All of that could
result in it even being possible that the LEGO mold costs LESS than the mold
Robert describes. That would also suggest some of why the sets with SPUDs cost
significantly more, they don't get the same volume efficiencies in the whole
molding process.
Frank
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Bulk Ordering - Secrets Revealed.
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| (...) Brickshelf (...) which (...) cost 10 (...) than 1 (...) probably (...) The mold in the picture has a number of removable parts that make up the 8 chambers for the 2x3 bricks. These have to have been replaced a number of times to have made that (...) (24 years ago, 19-Sep-00, to lugnet.general)
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