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James & All,
> In lugnet.general, Frank Filz 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
>
> I'd take a stab that that is actually the "LEGO Factory Tour" in Funtown • at
> LLC. Or at least, it looks an awful lot like it. :) There is also a mold
> machine pumping out 2x4 red bricks (at the time) and an assembly line • machine
> that made & took apart simple LEGO cars.
>
> > 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).
Well, I do know those molds cost a pretty penny. A mold for a Chrysler
battery box for the Neon cost 500,000, and it was a little bigger than this
mold. Depending on the tolerances for the inserts, I imagine this one might
have cost more. All the layering an stuff is the mold itself. The round
holes on the side are for the water cooling and heating system, that cool
off the mold and parts when the injection cycle is complete. And that is the
prettiest mold I ever saw, becuase of the 15,000,000 million cycles, the
paint is gone, the inside is filled with scortched marks, and it looks used
after a few times being in and out of injection machines. They cleaned it
up.
> > Actually, it looks like the mold may make more than 8 bricks, it looks • like it
> > has 4 layers, and thus makes 32 bricks.
See above, it is the cooling chambers for the parts, as well as the
injection housing, for the parts need a little push to come out, most of the
time, you can't have multilayered molds, it would have to have 32 bricks in
it to make 32 bricks a cycle.
Scott S.
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