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Comment by kbatten | Hacker News Reader

With the explosion of 3d printing I would love to see what Lego does to capture this market. I can already print lego clone pieces. My niece doesn't really know about intellectual property, she know about mashing plastic together.

They can be the leader, but the window that they can take advantage of this is closing quickly. A 300 dollar printer id not that big of an investment and once you have it you can print a big item for about a dollar in plastic.

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The difference is that 3d printed piece will hold up for what, a year if that. There is a reason that Lego cost as much as they do, and it isn't because they are greedy. The tolerances on the blocks that they produce are beyond tight and their blocks are guaranteed to work basically for life. Ever try megablocks, that is what 3d printing your own pieces is going to be like...at best.

Lego is something that was passed down to me and I have passed it onto my own children and the amount of blocks we have continue to grow.

Can you give evidence to it only lasting a year? I print in PETG which is the same plastic used by Coke to create their 2 liter bottles. Even "if" it only lasts a year, the cost of the plastic is cents so I'll just print another.

I'll pass down the schematics which are more durable than even plastic.

If you print another brick, what happens to the old brick? Another piece of trash for landfill?

PLA is easy to recycle, though as I said I mostly print PET. That does seem to be recyclable though I question the cost/benefit of doing so since the recycling itself has cost and it may weaken the plastic.

Personally I have a bucket filled with the scraps till I can figure out what I want to do. But I know I've thrown away far more plastic packaging than I waste printing so I don't stress about it.

Nevertheless your point is valid and needs to be considered as 3d printing becomes mainstream.

I highly doubt you can print lego pieces at anywhere near the tolerances that the real bricks have. Getting tolerances right even on shapes that are relatively simple is a massive problem with most filaments. On most of mine, the plastic expands anywhere between .2 and .6 mm depending on all kinds of factors that are hard to predict. Duplo would probably work well, though.

There are already a few sellers of 3d printed Lego compatible pieces. They usually sell to special minifig accessories (armors, weapons, headpieces), sometime hand painted or hand finished.

These accessories command relatively high prices and cater to a market not covered by Lego itself.

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