Hacker News Reader

Comment by iafisher | Hacker News Reader

One thing that Lego does very well despite (or perhaps because of) being a closed system is ensuring the consistent quality of all its bricks. In the years I played with Legos as a child I never encountered two bricks that didn't fit together perfectly. I wonder if an open standard would be able to achieve the same consistency.

View on HN

Like you said, the standard is dead easy it's paying for the QA

I can't find it now, but I remember reading about the QA process that they use. If I remember correctly, each mold is uniquely identified, so if you do find a bad part, the mold is taken out of circulation.

A Lego brick is a remarkably sophisticated piece of technology. Achieving that level of precision involves clever engineering and a very expensive piece of tooling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMjtmsr3CqA

How long ago was that? Lego from the 80's sometimes got stuck together. I even remember two (2-brick) sets of bricks that stayed together to this day.

You could tell the sticky pieces by the teethmarks from pulling them apart :D

By that standard, nearly all of my pieces must have been sticky.

(And yes, I did grow up in the '80s).

Have you tried these:

  https://shop.lego.com/en-AU/Brick-Separator-630

They work very, very well.

The other thing about Lego is that it's a bit trickier to clone than you'd think. Most of the other 'compatible with other major systems' brands don't come apart as well as Lego does.

It seems part of the trick of Lego is to make things that are appropriately easy to take apart, as well as put together.

I used this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Lego-Gray-Brick-Separator-LEGO/dp/B00...

I wonder about the design change, with this plus-like protrusion at the top. Is it to enforce correct direction of operation when using the separator?

I guess that "plus-like protrusion" is designed to fit "tubes" on the high bricks, primary use being removing low bricks from high bricks. I guess one could use two separators side-by-side to firmly hold 4x2 brick, IIRC 2x2 had one "tube" and 4x2 had two "tubes".

It is to push out cross axles that are part of Lego Technics.

See for example set 10074-1.

Once the lego patents expired all the lego clones had perfect compatibility with lego.

Any of the clones I’ve tried with my kids have barely had compatibility with themselves - at least not to the standard LEGO sets. They don’t grip as well, they fall apart, even their colors can vary. Stay away.

It is a matter of quality. LEGO uses more expensive plastic, and scraps their molds at the first sign of wear. The competitors use cheaper plastics and keep using their molds until they are significantly out of tolerance. This is how they are able to be much cheaper.

There isn't anything magic about what lego does, other than they do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com