3D Printing

[boliramirez]

I have  few injection molding machines, how many bricks do you "really" want??  

[@rtisan]

Gotta say, these really are cool! I`ve always loved the thought of printing/designing my own bricks and pieces to build with, but it is many times more expensive (though prices are dropping) and more time consuming. Though it doesn`t compare with injection moulding, printing is still really neat. Also, I love that 3 sided piece! Could think of several uses for something like that 

[Stevenplays]

Looks like a cheap, flimsy material, wouldn't touch it with a fifty foot pole.

[Noodlenut]

That's awesome!

[Guest TabbyBoy]

If the "ink" is the same price as that for inkjet printers, it'll be too cost prohibitive and will be no threat to current production.  It's a nice concept and would be good for a MOC where a certain brick isn't available.

[jbacunn]

Cool but no threat to Lego for the time being. The cost has to come way down and the technology has to get much better. Maybe in another 20 years this might be something people have in their houses.

[legoman12323123]

Cool but no threat to Lego for the time being. The cost has to come way down and the technology has to get much better. Maybe in another 20 years this might be something people have in their houses.

 In 20 years from now .. we would only be able to achieve mega blok quality .. I think ill stick to just buying offical lego bricks 

[knarrff]

People still buy cards at retailers for birthdays, despite pretty good printer quality. I don't think this is going to be a problem for Lego for the next few years.

[Miami Bomb Squad]

why even go through the work/time to print it when you can purchase a complete set of excellent quality with box art and instructions.  
oh, and did i mention, its has NO RE-SELL value.
this idea is a great invention but its has its uses and making legos is not one of them.

[seapotato]

I think it would be useful to print rare pieces. The technology will get better eventually!

[mcortez]

High end 3D printers are actually very very nice, top quality selective laser sintering printers are perfectly capable of printing out some good LEGO compatible parts. These are not the crude 3D printers that are often highlighted by the maker movement that you can buy for $400 - $4,000 USD -- many of these have a resolution a 10th or 100th that of 3d extruding printers offering super high quality.

 

 I'd love to have one available to print rare parts when designing MOCs  to see if they'll work out or not, before spending money on bricklink.

 

 

Downside of course, is that those high quality 3d printers also currently run somewhere north of $50k USD, with basically no ceiling on the price (for more $$$ they just get bigger) -- should the price ever come down to just a few thousand dollars while maintaining the high quality prints, and if the powders they use became readily available from office depots / staples -- I think the "print your own toy" revolution would be right around the corner.

[gregpj]

I think it would be useful to print rare pieces. The technology will get better eventually!

 

Ignore all the haters. I haven't yet seen a 3D printer or it's product up close, so I for one appreciate your time in sharing a neat little experiment. Some of the "you suck, I don't" folks on this forum should take note. Everything is awesome!

[biniou]

FAKE ! It's made in sugar.

  :P

[superbrickman]

Great little experiment, thanks for sharing!

 

Let's not rule out that TLG might eventually consider products, material, etc. suited to the 3D printing ecosystem.

 

I was at a Science and Math bootcamp at my nephew's school last fall, and was pleasantly surprised that kids like him in second grade are using 3D printers already. They have assignments around these things too.

 

So, while I I have a hard time imagining that something like a LEGO 3D printing kit (heck, a consumer-grade LEGO 3D printer sold by TLG, too) is bound to be reality anytime soon (like in the next 10 years maybe), I wouldn't be shocked if "eventually" came a bit sooner. Who really knows?!

 

[DoNotInsertIntoMouth]

We will see, but I am definitely not scared of them yet. The current bricks look a lot better.

[inversion]

Downside of course, is that those high quality 3d printers also currently run somewhere north of $50k USD, with basically no ceiling on the price (for more $$$ they just get bigger) -- should the price ever come down to just a few thousand dollars while maintaining the high quality prints, and if the powders they use became readily available from office depots / staples -- I think the "print your own toy" revolution would be right around the corner.

 

That's no problem. Copy shops exist where efficient printers cost $6-7k. There are 3D copy shops as well: you go in with a design on your pen-drive or cloud storage and just print for a fee. In a big city it could be quite feasible and they can afford high-end quality machines so people go there instead of buying their own.

[jerryherb]

Looks like a cheap, flimsy material, wouldn't touch it with a fifty foot pole.

it actually is ABS plastic just like legos. i have one of them makerbots at home.

[jerryherb]

now imagine printing out a 10179 4 times the size....

[TheOrcKing]

Let's not rule out that TLG might eventually consider products, material, etc. suited to the 3D printing ecosystem.

The Lego Group has actually considered 3D printing as a possibility in the future.

[superbrickman]

The Lego Group has actually considered 3D printing as a possibility in the future.

 

 

Wow, neat! My guess is they probably still have nightmares from the video game wave of the early to mid 90s, leading up to their dismal financial performance in the late 90s and early 2000s, and wouldn't want to fall behind on any potentially major trend upcoming. I'm done theorizing now.

[jnorlund]

The technology is awesome and has so many applications we are just starting to think about. It will be a threat to several industries' status quo but probably not this one.

[hobbycrafter]

Isn't there a different thread for discussion of how 3D printers might impact investing? I can't seem to find it, and I don't understand why "3D" is not an accepted search term.

 

Anyway, seapotato, when you said they used a handheld "3D Scanner", does that mean they scanned a LEGO brick to get those dimensions for them to put into the 3D printer? 

 

I'm pretty sure right now, the issue with 3D printed LEGO is the print quality of the average 3D printer itself, but I'm wondering if dimensions from scans have any effect on the final print quality too, or why people just don't make a CAD file from scratch, seeing how it's basically a rectangle with six cylinders on it. I believe images from LEGO's original patent were released earlier this year too, there might be dimensions on that.

 

 

Also, I love that 3 sided piece! Could think of several uses for something like that  

@rtisan, here's something similar you might find interesting:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/04/05/how-a-geek-dad-and-his-3d-printer-aim-to-liberate-legos/

http://www.thingiverse.com/uck/designs

[seapotato]

I'm not sure what they did, but they do have a handheld scanner that they use to get dimensions of some stuff, but I believe they do also have a program where you can just design whatever and save it on a memory card to feed into the printer.

So yes, the dimensions probably would have been better if they did use the program. I think they scanned this one since the studs seemed a tad small that it doesn't fit properly? My friend said she tried and they fit bricks.

[seapotato]

They printed pieces of a Halo helmet and glued it together. Then they used clay to finish it off and make it have a smooth appearance. I think a lot of people who do cosplay would definitely love to just print their own pieces to a costume. It's actually very good, cosplayers probably would shell out money to get the Halo helmet.

[hobbycrafter]

They printed pieces of a Halo helmet and glued it together. Then they used clay to finish it off and make it have a smooth appearance. I think a lot of people who do cosplay would definitely love to just print their own pieces to a costume. It's actually very good, cosplayers probably would shell out money to get the Halo helmet.

Some do, but many prop makers find out that the ratio of people with casual interest (read: "dood i'll give you a hundred bucks for it") vs. people actually willing to shell out the thousands for it is very, very disproportionate. I'd stick to the LEGO business, the aftermarket customers are far more informed.

 

Printing costume pieces gets very costly very fast though. There's a debate in the costumers/prop community over traditional vs. 3D printing, and traditional usually weighs out to be the winner in terms of cost and quality. It makes sense to 3D print a complicated small detail piece to add onto a helmet - it does NOT make sense to waste a massive amount of material (and money) on stormtrooper armor, which is essentially a smooth, curved surface with an angle here or there that can easily be vacuum formed or built from scratch with plastics.  Most costumes and parts turn out to be the latter, once analyzed and broken down into simpler shapes.