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Ask Slashdot: Economical Lego-Compatible 3-D Printer?
Wycliffe writes: There are plenty of high end 3d printers which allow high precision and large prints. There are also plenty of economical 3d printers but most of them don't have high enough precision for printing good Lego pieces. What is a good economical printer for printing small Lego pieces? Build size is not important as most Lego pieces are tiny but precision and quality prints are very important. What is a good, cheap 3D printer that can reliably print tiny Lego pieces? What is the best bang for the buck when you want a small printer and don't care about large prints?
With so much demand for lego pieces isn't it time to start thinking the right way? Forget a 3D printer, how about building a lego pieces making machine? A cutting machine, a moulding machine for home use as opposed to a 3D printer, which will probably not work well enough to make high quality pieces anyway.
You can't handle the truth.
As someone in this industry (Ultimaker)
I will tell you. There no single printer you can buy that will do Lego level of quality. The precision of lego is just beyond of what current 3D print tech can do. The molds Lego uses to make their bricks are already on the extreme level.
Now, if you want to replace 1 brick. You most likely can get away with any printer, as 1 imprecise brick in a build isn't an issue. But 5 in a row are.
Your best bet would most likely be a small SLA printer. Like the a Formlabs or a Autodesk Amber.
If you don't want the dirty bits of SLA. You're stuck with an FDM printer. Not the best option for what you are looking for. But no chemicals. I would look at an option that has a 0.25mm nozzle option. There are a few. Our latest iteration has it. But that's most certainly not the cheapest machine.
I wonder if this is even legal?
It's technically legal to produce the basic bricks, since the applicable patents expired in 1989. As for trademarked Lego properties (like the mini-figures, for example) or any which are covered by more recent patents, you can still get away with it as long as you're only producing toys for personal use, and make no attempt to sell them.
But back to the OP's topic: The feasibility of making Lego compatible bricks with cheap 3D printers isn't actually the only question that you're going to have to face; you also need to take into account materials cost. Sure, the "Ultimaker 3D Printer" itself is quite expensive at US $2K -- but even if you gave up on cheaper options and decided to cough up that chunk of change, you also have to keep in mind that the plastic filament to feed the beast also costs money, to the tune of $20 to $80 per spool, depending upon what you're doing. On top of that, not every "printed" component comes out quite right... so you're likely to blow plenty of cash on ultimately wasted filament. Mind you, there are also so many other really cool things you could do with a 3D printer, besides making Lego bricks... but those things will just require that much more filament, and ultimately accomplish the opposite of your stated goal, that of saving money.
So the bottom line is, if you're going to get into 3D printing at all, you really need to do it "for the love of the game" as they say, not to save money. If all you want is cheaper Lego compatible bricks... then you'll probably be better off in the long run just buying generic brand bricks.
What Lego could do for me would be to offer kits of bulk pieces that are not intended to build something specific, at a good price. Older kits were a lot more like that
They do have those, appropriately named Lego Classic. And they are about the same price as any other Lego, around 6-8 cents/brick.
MegaBloks makes generic bricks that are nominally compatible with LEGO bricks. But in practice, they are built to lower quality standards and tend to attach much more poorly. As small number of MegaBloks in a collection of LEGO bricks can cause a lot of havoc and result in LEGO models that keep falling apart.
Yes, and even worse, in my experience, MegaBloks are dimensionally unstable over a decade or less, Legos are stable for at least 4 decades.
About 10 years ago I gave my nephews a set of MegaBloks and patted myself on the back because I had given an enormous set of "Legos" for so cheap. When new, they worked just as well as Legos. My nephews have long-since outgrown those MegaBloks but my own kids were visiting recently and we dragged them out. They do not stay together at all now.
I still have the real Legos which I had as a kid in the 1970's, and they hold together just like new.
So you might think you are getting a deal with MegaBloks, but not so much, if you plan on them lasting.
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