Slashdot Mirror
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?
I wonder if this is even legal?
As long as you don't print the LEGO trademark on them, it is legal. But it is not possible, at least on a cheap 3D-printer. Legos are made in custom injection molds with 0.005mm precision. A 3D printer is not going to even get close to that. Making Lego Bricks.
Depending on how many parts you are having made, consider sending them to a company with a good machine. I had to have a few parts made for a work project. I sent the parts, they sent me a quote, the price was reasonable and I got my parts quickly. I don't do this every day, so for me I wanted the parts in my grubby little hands rather than the machine to make the parts.
The most economical solution that I found was to simply buy used, good-quality Lego off of Ebay. The price is typically in the neighborhood of $17-$23USD per pound of used Lego (non-broken, washed, and sanitized).
A decent, high-quality, but non-commercial 3D printer costs $2500USD (for an Ultimaker 2). That's a lot of Lego.
That's the reason why many people who own LEGO bricks are scared of MegaBloks. 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.
And as the bricks look so similar, they are hard to remove from the collection of bricks, once the infestation has happened.
Having said that, I can definitely understand why OP would love to have a 3D printer that can output LEGO-compatible bricks. Every so often, it would be nice to build special-purpose adapter pieces that allow integrating non-LEGO hardware (e.g. a cell phone) into LEGO models. Perfect fit wouldn't necessarily be a strict requirement. And as the adapter is going to look quite unique, there isn't much risk of it accidentally getting confused with a genuine LEGO part.
But Lego wins on quality and nothing beats Lego. Everything else is a cheap knock off. Lego blocks are nearly indestructible and will last forever, so costing a little bit more for something you can continue to pass down through many generations of your off spring isn't that bad of an investment.
I know 3D printers are all the rage these days, but low cost CNC mills will give you far far better results than low cost 3D printers.
Or, more significantly, the sort of specialized pieces that nobody has ever made, and thus can't be bought at any price.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
As a child, lego is awesome because you can build stuff. Then take it apart. Then build new stuff.
As an adult, lego is awesome because you can build stuff. Then take it apart. Then build new stuff. And it's an engineering marvel in its own right. It's just awesome.
Binding properly 40 years later is merely evidence of the awesomeness. I pity you that this is something you don't appreciate.
It really depends on what the goals of the person are. You don't actually need the precision that lego does in order to create an interoperable part and I have done that with a consumer-grade 3d printer.
However:
You will have nowhere near the durability of a lego part. Not just in terms of strength, but in terms of wear. It will not last.
You will spend a *lot* more money per brick. Its been a while since I've done the calculation, but I'm pretty sure its at least an order of magnitude more expensive to print your own. Especially if you aren't using a consumer-grade printer (stratasys ABS is stupid brittle and very weak, completely unsuitable for the task, and absurdly expensive on top of that).
So why do it? Maybe for giggles (I've done a variety of 3d prints that are not really serious, but just to see if it can be done). Maybe for one-off pieces. It may be worthwhile to print an occasional piece that Lego does not. I've done a variety of those.
Bottom line: any reasonable printer should be able to do it, but *no* 3d printer can match Lego injection molding for quality, durability, price, etc.