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A comment on How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware.

Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by iafisher on Thursday June 28, 2018 @05:02PM (#17420464)
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.
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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by Already__Taken on Thursday June 28, 2018 @05:44PM (#17420730)
Like you said, the standard is dead easy it's paying for the QA
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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by anitil on Thursday June 28, 2018 @08:35PM (#17421569)
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.
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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by jdietrich on Friday June 29, 2018 @07:28AM (#17423831)
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

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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by TomMarius on Thursday June 28, 2018 @06:40PM (#17421049)
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.
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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by kraftman on Thursday June 28, 2018 @06:57PM (#17421143)
You could tell the sticky pieces by the teethmarks from pulling them apart :D
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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by adrianratnapala on Thursday June 28, 2018 @08:59PM (#17421685)
By that standard, nearly all of my pieces must have been sticky.

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

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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by sien on Thursday June 28, 2018 @07:04PM (#17421184)
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.

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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by TeMPOraL on Friday June 29, 2018 @03:52AM (#17423077)
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?

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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by Tomte on Friday June 29, 2018 @06:07AM (#17423570)
It is to push out cross axles that are part of Lego Technics.

See for example set 10074-1.

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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by friendzis on Friday June 29, 2018 @04:55AM (#17423291)
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".
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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by Qwertie on Thursday June 28, 2018 @07:42PM (#17421370)
Once the lego patents expired all the lego clones had perfect compatibility with lego.
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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by djrogers on Thursday June 28, 2018 @09:04PM (#17421702)
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.
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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by bluGill on Friday June 29, 2018 @10:36AM (#17424748)
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.

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