One of the things I love about BrickForge is that they seem to be just ahead of what LEGO ends up producing — from cows, pigs, and crowbars a few years ago to 1×1 round tiles and park ranger hats in the upcoming 2012 LEGO City sets. Does The LEGO Group have a spy in BrickForge world headquarters?!
Anyway, I always like to learn more about the LEGO vendors and custom accessory makes who populate the brick “ecosystem,” so it was great to run across an interview with Kyle Peterson on one of my favorite non-LEGO blogs, MAKE.
I hear some 3rd party manufacturers of Lego accessories recycle old bricks in their ABS, grinding them up and adding them to the molten plastic. Can you talk a little about this?
Obviously the ABS has to come from somewhere. BrickForge deals with very large production runs – thus we use specifically dyed ABS pellets during the self-contained, automated injection process. Other vendors may use a smaller, lightweight injection press for smaller production runs. This requires a manual feed of plastic into the hopper. Either the artisan has to purchase pre-mixed pellets (that match the LEGO color palette) or simply grind up and smelt existing LEGO brick. The first option is expensive, the second option is time consuming (not to mention having to deal with toxic fumes).
Read the complete interview on the MAKE Blog.
“I hear some 3rd party manufacturers of Lego accessories recycle old bricks in their ABS, grinding them up and adding them to the molten plastic”
Baichtal is likely referring to his older article on BrickArms prototype molds:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/02/brickarms-molds.html
While Will Chapman does occasionally use ground LEGO plastic to inject prototype molds (great way to test possible new colors!), BrickArms production runs, created with separate steel production tools, use virgin high-quality ABS. The advantage Will has with using the highest quality, thermostable ABS is that Will’s molder can regrind sprue and use that plastic for additional production runs with no loss of quality. The molder also sends some of this regrind to Will for use in injecting prototypes with his home equipment. Waste not, want not!
^ That’s what I figured John was referring to. It does make sense that you’d use available materials for small runs like prototypes (and Will gets some interesting effects by mixing colors).
Well I wouldn’t say the article was necessarily referring to anyone in particular, multiple customs parts dealers have home-based systems. Thrash’s new budding business (Brick Warriors) makes great use of this method, for example.
Anyone else suddenly reminded of Carly Simon?
Anyway back to the actual article, it’s nice to see the greater recognition of the hobby outside of our small LEGO-oriented circle. I have to admit, those “new” parts (ranger hat, 1×1 round tile) really did catch me by surprise!
@StarWars4J From the original article Baichtal wrote that I linked to:
“Parts are injected with ABS resin – some of it is ground up Lego bricks.”
As such, I don’t think it wasn’t that much of a leap for Andrew and I to come to the same conclusion, namely that Baichtal was referring to BrickArms. Given some of the information Kyle had given in his response wasn’t accurate (ie BrickArms does not use any ground LEGO plastic for its production runs), I just wanted to clarify the matter. That’s all I had to say, and I’m happy to leave it there and welcome other discussion related to the article.
“Given some of the information Kyle had given in his response wasn’t accurate” LOL, whatever William.