Is it worth printing legos ?

Hello people

I'm have just bought a pursa i3 from www.3dminions.com. I am going to get started with 3d printing, and the first thing on my mind is printing some legos.

But im wondering :

Is it worth printing legos quality-wise and cost-wise ?

It may be fun to experiment, but if the cost of materials and power used while printing a lego set comes more than outright buying the kit itself, then it would not justify doing it. Especially when the quality is low.

I have seen around good lego bricks which were printed, but most seems to have a surface finish that is not smooth and perfect. The ones printed with 0.1 mm layer thickness are quite good and work very well, but their surface finish is not as perfect as legos.

So i thought i'd come and ask advice on this matter.

Is there anyone have used 3dminion's machine?Is it good enough for printing lego?

Thanks for your responses.

I printed a few on my Folger Tech Delta. At .1mm layer height I am happy with the results, but even printing a dozen or more blocks at a time the time investment wouldn't be worth it for me if I were printing a large set.

Have you checked the price of legos in the stores in your area? I only needed about 10 pieces so buying a $20 set to get them is absolutely not cost effective, but that was the cheapest set that had all the pieces I was looking for so YMMV.

I have not used the 3dminions printer, but after spending the time calibrating my delta when I built it, legos print just as well as anything else and interlock with printed and regular legos well.

OK!Thank you!I love playing lego!I will try to print a set right noew!

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jculver09
I printed a few on my Folger Tech Delta. At .1mm layer height I am happy with the results, but even printing a dozen or more blocks at a time the time investment wouldn't be worth it for me if I were printing a large set.

Have you checked the price of legos in the stores in your area? I only needed about 10 pieces so buying a $20 set to get them is absolutely not cost effective, but that was the cheapest set that had all the pieces I was looking for so YMMV.

I have not used the 3dminions printer, but after spending the time calibrating my delta when I built it, legos print just as well as anything else and interlock with printed and regular legos well.

OK!Thank you!I love playing lego!I will try to print a set right now!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2015 03:32AM by qiaoyifei.

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qiaoyifei

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jculver09
I printed a few on my Folger Tech Delta. At .1mm layer height I am happy with the results, but even printing a dozen or more blocks at a time the time investment wouldn't be worth it for me if I were printing a large set.

Have you checked the price of legos in the stores in your area? I only needed about 10 pieces so buying a $20 set to get them is absolutely not cost effective, but that was the cheapest set that had all the pieces I was looking for so YMMV.

I have not used the 3dminions printer, but after spending the time calibrating my delta when I built it, legos print just as well as anything else and interlock with printed and regular legos well.

OK!Thank you!I love playing lego!I will try to print a set right noew!

I have printed a few pieces.
You don't get the quality of the original Lego pieces. I would have been able to get it better with a bit of tinkering I suppose.
Where it comes in handy is if you want a Lego piece you don't have or can't get.
I made a remote control car out of Lego a few months ago. I printed the motor housing so that it was Lego compatible (see attached photo). It worked pretty well.
If I had my 3d printer then I could have tweaked it and improved it, but I was having to use a 3d printer at a Library so didn't have that flexibility.
Having said that, it fitted well enough and the whole thing worked well.
Eric

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blabbersnitch
I have printed a few pieces.
You don't get the quality of the original Lego pieces. I would have been able to get it better with a bit of tinkering I suppose.
Where it comes in handy is if you want a Lego piece you don't have or can't get.
I made a remote control car out of Lego a few months ago. I printed the motor housing so that it was Lego compatible (see attached photo). It worked pretty well.
If I had my 3d printer then I could have tweaked it and improved it, but I was having to use a 3d printer at a Library so didn't have that flexibility.
Having said that, it fitted well enough and the whole thing worked well.
Eric

Ok,thank you,I think make lego myself is really fun

Take it one step further....

Think about how to design something fun like legos but 3d print friendly, that is something that is relatively quick to print but not difficult like legos.

Here are the problems with legos..

The underside needs support
The pins need to be pretty perfect to fit the next block.
They take a lonnngg time to print

There are other building block style things on thingivers that are cool. I found a triangle shape thing that snaps together and you can make geodesic shapes with it.

Be original dont just print immitations... Invent something

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thetazzbot
Be original dont just print immitations... Invent something

+1

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thetazzbot
Take it one step further....

Think about how to design something fun like legos but 3d print friendly, that is something that is relatively quick to print but not difficult like legos.

Here are the problems with legos..

The underside needs support
The pins need to be pretty perfect to fit the next block.
They take a lonnngg time to print

There are other building block style things on thingivers that are cool. I found a triangle shape thing that snaps together and you can make geodesic shapes with it.

Be original dont just print immitations... Invent something

OK.although I am a new player,I want to invent good printers too,I will try

Use Legos for what they are good for and design and print parts that are compatible for things Lego doesn't do.

It's hard to make parts that snap to Lego directly, but you can always put flat surfaces on your parts and glue Lego bricks to them for perfect compatibility. Lego makes pieces with flat tops and almost all the bricks have flat sides, so there are plenty of ways to make exotic 3D printed parts that are perfectly compatible using just the most common and cheap Lego bricks.

If you design your parts right, and then glue the bricks to them while snapped to other Lego bricks acting as spacers, your parts can be made to integrate into bigger Lego structures.

I know, gluing is cheating...

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the_digital_dentist
Use Legos for what they are good for and design and print parts that are compatible for things Lego doesn't do.

This. It will always be better to buy the lego's kit then it will be to print it from scratch. The bricks are mass produce to better standards then you can replicate. However, 3D printing is great for the bricks that lego doesn't make or at least doesn't sell outside of massive kits. In those cases, being able to design and print a block that behaves exactly how you need it to drastically outstrips the drawbacks of printing your own blocks.

I can see the usefulness of printing things like gun turrets, space ship stuff that have a lego base, that would be cool. but printing bricks alone is boring.

I may have mis understood the OP's intentions.

Printing Lego is a really good challenge to dial in your printer settings. Real lego is moulded to incredibly precise values, and getting a 3D printed piece that will "clutch" well to real lego is a challenge. The studs have to be the right diameter, the walls need to be the right thickness, the interior holes of the tubes inside the bricks need to be right, get one of those a tiny bit wrong and it'll either fall off, or not go on (or snap the studs off when you try and pull them apart!). I've spend a long time printing bricks, not because the end results where better (or even cheaper) than real lego, but because it became one of those things I just wanted to "get right" You'll spend ages with calipers and tweaking values, but it's pretty satisfying when you get it all dialed in and your bricks just click with real lego.

That being said, designing a new type of brick that is much friendlier to 3D printing and as versatile as real lego is an even bigger (and much more rewarding and useful) challenge.

My grandson always asks me to print him some legos and i dont because it is a pain in the arse... But i like the idea of using it as a measuring stick for printer robustness.

But i printed him some geodesic connector things that he loved!
[www.thingiverse.com]

Those look even more fun to step on than Legos

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jculver09
Those look even more fun to step on than Legos

LOL, add that to the requirement for 3d printer friendly toys, do no harm to the big toe

Can you give me the trigngles?I really want to try it.

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thetazzbot
Take it one step further....

Think about how to design something fun like legos but 3d print friendly, that is something that is relatively quick to print but not difficult like legos.

Here are the problems with legos..

The underside needs support
The pins need to be pretty perfect to fit the next block.
They take a lonnngg time to print

There are other building block style things on thingivers that are cool. I found a triangle shape thing that snaps together and you can make geodesic shapes with it.

Be original dont just print immitations... Invent something

Can you give me the trigngles?I really want to try it.

I posted the link before...

here it is again

[www.thingiverse.com]

Not sure if others' have mentioned it or not -- but there are some cool legos on thingiverse that you can't buy -- weird shapes with angles, impossible pieces etc -- a Han Solo in carbonite brick -- a whole modular lego castle set -- a piece that's lego on one end and knex on the other... -- lots of really cool stuff. -- As for cost effectiveness, I don't know, but I want to do it to offset an existing lego collection with additional cool stuff -- just make sure to print some calibration legos and verify they snap together correctly before printing a big set and realizing they're all .5 mm off or something silly. :-)