Lego 2x3 Plate Mold

[LegoCityMann]

A friend of this posted it to my facebook wall today and I thought I would share here as I have never seen one before. I even looked thru Gary's CD and didn't find anything like it.

[Stinky]

Wow! That sure would look nice in anybody's collection...

[Zeya]

That's awesome to see. I haven't seen a mold before either. Thanks for sharing.

By the way, I think that's a 2x3 plate, not 2x3 brick. It looks shallow to me.

[jimmynick]

Thanks for sharing this picture with us! I've never seen a LEGO mold before. It's curious that the parts of the mold that didn't touch the plastic are still very shiny, but the parts that made the bricks are dull. Do you know if they are made of different materials?

[CorneliusMurdock]

I thought TLG buried these in Billund to keep them out of the hands of their competitors... Or is that just an AFOL myth?

[Bamos]

Standard practice to destroy a mold is to mill the impression out of it and recycle the rest or use it for something else. The shiny part may have been hard chromed to reduce wear. The dies themselves look like they are inserts and can be changed out.

Bill

[LEGO Historian]

I will chime in and add that I have never seen a LEGO mold in an image with that much detail. They do show one in THE WORLD OF LEGO TOYS, but it wasn't that clear of an image, possibly purposefully so.

There are no known molds in private collectors hands, and TLG plans on keeping it that way. I'm assuming this was a display item at a LEGO fair (hence the display tag). Parts of the LEGO molds are sprayed with MRA (mold release agent)... so they may not always look so nice and shiny like this one. I'm betting it was cleaned up first before display use.

Now if someone can please provide me with the buried location of the Cypress Tree mold, as well as a hammer and chisel, I'd appreciate it!

[Faefrost]

A great look at a mold. There were a couple of good looks at them undergoing maintenance in the National Geographic Megafactories episode, but this shows one nice and up close.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2wah736BAc

Does this help explain why these molds cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars? And what they expect the output of such a mold to be?

[Jargo]

Would this have come from a production plant in the USA?

[Nightshroud99]

I have to admit this is pretty neat, I have never seen something like this before.

[Purpearljellyblob]

Thank you for sharing the picture LegoCityMann and very nice video FaeFrost!

It is really great to know the origins and how it is manufactured.

[jonwil]

I suspect there is nothing in that image that would be a surprise to someone skilled in the art of making precision injection molds. I doubt there is anything in there that is somehow special to LEGO and that isn't used by other makers of injection molded parts.

Edited February 21, 2013 by jonwil

[Vindicare]

I have a photo saved on my iPad of probably that same mold(a 2x3 mold, but no pieces in it). Not sure where I originally saw it.

[CopMike]

Nice picture!

There are some that you can see in Billund, in the Museum and the factory during guided tours. There were a fully functional moulding machine making red 2x4 bricks in Copenhagen at Lego World last weekend. When the employee handed out the bricks they were still warm!

Here's an article from CNET with some nice pictures and text !

[Stinky]

@CopMike: Great story, thanks!

Makes me wonder if any of the factory staff would themselves be an AFOL? Could well be that

when you get at home at night after long hours of inhaling plastic dust you don't really have the

need to work on your MOC.... :)

[splatman]

Is that the one in Legoland CA?

I've seen it and took a pic of it. Though all the mold cavities were empty.

I was slightly disappointed, that it is attached to the table; I wanted to know first-hand the weight of that beast.

[CopMike]

In this article on Wikipedia you can read all you ever need to know about molds or die as they also are called.

[Thorg23]

Thanks for posting that video Faefrost; that was really interesting.

[Hrw-Amen]

Nice to see that, it is a lot bigger than I expected it to be!

[Catanas]

Thanks for posting. I always wondered what one of these looked like and it's just as heavy duty as I'd expected. And to be honest, I can't even imagine what 120,000,000 2x3 plates would look like so I hope the mould gets a long and comfortable retirement package.

[Rolf]

Wow thats awesome.

[Lego Otaku]

Looking at the size (looks to be about 7"x10"?), it can be easy to understand why LEGO won't make new mold for original Monorail system. Consider this: a curved track is 32 stud by 32 stud when laid straight. Which means a mold would need to be minimum of about 15" x 6" for a single track. That means big mold for one track. Add to that only one track at a time, and average of about 15 seconds or more to fill with plastic, then cool it to solidify it, then pop it for next piece. That comes to 4 per minute or 240 tracks per hour without making a flawed part. (how long would a curved section take to fill and cool??) Almost forgot, the track section has recessed studs on the side of the track, a simple 2 part mold can't do that so it's likely a complex mold with smaller moving parts to form the recessed studs.

All but 1 monorail set needs 4 curved tracks, one machine would be churning nonstop for a few weeks for each of the 4 sets (6990 and 6991 plus 2 expansions sets) and likely over a month for 6399 shuttle set. During which time it won't be able to produce other parts. Now one piece per mold vs 8 smaller common bricks which can be used in more sets, needs shorter cooling time (being smaller), I'd suspect a whole lotta more pieces per minute this way. You can see the difference in cost per piece this way, one huge piece with longer fill and cool time or lots of small pieces with shorter fill and cool time, the smaller pieces can have quicker return on investment and pay off the mold much sooner.

I doubt the mold for monorail ever reached 10 million uses before it was lost* and when you consider how much those costs to make, combined with how poorly it was selling in the end LEGO very likely lost money on monorail-specific molds.

* I heard a mold was lost but LEGO never explained in detail or which mold specifically, for all I know it was intentionally destroyed and scrapped into new mold blank for different pieces. But a proper monorail set needs: mold for motor, motor base, monorail base, bogies, curved tracks, and straight tracks. (switches and slopes are optional) If any of those are missing, it can't be made without making new replacement mold. Plus the original battery box and power cable are obsolete so a redesigned motor to use current PF system is required.

I read somewhere that LEGO spends a few hundred thousands dollars for a single mold, plus some more money invested in redesigning the motor house and base, and source of suitable motor that is similar sized, if LEGO ever wants to restart monorail line. So maybe a million or so dollars to restart monorail line? If LEGO sells them for high costs, it'd sell slowly and die quickly. If LEGO sells it cheaply, it might sell faster but with smaller profit margin. Either way it'd take a lot longer to pay off the mold than with most other parts.

Maybe if Disney demanded LEGO come up with Disneyland themed sets and include monorail, we might see it. Until then, we'd need miracle for it to come back (such as finding all of the original molds intact)

Edited February 3, 2014 by Lego Otaku

[Artanis I]

I'm not bothered so much that there aren't going to be any new monorail sets for sale, it's more the fact that there won't be any more tracks or train parts entering the after-market. Once they're gone, they're gone. Also we'll never get the battery box, motor or tracks in other colours.

We won't see it back again, but it's such a sad thing to consider that I still like to dream that maybe, one day...

[lord raphael]

May it Rip.Retire in peace.

[KringlesBricks]

Still amazes me how a big mold makes tiny pieces that get sucked up by "mom vacuums"!!

I still dream of the monorail when I see one in person, photos, or when someone actually has the sets and accessories...just wish I wasn't so young with only allowance money to get Lego Sets. I didn't have such a large allowance...