Bricks cracking... just from being connected to one another?

[ibecks]

I also seem to have issues with headlight bricks, also mostly on the back. When I rebuilt my modulars after moving house I noticed loads of them, which is really disappointing. Lego customer service got back to me really quickly and asked me to send them pictures of the problem and which replacement bricks I needed.

[krayzie]

I just recently started buying legos for my daughter last year as she is finally old enough to play with them. I've already requested about 30 or so pieces as all the pieces with slopes seem to end up cracking. I've also had a few cracked flat tile pieces. A ton of white pieces from the 2011 target dog gift card set have also developed cracks. I have pieces from sets that were purchased and built 3 months ago that have cracked flat tiles and slope pieces. There seems to be a qc issue with a lot of these pieces... Lego was really helpful with my first two replacement requests but I ended up having to put a third one in due to them failing to send me 2 pieces from my second request. They're now requiring that I send them a receipt for future requests... What started off as great customer service has quickly nose dived.

I was actually able to pickup my lego sets from the early 90's from my parents house this week. I will have to go through those sets and see if they have cracks as I don't recall ever having cracked pieces...

Edited June 27, 2013 by krayzie

[TheLegoDr]

The same thing happened to me. As frustrating as it is, I do understand why they require receipts or other means to prove you bought the set so they aren't just handing out free pieces to people. It became such an ordeal, I quit asking for replacement parts, even though I still require many.

From the group of people I've talked with recently about cracked pieces, none of them have experienced any. I seem to experience many in every set. So odd that it happens, but maybe we get the bad batch.

[Legopast]

I have never in my 16 years of LEGO had an actual brick crack that was being used correctly, Droid arms in the first days of episode one sets and the Mars Mission alien arms where my only concern.

I am yet too see a cracked cheese slope and I also fail too see where they could crack? they seem rather sound to me. I have also noticed the majority of posters are from the U.S.A could this be a regional problem? Is U.S LEGO produced in a different area to European LEGO?

And finally are there any photos of these cracked cheese slopes?

[Aanchir]

The same thing happened to me. As frustrating as it is, I do understand why they require receipts or other means to prove you bought the set so they aren't just handing out free pieces to people. It became such an ordeal, I quit asking for replacement parts, even though I still require many.

From the group of people I've talked with recently about cracked pieces, none of them have experienced any. I seem to experience many in every set. So odd that it happens, but maybe we get the bad batch.

Or it could be some factor that affects different people to different extents, such as heat or humidity. Even if you don't live in a hot or humid place, it could be that your nearest distribution center isn't as well-insulated as others. There are always a lot of reasons these kinds of problems can affect different people to different extents. Of course, when a problem's as widespread as cracking cheese slopes seem to be, it's still something TLG should be looking into.

[Hoschiebaer]

recently i had two incidents of cracking lego (just by being attached to something/built up)

one was the crab from the 2011 altantis set (claw just snapped while being attached to a the "baited hook" of the cmf dwarve fishing rod)

the other was a light bluish gray headlight brick that evolved a crack in one of the sidepieces.

Edited June 27, 2013 by Hoschiebaer

[meyerc13]

I'm in the process of breaking down quite a few sets to use the parts for MOCs. Just last night I ran into more cracked cheese slopes. Also, my son has been interested in Harry Potter recently, so I dug out a set I had bought for parts, assembled once about a year ago, and then disassembled and stored. I was very disappointed to find one of the minifigs with a cracked torso. Luckily I had extra torsos since every set comes with a Harry Potter, but it's sad that a torso would crack without ever being used - only assembled.

It's discouraging to hear that LEGO would start asking for receipts, I don't keep them. I have sets that I bought two years ago for parts and haven't even opened yet... I'm afraid I'm going to find a bunch of cracked parts when I do open them with no recourse.

[Legopast]

It is quite fair for LEGO to ask for receipts as there are many people who would otherwise abuse the system, You cannot expect to take a shirt back to a shop if it falls apart and you have no receipt and LEGO is at the end of the day a business, I think quality control is above average in LEGO when it comes to the toy industry as with products from other companies such as The halo figures from McFarlane Toys priced at £11.00 each I purchased many of these and they literally fell apart whilst being removed from the packaging,

When I was younger G.I joe figures also had the "falling apart" problem with light play ~

LEGO and it's vast array of products have stood up to the test of vigorous play and chewing from countless children in the past and continue with a high standard to this day.

If we think logically they must make Millions of any said brick in a production run and there will be an unlucky few who get that weak brick but LEGO are willing to replace this as long as you provide evidence and go through their system.

As LEGO has grown in popularity I imagine their production runs have grown significantly and the amount of bricks being produced has in turn gone up, ABS is not the cheapest plastic so they have sourced as well as they can a supply which is economic for themselves and turns a profit. But the larger the amount of bricks the larger the error margin will be, Overall I think TLG does a rather good job with brilliant customer service and outstanding brand control with all shops being friendly and inviting and more than willing to help with broken items and the best online customer service I have ever had , Having had conversations over email with LEGO customer support with quick friendly replies and the eventual sorting of all my troubles.

LEGO is by nature a friction connected brick also so bricks are under stress at all times alot of moc'ing does put bricks under extra strain too this may be a factor in the bricks breaking rather than quality of said product for intended use.

(I realise I have gotten quite carried away here but thank you for your time and this interesting conversation )

[fred67]

This is an issue we've discussed before; I will insist that there must be something environmental going on, as some people seem to have it happen a LOT, and some people have it happen few and far between, but there doesn't seem to be many people that have it happen somewhere in the middle.

In the last thread on the subject, I mentioned that I have not had any problems with cheese slopes; if you look in my signature, you'll see some modular castle stuff that I did a long time ago; the modules are not connected to each other, but they are assembled in storage - I'm talking about hundreds of cheese slopes, and not a single one has cracked.

Most of my sets get assembled and sit on the shelves for years - and no cracks, and yes, while I didn't look today, I have looked.

I don't even have the greatest storage conditions - I live near Atlanta, and although I have air conditioning, most of my LEGO is in a bonus room that is not on the central air. I only use the wall unit when I'm there, so the LEGO often languishes in hot (high 80s to low 90s) in the summer, and it gets cold here, too - freezing weather in the winter.

They do stay out of direct sun light, but other than that they are under less than perfect conditions - and yet not a single broken cheese. I've had maybe two cracked pieces of LEGO that I can recall, ever, in addition to one cracked bionicle part that came that way from a garage sale.

[Alcarin]

I never had a problem with LEGO so far....

After I cam from my Dark Ages I built and bought about 20 sets.... nothing wrong so far...

[Legopast]

Maybe we should compare climates? or locations,

I have had 0 problems with LEGO products breaking in normal use (forgiving droid arms) Living in Great Britain the temperatures are never too extreme and they stay quite similar it is not very dusty here or polluted as I live near the sea in a non industrial town

Could it be man made environmental factors?

[TheLegoDr]

I would like to agree with the notion it could be environmentally related. The transition from heat to humid to freezing conditions would be hard on anything. But I also can't get behind that argument, since my old LEGO bricks from the early 90s were in totes in a garage without insulation in northwestertn Nebraska (meaning 100+ F summers and well below 0 degree F winters) and none of those bricks are cracked or warped. A lot were actually still connected since I put them together in my youth, so going on almost 20 years now. No stresses noticed on them.

Most of my LEGO is purchased from S@H or the LEGO store. Rarely do I pick anything up from retail stores other than a good clearance item. Those sets currently are in our basement. It is a very similar climate to my childhood climate, only maybe not as cold or hot. And being in the basement actually keeps them cooler in the summer. I am currently sitting on a stockpile of sets that i haven't had time to build, but then I also have other sets that I have used to MOC with. Every piece is coming from a brand new sealed set and within a short amount of time they are cracked or cracked straight from the box. You don't see the crack inspecting each individual piece until you put it on another piece to see the stress. So either that initial clutch causes enough stress to crack it, or it was already cracked and is only visible based on the clutch. Either way, it is unacceptable. LEGO does have millions of pieces going out all over the world and as far as I can tell, I'm one of the few with all of these problems. So maybe I do just end up with the faulty products, but it seems odd for me to get such a high ratio of damaged bricks or missing bricks. I've had quite a few sets with missing bricks too. I open all of the bags into piles on contrasting colored rugs/carpet or the like so I can see all of the pieces easily. So as much validity there is to a lot of opposing arguments, I still will combat it.

I do agree with LEGO having to see receipts. There are many people out there that will abuse the system. However, as stated above, some people don't keep all of their receipts. And a lot of my LEGO are gifts from family members, so they keep the receipts for the short amount of time after they buy it then dispose of them. So that isn't always the best proof of purchase. And with that said, people could easily still abuse the system even though they bought the set. They would have a receipt, but still get free LEGO from the company based on a lie. I don't agree with that one bit and I would never do such a thing, but dishonest people can do a lot of things to get around the system.

I'd love to be able to not have a single brick damaged, ever, let alone straight out of the box, but I don't think that is in the cards for me. Cheese slopes are a major problem for me, which is understandable since it may be thinner in a certain area of the mold, but then why do so many others not have a lot of cracked cheese slopes also? And from what I can tell, my 1x4 and 2x6 arches are actually more susceptible to cracking than cheese slopes. I'm currently building a miniature scale Hogwarts and with the tan pieces used, I have lots of cheese slopes, plates, arches, and 1x2 log bricks cracked. Just odd is all..

[meyerc13]

The thing that is interesting to me is that the problem seems to occur most frequently with certain colors and certain parts. I have many cracked white cheese slopes, but I've only found two non-white cheese cracked. One was a Dark Bley (just found this one this week), the other is an orange from a Friends set that broke within hours of the set being assembled (by me).

Overall white seems to be a problem color, lots of reports of white cracked pieces. This might be because the cracks are easier to see, but even taking that into consideration I still suspect white cracks more often than other colors. Sand green is another color I've seen reported frequently.

If this were strictly environmental, why aren't all parts/colors impacted equally? I work in risk management, working with vulnerabilities and threats. Applying that in this case the vulnerability is in the plastic, the environment might be the threat vector that exploits that vulnerability, but if the plastic wasn't vulnerable the bricks wouldn't be cracking.

As for proof of purchase, I'd happily send the cracked bricks back to LEGO, but I couldn't produce proof of purchase for most of what I own. The parts should be proof enough, and broken parts are no good to me.

One final thought, for those who say they have no cracked bricks, I wonder if they just haven't found them yet. I didn't know I had cracked bricks until I actively started looking for them. Take light color cheese slopes and put them on a black plate, or dark colored and put them on a white plate. When you do that, it's much easier to spot the crack. Mine all seem to crack right in the middle, starting at the bottom and going up the front slope. You can't really see the crack when you hold the piece in your hand, you can sometimes feel it with your fingernail. If you flex the piece it will separate where it shouldn't. It's only really visible though when you put the piece on a stud, sometimes only when the stud is a contrasting color.

Edited June 29, 2013 by meyerc13

[splatman]

I'm going with the environmental factor (E-factor) concerning cracked bricks, though, to a point, considering what fred67 and others said, there must be something else at play also. I inspected a thingy I've built a few years ago, the other day, and all but 1 of the 8 or so white cheese slopes I looked at have those little cracks on the lower end. There it is again! Cracked white cheeses! I have probably a 1000 or more cheeses in a dozen colors, that I have not used yet, though I did not inspect any yet. When I do, I'll use the Edit function to report my findings.

My LEGO Room is in between a living room on the south, a bedroom on the north, and a hall on the east. Its single west-facing window is covered, so almost no light gets inside. I use a lamp in it. It's near Gig Harbor, Washington. The room's temp is usually a steady 60 degrees Fahrenheit, save for summer, when it sometimes gets warmer (no A/C in the house).

My money's on a combo of the E-factor and falling quality, considering the reports of older LEGO bricks living on w/o cracks.

Another thing I've considered, is the presence, and thus, interaction with the LEGO bricks, of certain chemical vapors, such as from various types of wood, the glues in plywood and particleboard, other plastics, carpeting, paints, paper and cardboard, electronics (Ever smell a PC monitor when it's warm from normal operation? Or a new one fresh out of the box?), auto exhaust, room air fresheners, fabric softeners, and cooking odors. I also no longer have a computer in the room (removed it about 2 months ago).

Everything after electronics on the above list have little relevance, since I keep the door closed.

When you can no longer smell something, it may still be giving off fumes; just so mild that you either no longer notice it, or it's below your capability to detect it. Such as paint on the walls long after it was applied. Or other things that are more than a few years old, and so have "lost their smell", though you can still smell something if you put it up to your nose.

I'm still leaning more toward the falling quality issue as a possibility.

I have not bought any LEGO in over 2 years, partly due to this issue.

TLG, if you're reading this, please, do something about this issue. We would like our bricks to stay crack-free.

[Aanchir]

One reason white cheese may be more likely to crack than other colors could have something to do with the fact that white cheese slopes were originally molded in polycarbonate, the same as transparent cheese slopes. Nowadays opaque cheese slopes are molded in ABS, but I have no doubt PC white cheese slopes were still showing up for quite some time after ABS ones were introduced, and may still be showing up.

As for cheese slopes in general, there's no doubt that the geometry of the cheese slope is a factor. There's no other reason that cheese slopes (and for that matter, any part with a 1x1 anti-stud that surrounds a stud on all sides) would be so much more likely to crack than other parts. From a layman's perspective, this makes some degree of sense. The walls of 1x1 elements often grip studs more tightly than the walls of other elements, and there are more contact points with the stud relative to the size of the piece than with larger elements, where amount of space occurring between contact points might relieve some of the stress. Someone with more of a physics or engineering background (Front?) could probably chime in and either confirm that notion or tell me that's a totally off-base assumption.

A production quality factor is likely as well, given that 80s and 90s parts didn't have this issue to nearly the same extent. But it's not necessarily a case of cost-cutting — it's not entirely unknown for some novel innovation to be introduced to solve one problem, which then inadvertently causes another. As an example, the thinner walls of 2x4 bricks today are in part intended to improve clutch power, but as a result of this combined with other production changes, modern 2x4 bricks are more translucent than older ones.

But environmental factors, either during production, during packing, or after purchase, could perhaps have some influence on why the problem affects some people more than others. During 2007, lime green BIONICLE ball cups were much more likely to crack than other colors, and the reason given by the LEGO Group was that there was a batch of these parts that had not cooled properly. Of course, the very next year the ball cups were replaced by a new style with different geometries, and while this was presumably an attempt to correct this issue, the new ones would break often no matter WHAT their color. We didn't get perfectly resilient ball cups again until the 2011 Hero Factory sets. So again, sometimes problems emerge as a result of an intended solution, and geometry has a big impact.

Edited June 29, 2013 by Aanchir

[gandalf the brick]

I have noticed this in 1×1 white cheese slopes

[Prince Manic]

Well during a little trailer for my upcoming second part to the Lone Ranger Train Chase brickfilm I was gonna do my gold holders began to crack on me just a tiny hairline one that you can see in the light, could this mean I have a set that has weak pieces or something was at fault with LEGO?

So now I could do a replacement by saying a piece broke on me or try a buy a piece so I can get another one but will crack again, the bell one is the worst one it's close to being broken and there will be no bell now.

So should I just use the replacment parts to get the Golden one and say it broke on me and explain it? I was gonna say this "The piece began to crack while snapping it on the beams." that I could say any ideas on how I can tell them that the piece cracked when I was installing it on the beams? This also applies to the Plate with Stick on too.

[JopieK]

they will replace it indeed, I had problems with Tiles in the Maersk train and they did replace it!

[Prince Manic]

they will replace it indeed, I had problems with Tiles in the Maersk train and they did replace it!

Wow once I do all that they email me on how to pay for that so I can know how much is it, I've got another (the extra one) is cracked too but is holding the fez still and snaps still but weakened a lot. I did another mod to the locomotive anyway by removing the last plate on the roof with the stick at the end anyway, the REAL model doesn't have a some kind of lamp hanging. Edited October 29, 2013 by Prince Manic

[JopieK]

I'm puzzled why they did not replace it for free then, they do in Europe / Holland!

[Prince Manic]

I'm puzzled why they did not replace it for free then, they do in Europe / Holland!

I'm doing the whole buy a piece thing not replacments I'm gonna get some extra pieces so I can work them off and get stuff I need within' to base a jupiter loco out of the Lone Ranger Instructions but I'll need two Flanged red driver wheels as I've tested that out and it turns perfectly with the two flanged ones.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Prince Manic

[Timoonn]

New curved slopes seem to crack as mini slopes. But less frequently.

[Vee]

Damn it! You people just showed me the dead pixels in my monitor that I was not aware of, now my eyes will always see them...

Ok, this is just a parallel. The point is that I didn't know that Lego pieces (can) crack by itself, with no good reason. All I read is that Lego is expensive because it is super high quality, super high precision, super durable and, again, super high price, and this is the first time I read about the bricks cracking. I am now worried. I am new as an AFOL so that explains why I never found a cracked piece. It helps that, unaware of the problem, I never even thought about looking for cracks; maybe I have some pieces, some don't connect too well anymore, but I just thought it was normal, now I will look for the cracks and as the old book says, "seek and you shall find"!

What worries me is that I used to collect Swarovski crystals, my wife and I used to love them, and, as it happens with Lego, they are expensive. We thought that they would last forever, being crystal, but one day I find that a piece of one of our Fabulous Creatures had fallen out, it just fell out. I visited a store and complained. I was told that excessive dry season could make the glue that holds the crystals parts together to fail with time but Swarovski, for the lifetime of any of their product, would fix them for free. And they did, they fixed it. Anyway, this event changed our vision of Swarovski and we never bought any more Swarovski ever since, it is been now more than 10 years. And we now see them in display, they are beautiful but it lacks something now and we don't feel the need to buy them anymore. The End.

I am afraid that if I start finding cracked pieces in my expensive well-taken-care-of Legos, this will be also The End for me. Well, I always look at the bright side, money will be saved, and this is good!

[Lego Otaku]

A tip for the concerned AFOLs: don't put anything together or if you put something together, put on beer glasses before taking it apart so you won't see cracks.

I have a Emerald Night and a few of the black cheese slopes have cracks after being around for almost 2 years

[Faefrost]

I think the most common problem surrounds cheese slopes and other newer similar sloped parts. Further it seems most prone in certain specific colors. With white, yellow and certain intermediary blends of them being most pronounced. Finally it seems erratic. Some people do not see it ever. But others will find it happening a lot.

Working, but probably likely hypothesis; it is a combination of three things. Part geometry and stresses, color chemistry, and environment, most likely temperature variances.

The biggest issue is most likely with the geometry of the cheese slope part itself. Anachir pointed out some of the stresses above. But in the case of a cheese slope it is further exacerbated because by nature of the part the forces are not evenly distributed. A 1x1 plate, tile or round, while gripping a stud with high clutch, still have an even amount of reinforcement all the way around. The very nature and shape of the cheese slope means the uphill side is more reinforced than the down hill side, and the slope sides will have uneven force across them. Now this is not in and of itself a huge problem. The parts obviously work, and they are wildly popular for doing things no other parts can. So the uneven force is a bit of a design trade off.

The part geometry probably does not become a huge issue until the parts get put under pressure and then subjected to an environmental force, probably heating and cooling over time. Just enough to cause some flex and added stress. This may be exacerbated in situations where unlike plastics are joining, such as ABS cheese slopes on a vacu form styrene baseplate. Or attached to polycarbonate. (Or it may be worse ABS to ABS, I'm just wildly speculating here.)

Finally color. We often forget that in plastics color = chemistry! and chemistry = strength and properties of the plastic. So different colors of the same type of plastic may behave somewhat differently. A white or a red may be more brittle than a green, which may feel different or seem softer than a blue, etc. so different colors of the same part may handle stress differently. This is one of the reasons why we do not see every part in every color. TLG has to do a lot of testing. It's also one of the key reasons that some clone brands are so horrid. They don't do anywhere near the degree of needed testing on color properties.

A combination of all 3 of these is probably what brings some light colored cheese slopes to form cracks under stress. Is it a "quality issue" ? Yes and no. Remember the cheese slope is a fairly new part. In this regard it isn't all that different from the old school space helmets and clips. I'm sure Lego is working to reduce or eliminate the issue in future revisions of the part. In the meantime does anyone here want to give up cheese slopes until they do? Show of hands?

As far as color variations, such as yellows and blues not being as consistent. That's I'm sure the unfortunate downside to improving production technologies. In the old days Lego used pre colored plastic pellets from Bayer. Very consistent color, but much more complicated production, more limited color pallets, etc. these days they use a newer color injection system. They use a single neutral color plastic pellet, and the color is injected into the molten plastic during the Lego production process. It probably isn't quite as perfectly precise as the old pre colored pellets. But it offers so many production benefits that it is generally a worthwhile trade off. Notice how we see more colors per set these days? And lots more use of subtler colors. This is why. They can make part A in color B as needed. They don't have to setup huge vast batches of red or blue etc to the extent they used to. This means the designers are no longer limited to whatever color they have huge vats of in the warehouse, and instead can be more creative and flexible in color use in their designs as well. Sometimes advancing technology has a few trade offs. Perfect color consistency down to the level beyond human perception is one of the trade offs.