Mylenium

Eurobricks Knights
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Everything posted by Mylenium

  1. Mylenium

    Is It Possible To Reintroduce Old Sets?

    Holy smokes! TL;DR! I'm out of here. Mylenium
  2. Mylenium

    Is It Possible To Reintroduce Old Sets?

    Oh please, don't spout LEGO's self-motivated propaganda for the umpteenth time. It's in their interest to tell people molds are expensive to justify their prices, but the reality is just the opposite. Molds have never been as expensive as the moon and at the current point have never been cheaper thanks to CNC milling, electric erosion, inductive partial tempering, laser stuff and so on. Yes, a "block" (all the connections and ancillary that holds the actual mold and the mold combined) costs a given amount X, but when small 100 people facilities producing in the B2B sector can afford having custom molds made, then so can LEGO. And given their revenue, they can do so more than once a year. For aforementioned reasons your argument also fails on the precision point, BTW. Nobody intentionally degrades quality in the hopes of producing cheaper molds. That's just not how this works... Mylenium
  3. Mylenium

    Is It Possible To Reintroduce Old Sets?

    There's sensible profit margins and then there's 20 Euro Beatboxes. LEGO killed it right out of the gate by even trying to sell these products at such abhorrent prices. Sure, everything a company like LEGO does is to generate some form of benefit (not always monetary), but it's not like we're talking luxury products you can sell at totally arbitrary prices. They simply overstepped the line with VIDIYO and got slapped hard for it. Mylenium
  4. Mylenium

    About Brickshelf...

    As safe as anything hosted on a private domain that barely seems to scrape by... And it's clearly not helping that there's a new one opening every few months.. Mylenium
  5. Mylenium

    Is It Possible To Reintroduce Old Sets?

    But then again LEGO is still its own worst enemy. I would have loved for VIDIYO to be a success since I love weird, crazy colors and unique characters (the first series was the only series of minifigures I made a point to collect completely), but no matter what, it is crystal clear why it bombed. Greed simply got the better of them and even after all these years the foregone conclusion has to be that they don't understand the digital world. These two factors always will get in the way and I fear Dreamzzz already is showing signs of being the next victim of their politics and policies. So yes, of course they'll need to experiment and come up with new stuff, but how inapt they are in doing so is still baffling. Mylenium It's well established that it was a combination of factors. Costly molds were one of them, but they also had serious quality issues overall, issues with their color system, lack of packaging automation and so on. You name it and it probably applies. Mylenium
  6. Mylenium

    Is It Possible To Reintroduce Old Sets?

    Probably none. At this point I would assume that anything that is still being produced and has been continually produced for the last twenty years is based on new molds. Not that I know. This stuff randomly pops up in articles on sites like New Elementary that specialize in obsessing about molds and pieces. I vaguely seem to remember that e.g. pretty much all of the octagon system molds have been scrapped/ repurposed and I would assume that this is true for a lot of molds from that era. Mylenium
  7. Mylenium

    Is It Possible To Reintroduce Old Sets?

    I don't see it that dramatically. Outside the "aged AFOL" bubble it would be treated just like any series and it is reasonable to assume the same steps and procedures would apply, meaning it would be part of a greater plan. In such a scenario they would be aware which sets to promoto and how the metrics are and they'd have a contingency plan to quickly pull the plug if things don't work out. Mylenium
  8. Mylenium

    Is It Possible To Reintroduce Old Sets?

    Probably not. The ways how molds are mounted and fed, the block sizes and whatnot have changed considerably over time and molds do age, so even if they still have them, they at least need a polish and possibly major adaptations to fit in a new machine. And some of those molds have already been reported as missing or damaged (not just the infamous goat), so LEGO would have to invest in new ones. That is the question, is it not? A better question likely is "How much of a profit?". They have been known to burn money on non-profitable projects just to show off and of course we could argue endlessly how poorly some sets actually sell. I think it's more important to consider how things balance out overall, not the individual product's success. This in turn could totally mean they would be willing to accrue losses on a revived older set if in turn it sparks interest in other sets and they recover the money that way. Mylenium
  9. Mylenium

    Those damn renders

    They look completely different, though, so this is a non-argument, I'm afraid. Within reason - certainly - and unlike @Murdoch17 claims, renders can be perfectly perfect. It's just that LEGO always seems to hire the most incompetent graphics artists. And to make matters worse, they have made it a habit of adding deceptive touch-ups from recoloring elements to messing with structural items that don't look nice. At the end of the day none of it likely reaches the level of standing up in court, though, frustrating as it may be. There's no rule in any customer laws I know where it says that it has to be 100% exact, even here in the EU with its pretty strict regulations. It only has to be representative of the final product and has to have the necessary info and disclaimers. In the end, it's a grey area and companies will use what they can get away with, which is the point. As a graphics guy myself I sure have done things along those lines in the past just because clients requested their product to look more favorably. Mylenium
  10. Nope. Only deco pieces like the barrel can be used that way, but they are meant to not be load-bearing. And that kind of seems to be the point: LEGO would likely never do such an element because of stability criteria. There's no way to add reinforcement ridges and such to such thin elements and that is most definitely the dealbreaker for your 1.25 x 1.25 barrel element you seem to be after. Mylenium
  11. You could wrap it in a big bag and attach a vacuum cleaner to suck out more moisture and draw out large gobs of water from the inside hollows of bricks. Mold is definitely a concern if you just let it dry conventionally over months. Mylenium
  12. You probably could clean it in an industrial vacuum washing chamber. The vacuum would ensure that any remnants are drawn out to not produce water spots and depending on the model you could wash the model with a super fine spray fog instead of actual flowing water, which would help to avoid small parts coming off... Mylenium
  13. Mylenium

    Odd-Figs Do you like them?

    Just look up their own "How minifigures are produced" video. What was the number? 35000 minifigs per hour on a single fully automated production line? If after that you still believe a minifig costs more than 10 Cents, then I don't know... I'm willing to concede that one of those little drop-shaped guys perhaps costs them 3 Cent, but at the end of the day it's a tiny fraction of the cost of a whole set. And it's not like the Dreamzzz sets would be stuffed to the brim with either minifigs or those little guys and neither were Nexo Knights or Elves. So from where I'm sitting, LEGO doing this as a cost-saving measure and to spite minifig aficionados makes absolutely no sense whatsoever when we're talking about this monetary value of a set at large. Point in case: There's no intrinsic value to a minifigure or other creature beyond what it costs to produce. Everything else is just licensing fees and fanboys losing their marbles over rare Star Wars minifigs or whatever. Mylenium
  14. Mylenium

    Odd-Figs Do you like them?

    Weird logic. They "cheapen out" by creating a new mold? Also as the @Classic_Spaceman already said, many of these little buggers are printed and they use standard minifig heads. In fact there's one in one the sets that uses the 2x "minifig big head". And of course all the new accessories and recolored pieces. I really can't see why this would be so terrible. My only complaint really would have to be that LEGO are being miserly by not even having them in every set and when they do, their definitely could be more. Mylenium
  15. Mylenium

    Odd-Figs Do you like them?

    The new Dreamzzz minis are cute with their little tummies and doughy, drop/ blob like appearance. Other than that I can only speak for a few of the Elves goblins. Some are cute, some are not, so it's a bit of a mixed bag. Generally, though, I would prefer if occasionally LEGO did more of these miniaturized figures just to have options when something isn't minifig size. On the other end I would throw in another vote for some sort of Technic figures. Not necessarily the old ones, though. It would need to be updated notably to look pretty and fit with today's standards and expectations. I always found it odd that you had to use Playmobil or other such figures just to man your machines and vehicles... Mylenium
  16. Mylenium

    More classic models on the way?

    They could just stop doing that and then none of this has any meaning. Wasting time on such speculation is as productive as asking random strangers on the street about their opinion on the matter. Or straight to the point: It's utterly and completely pointless. Companies do what companies do and LEGO is just another big corporate blob whose decision making eludes anyone not working inside at the highest levels. Mylenium
  17. Mylenium

    When was Bat mould changed?

    Yes, it's common. Most "molds" are actually multi-piece frames and not every item may carry numbering or labeling. That's the same as some items have differently located injection points depending on whether they are on the left/ right side or top/ bottom of a sprue/ injection gate. Nothing to worry. It's just one of those pesky myths that just won't die and people keep mis-quoting. Not every original LEGO piece has the logo. Mylenium
  18. You will need to adjust your frame construction e.g. with 4070 bricks and brackets. the way you built it wouldn't work in the real world, anyway. Mylenium
  19. Mylenium

    Surprisingly expensive pieces

    I could probably invoke bragging rights over some Technic pieces in rare colors and of course certain minifigure components. Similar to you I also think I have various modified bricks in very rare colors and another such item are hinge plates/ C-clamp plates. Since I don't catalog my stuff I'm usually surprised what treasures I have when randomly checking stuff on Bricklink. Just selling a handful of those pieces could finance a big set sometimes... Mylenium
  20. Mylenium

    When was Bat mould changed?

    https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=519 Mylenium
  21. Mylenium

    Straighten up trees

    You could try to put them in hot water and/ or heat them with a dry blower, but certainly don't boil them. Industrial processes e.g. for extruding plastic tubes and rods use around 50 deg C to 60 deg C to "relax" the plastic and to straighten the product, but I wouldn't go much higher. Mylenium
  22. This one: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3228c#T=C Not a "monorail" piece, though. My mistake. Mylenium And that makes exactly sense because...? They just brought back this piece after not producing it for 12 years: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=2577#T=C Did they use an old mold? Built a new one? We don't know for sure, but seeing how sparingly it was used even back in the day I'm sure they dusted off an old mold, de-greased it, gave it a polish and just used it. Same for a few other legacy pieces that have resurfaced in recent years. That isn't meant to dismiss your point out of hand as I'm sure they indeed got rid of many molds and don't have endless storage space in their vaults, but no doubt they have many old molds still around. And honestly, LEGO can't well claim molds would be super-expensive and then discard them left and right. Even on that level it wouldn't make a lick of sense... Mylenium
  23. I don't see the problem. They're basically already doing it all the time, including bringing back the short straight monorail pieces as decorations on the Daily Bugle set. At this point LEGO are so large that even "limited run" productions mean tens of thousands of packages and what's to stop them from firing up one of their smaller machines for a few hours just for that? We could agree that taking molds out of storage, dusting them off and prepping for production could be a cost factor, but even that would only open up endless discussions on why it's in LEGOs best interest to perpetuate the myth that molds cost as much as the NASA space program, which couldn't be further from reality... From a mere technical standpoint they should not have any issues. The planning and logistics are no doubt a much bigger concern. Mylenium
  24. Based on so little information there is no point to even guess. Number of frames, complexity of the models, materials, sampling settings, lighting, output resolution, the computer's specsand a ton of other factors influence this. I mean just for perspective I started out doing 3D when rendering a simple sphere took several minutes in the most crappy quality... Rendering a reasonably complex model taking a bunch of time is perfectly normal even on the most powerful computer. anyway, you have to be much more specific and provide info about all your settings and a screenshot of the scene before anyone can assess whether your render times are within normal expectations or excessive and from there on can advise on optimizations. Mylenium
  25. Mylenium

    Weight allowance for joints?

    As @MAB already says there's a million factors. I remember it all too well: On the LEGO Ninjago Movie big shark sub they felt like they would never move, on the First Order Assault Walker the felt a lot less rigid due to the length of the legs. it will really depend a lot on angles, length of segments etc.. Mylenium