Mylenium

Eurobricks Knights
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Everything posted by Mylenium

  1. Mylenium

    Follow up on lego banning me

    Get in touch with whatever customer rights organisation in your country/ area and ask them what can be done. You have a faulty product and are entitled to getting the situation rectified. Mylenium
  2. They've gotten really pissy towards customers at B&P. They will cancel even the simplest order for defective or missing and you have contact them again and appeal your case. Mylenium
  3. It might be worth adding some questions for internal electrification (e.g. USB ports for turntables and lighting kits) and labeling/ displaying plaques. Personally, if I were ever to purchase a custom shelf, I'd also look for customizeability by ways of having ramps to display models at an angle or being able to have custom inserts that can fit into standard pattern holes like on professional exhibition showcases in museums... Mylenium
  4. Mylenium

    Vintage Baseplate Paint Restoring

    Probably just a standard matte acrylic paint. Printing with UV-curing paints wasn't really a thing in those days and enamels don't respond to isopropyl. Any modelling acrylic like the one @MAB suggested will do. Mylenium
  5. Mylenium

    Unusual/illegal building techniques

    That's not illegal and your post illustrates the core problem of the discussion: People perceive things as "illegal" that aren't and on the other hand will happily accept techniques that actually are damaging to the material and model as being non-illegal. Yes, of course it's nuanced and the conditions under which certain connections and techniques are used can influence this as well. A connection can be perfectly legal one moment, but turns illegal when you add a wrong element next to it. There's potential for infinite discussion here. Mylenium
  6. Mylenium

    Unusual/illegal building techniques

    They are in the sense that they put stress on the plastic and affect stability of the models. Whether you care about that in any way is of course entirely up to you. I do to a certain extent, but that's just my engineering mindset shaped by my work bleeding into my hobby, I guess. Mylenium They rarely do, though, and when they do, they're quick to declare it an unfortunate accident. Mylenium
  7. Hard to center those little buggers if you print a few thousand of them per hour. I'm sure the holding notch is very flat and there's a lot of unwanted slipping going on. Mylenium
  8. SRSLY? *lol* Using stickers is a decision not a "problem". You still incur extra cost. Technically of course it's not at all an issue to manage even the biggest inventory in the day and age of computers, but you still have to transport the actual physical product. See above. Managing it is one thing, actually moving stuff another. Mylenium Depends on the subject, I suppose. I never considered it relevant for Technic sets for instance when I was still into that. Price or how "precious" a set is is not necessary a criteria. To me it's usually about whether or not a print would add to the model. Sticking with the Technic example I for instance always cooling gills or fuel hatches to be printed, but at the same time I couldn't really be bothered with the branding. At the end of the day a panel plastered with advertisements is also unattractive and kinda useless for other stuff. Perhaps in the end that would be a line of thinking to pursue: Rather than wanting to have everything printed, consideration should be given how it improves the base level rudimentary appearance of a model. Mylenium
  9. They won't. With soon to be ten production facilities across the globe they just won't transport a bunch 1 x 4 x 3 bricks from Vietnam to Billund to print them or whatever people imagine would happen here. To me that's the biggest point people are always oblivious about - LEGO's internal production flow and logistics. And you can spin this however you want it. If they don't want to transport plastic pieces, they have to share molds and transport them around or create duplicates in every factory or even more critically they'll have to build a printing department in every one of them. It really is one of those things where no matter what they do they can't get it right. They've simply grown beyond a point where you can sensibly handle everything in a single place like pretty much all their many times smaller competitors. I dislike stickers as much as the next guy and never use them, but once I put on my production manager/ engineer hat, I totally get why things are as they are. Yes, certainly. Even with 4+ sets or other sets aimed at the youngest kids there is no stringent logic as to what gets printed and what is a sticker (aside from the technical stuff). Mylenium
  10. Mylenium

    Are these axles the same height?

    They are not. You need to insert a bracket or a lamp brick for a half plate thick offset. Mylenium
  11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_cosines The rest is a quantization problem, which is the hard part. It's one of those things Studio should have a panel for perhaps... Mylenium
  12. Mylenium

    That "No More BigFigs" Rumour

    Nobody can have a link because LEGO never said any such thing. Even the mere assertion that they won't do big figs anymore sounds ludicrous. Why would they not? This may have come up as a point in the recent battle over the minifigure trademark/ design kerfuffle (diluting the design, infringing and usurping other companies' designs etc.), but otherwise there's no rational reason for them to never do a big fig again if they see it as the viable solution for representing a specific character. It was never consciously destroyed. They simply "lost" it, meaning they didn't store it properly and then it was damaged beyond recovery. Why they never created a new one is of course another question entirely. Mylenium
  13. Mylenium

    Making sand red 1x2 plates

    Probably not. Dark Red will just turn into pink because it doesn't have the grey-ish undertone Sand Red has. And I can't imagine other approaches like "greying" Bright Pink plates or applying a red tint to Dark Tan, either. Sand Red has some very specific characteristics that are hard to capture. Ultimately that's why so many people would love to see this color come back. Mylenium
  14. Mylenium

    Why does Lego have rules?

    Food for thought: Said plate would get pressure from both sides without being able to "evade it" by bending ever so slightly, so ultimately the forces need to be absorbed by the intra-structural elements such as the (hollow) studs themselves or the anti-stud rings. It's perhaps not a problem on some models, but since such stuff is cumulative and tends to be quite damaging, the long term repercussions could be notable. It's the same thing like when you build your model all too solid and then people wonder why after a few years their precious MOC crumble. Not meaning to turn this into an endless academic discussion, but from a engineering standpoint these considerations matter. In fact even your brackets example could be mentioned here because it's the same problem. Don't get me wrong, personally I wouldn't care and the lack of straightforward direction inverters drives me up the wall just as much as anyone else, but I do understand LEGO's reasoning from this side of things. Mylenium
  15. Mylenium

    Why does Lego have rules?

    Generally I agree with that, but the circumstances for my pistol example are very specific. Apparently the same solution would not work if there weren't the large hollowed out spaces. If you only have a 1 x 2 or 1 x 1 area it's over, because you need a 2 x 2 area at least to accommodate the handle. LEGO is extremely pick-ish about structural issues, that's why. Turning things upside down changes the whole equation in terms of pressure on models when they stand, shear, torque and bend forces and so on. The irony of course is that none of that is a problem in practice. Those models won't last for forever, either way, and most customers simply don't care. That and of course it would be even less of a problem if LEGO's bricks hadn't such bad quality, which lately is really becoming an issue. Mylenium
  16. Mylenium

    Why does Lego have rules?

    Yes, exactly. It's more of a design philosophy, though at times it gets ridiculous as clearly the designers often feel the lack of e.g. proper direction inverters is a hinderance to their work as well (see the rather creative use of the pistol pieces in the Singapore Architecture set): https://myleniumsbrickcorner.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/island-architecture-lego-architecture-singapore-21057/ It's 2022, not 1963. There's isn't some poor tool maker polishing molds for days on end inflating the cost. You can produce a production-ready mold using latest CNC manufacturing methods within 72 hours if you have the design ready. And just see the facts for what they are: There's new heads in every Avatar set. There's like 20 new large pieces in every new Ninjago wave. They introduced a bunch of new molds in City and Minifigures this year. They have introduced a ton of new pin designs. Need I go on? In relation to the money LEGO makes off these things, the cost for molds is negligible. And further proof to that is in every of the alternate vendors introducing new molds when they need just as well. If those many times smaller companies can do it without going bankrupt, so can LEGO. Molds being super expensive is really just a myth that won't die and it's in LEGO's best interest to keep this myth alive as well. The much bigger issue, and funny enough this is something you never hear because people don't consider it, is how any expansion in the parts portfolio needs to make sense as it ripples through the whole chain of designing models with them in mind, manufacturing the pieces and logistics. Mylenium
  17. For me the biggest advantage is that the store sometimes has enough supply of sets that are sold out in the online shop. They also occasionally sell of leftover GWPs. Otherwise there aren't too many benefits, at least here at he Leipzig store. The PAB wall is not refreshed often enough and not the biggest one to begin with and I don't have much interest in minifigs. Unless you arrive there on the first day, most really desirable accessories have been gobbled up from the BAM towers, anyway. Mylenium
  18. Yeah, without having a wanted list you can't find that out easily since there's no way to just add items to the basket and compare. Mylenium
  19. Mylenium

    Neon/Vibrant Yellow

    Any such colors will have some fluorescent properties, but it's merely a side effect of the pigments used, not necessarily intentional. In this case the effect is perhaps too weak to have any real world use and generally blasting plastics with any form of UV light is not the best of ideas in the long run. The pieces I have only show a gentle shimmer under UV, so it may not be worth it for whatever you may have in mind. Mylenium
  20. Mylenium

    Parts with studs on 2 opposite sides.

    There are not that many. Apparently there's the 1 x 1 x 1 bricks with four studs on the sides, the 1 x 2 x 1 brick with studs on both sides and then something like this https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4081b#T=C . Otherwise you're pretty much out of luck. LEGO doesn't do direction inverters, though more recently there are more and more sets where the lack of these elements that are common for their competitors becomes painfully apparent and the creative workarounds (see this for instance: https://myleniumsbrickcorner.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/island-architecture-lego-architecture-singapore-21057/ ) don't really disguise this fact. Mylenium
  21. Most definitely not. It's an extra burden. You need to plan for it and integrate it into your production schedule and then selling 20000 or so packages is not much compared to LEGO's usual production numbers. Any extra revenue they could generate in theory is likely eaten up by the higher cost. It's still a niche product and outside the AFOL bubble or even more specifically an informed sub-set of that demographic who regularly follow the latest news people don't took any notice most likely. Mylenium
  22. This has always been the case. BL simply uses different names for the colors. LEGO calls BL's "Metallic Silver" "Silver Ink" based on the actual coating process used, and their "Metallic Silver" is indeed just what passes as "Flat Silver" on BL. Mylenium
  23. I'm not convinced it will get another round. The effort that needs to go into actually producing the sets is apparently quite high and it's just not efficient to sustain in the long run. Other than that a lot of it plays into the whole state of LEGO Ideas and how the designer program was a "dump" for entries that were scratching at the door but didn't quite make it in, but that's another discussion entirely... Mylenium
  24. Mylenium

    Do set prices go up after the fact?

    Yeah, I feel the same when I hear about such mythical clearance sales in the UK or US. LEGO is discounted here in Germany for a good part and getting 20% off is not too hard, but I've never heard of such crazy "Let's just get rid of it!" sales here, not even when everyone miscalculated the failure/ success of VIDIYO. :-) Mylenium
  25. Mylenium

    Do set prices go up after the fact?

    Based on your info it doesn't sound too bad, though. Perhaps it's more a case of lack of wider distribution and no retail discounts at other vendors. Mylenium