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OK, so recently the 5 millionth topic was opened about storage. Let's keep it all to one sub-forum and one topic. How do you sort your LEGO? How do you store your LEGO? Discuss...
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Set Restoration: Original (vintage) or new parts?
Yoshi648 posted a topic in General LEGO Discussion
Here's a thought: You're going through your LEGO collection and you come across a piece that was from one of your old childhood sets that you luckily kept. For a bit of nostalgia, you decide to re-build the set. You head on over to Peeron/BrickLink for the part inventory and start scavenging your collection for the parts. As your digging through your collection, you start finding pieces that clearly were from the original set. It's obvious this was a childhood piece; it still has all your teeth marks from prying it off that one stubborn brick and all the scratches from when you drove the car it was built in down the stairs. You look around and you find the exact same piece that came from a new set you bought the other day; all nice and shiny and ready to be a part of something great. Now you have the dilemma on your hands of whether you should keep the set in its original form or restore it to look like new. What would/do/did you do in this situation? -
Hello, I am just getting back into Legos and wondering about the extent of other people's collections. How many Legos do people have? How long does it take to sort your collection? How do you sort your collection? Is there any kind of automated way to sort besides the DIY machines on Youtube? How much space does Lego sorting take up?
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If there was a commercial machine that could sort Lego by color, would you buy it? How much would you pay? I know sorting by type/part is ideal for most, but it is more difficult to execute. Additionally, what is the ideal size for this type of product? All the DIY machines on YouTube seem pretty large.
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Piqabrick - LEGO identification system
Stefano Berti posted a topic in Digital LEGO: Tools, Techniques, and Projects
Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, Piqabrick instantly identifies Lego bricks’ code, simplifying the long-lasting operations of searching and sorting. Among the main needs of AFOL (Adult Fan Of Lego) community, identifying single bricks (maybe rare or unique printed bricks or minifigs) is certainly on the top of the list. But also identify two similar bricks, or discover their related codes could be complicated, since they’re hidden or difficult to read. Not to mention the stressful research on online catalogues or marketplaces! In a split second, and with just one photo, Piqabrick identifies any brick. Sort less and play more. Piqabrick easily and quickly identifies any Lego brick providing you the ID code and color code. How? Thanks to our proprietary computer vision technology. Piqabrick “looks at” a brick to identify it, just like we already do.. but better! PIQABRICK relies on DART (Direct Acquisition and ReTrieval), Getcoo’s proprietary Artificial Intelligence, already adopted in industry and tourism. PIQABRICK is made of two parts: the PIQABRICK BOX and the web dashboard. The first one consists of a USB camera and LED (to provide the correct illumination) mounted on top of a box made by LEGO® bricks. The box has precise dimensions (16x16 brick units wide and 12 brick units tall), but it is fully customizable by the user with his/hers own bricks (as long the internal dimension are kept, the color of the bricks does not matter). The PIQABRICK BOX is connected to a PC via USB and does not require any installation. To identify a brick, down to its ID and color code, just put it into the box! The web dashboard controls the camera in the PIQABRICK BOX for the brick identification. Once the brick is identified the dashboard provides the links to the LEGO marketplaces to easily buy/sell the brick and to manage the personal inventory. With PIQABRICK, Lego lovers can save time in the brick identification and the personal inventory management. The computer vision speeds up the buying/selling activity on the specialized marketplaces. With less time needed for searching, sorting and inventorying, more time to play, build, and have fun! Functionalities: identifies any brick down to the ID and color code speeds up the identification with computer vision identifies minifigs as well suggests similar bricks (by code or color) provides “appear in” functionality (list of sets in which a brick appears) provides “rebrick” functionality (list of sets one can build with the bricks in his/her inventory) More info: https://pickabrick.live/kickstarter box.piqabrick.com www.facebook.com/Piqabrick/ https://youtu.be/Umub6GvWVqk -
Using an A3 Report to streamline my sorting and storing process
legoman19892 posted a topic in General LEGO Discussion
I did an A3 report of sorting and storing my LEGO. Eliminated rework and did some visual management as a result. Anyone else do this to lessen sort time? What is an A3?: https://quality-one.com/a3/ -
Today is September 1st and its time to returning to Hogwarts! I want to show this little vignette from my new moc in the Dumbledore office, Hope you like it! Welcome back to Hogwarts Harry! by Etel Enzos, en Flickr
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Episode six of this radio play is now available for download. Rob meets with a group of AFOLs and they start planning their first LEGO show. Professor Smith and Rob discuss Greek philosophy and the best strategy to have a career at the university. Maki pushes Rob to his limits and their fight erupts into a true tragedy. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS
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Hello, The third episode of The Ideal Order is now available as a free radio play. Rob Park discusses the classification of every living thing with Professor Smith and visits Francis, a true AFOL. Enjoy, Christoph
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I am happy to announce that the radio play version of The Ideal Order (Second Edition) is now available as a podcast. The radio play was recorded with a group of talented actors here in Christchurch. The play consists of 12 episodes each of approximately 30 minutes. A new episode will be released every week on Friday. The Podcast is available on Apple iTunes, Google Music, Stitcher, TuneIn or directly on the web page. You can listen to the teaser already, the first full episode will be published this Friday. In addition, free eBook versions are available in English and German!
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Estimating volume of Lego bricks for storage of large collection.
Donald posted a topic in General LEGO Discussion
Hi, I'm looking for optimal storage of my Lego brick collection. It is about 40'000 bricks, less than 1'200 different parts, mostly from Creator Expert, Architecture and Technic sets. At the moment most sets are built up, but I'm looking to disassemble most and store the sets, sorted by part (but not color). I would like to estimate the volume per brick type. Does anyone in this forum know of list of volume/size of the bricks by design/part? Also if anyone knows of proper values of the bulk density of of the most common types of bricks, plates and tiles, please post. While were at it, does anyone know of a list with weight per brick? Thanks! Donald -
Hiya, I'm assembling my 2 x 10027 Train Engine Sheds ready to sell and I've run into an odd problem. Brickset's inventory says it contains the new stone greys while Peeron says it's the old greys. I tried to narrow it down by assessing whether I had the correct baseplates, tracks and other unique parts in the right colours which lead me to believe Peeron is correct and this 2003 set was on the cusp of 'greygate' but if someone could check their set and confirm which greys it uses, I'd be very grateful. Were there any sets that contained a mix of both out of interest? Thanks, Alex
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hey all, thought i'd share my latest build...our LEGO room! so about a year ago I built a lego play area in our basement, which looked something like this... It wasn't much, but it was a start. it was a mostly color sorted system, but still like half of the bins were type sorted. I think it's a good method for kids or casual building, since sorting is a lot easier/faster and at the time it was 100x better than digging through a huge bin...but I soon realized type sorting was the only way to go. Since we were still getting settled into a new house and had an extra bedroom that wasn't getting used, I decided to annex it in the name of Lego. Here's the workbench part of the room and the view you see when walking in. I'm using a 10mm lens so this room looks bigger than it is, it's roughly an 11x11 room. we had an empty room to play with and after a year of pondering what we'd do with it, we decided a LEGO room would be the best use :) The workspaces are for my daughter and I, and the yellow chair is for my wife so she can hang out with us. All the storage bins are IKEA Trofast and I custom build the work bench on a frame of 2x4s and plywood with large trofast bins on each side. I was a bit worried the 7ft span in the middle would be too much but since one end is supported on the wall directly to the studs and the top is pretty solid, it is actually really sturdy. Here's a bottom view of the work bench, I added some 3/4 melamine panels to the back of the bins to stop the bins from going too far back and for adding some extra support for the workbench. Since I hate painting 2x4's I decided to face the front edge using some cut up grey baseplates i had that were partially damaged. I just cut them on a table saw and epoxied them on. I used bricks between them so assure they would be properly spaced and i'm sure someday we'll decorate them, but even as grey plates it looks good. Close up view of the front edge surface... Next up was lighting. The room has crappy lighting so I replaced the fan/light combo with a large ikea light and was going to hang ikea work lamps above the work bench, but then I realized it would obstruct the wall and be generally annoying. so I decided to wire up some LED strips I had left over from another project. These are warm white 3-chip LED flexible strips from superbrightled.com that i just adhered to some aluminum L channel. Then I cut more baseplate strips and epoxied them on to the L channel and then covered the entire L channel face with 2x yellow plates (only the already damaged baseplates were kraggled). The lights are 12V LEDs and draw about 1.2amp, so I used an old 3amp 12V converter I had laying around in my pile of converters then wired them to a toggle switch that mounted to this LEGO case. Here you can see the view underneath, I had to cut up some of the edging strips so the light could stay flush which was a PITA. Had I planned to do the LEDs before installing the bin frames I could have done that a bit cleaner. Using some left over L channel, a few screws and some 3M double sided tape I made this little 2x shelf for some of our favorite minifigs (i may need to make this longer :) My little corner, the Simpsons house and the modular are in for repairs... The space man decal was in the plan from the beginning, hence the red wall. here's the first two layers on, the extra squares are for registration. Here's the final decal. I made the illustration myself and used to sell these on etsy in a single color, but even though it was original artwork, the LEGO lawyers still objected to it so it's no longer for sale. :( Some of the small bin labels, it's so nice having a vinyl cutter. Here's a detail of the labels I made, I used this funny shape at the top to help me position the decals easily using the plastic supports in the bin's lip for alignment, it worked out great. Some of the small bin labels. I was a bit concerned about my choices for organization, I agonized over it for a long time, but it worked out pretty well. I have a few changes I'm going to make and I may do another small trofast set in the closet to handle some oddball groups like nacelles, and vertical wing/stabilizers. The one big mistake I made was forgetting about modified plates larger than 1x2. Not sure where those are going yet, for now they're in a loose bin in the closet. Here's the opposite wall which is mostly just straight bricks/plates/tiles. The trick with this side was that I only had room for 6 large bin frames and the small bin frames didn't exactly fit on top of that, so I modified one small bin frame so it was only 2 bins wide then used the cut off scraps to fill the gaps. Then I just covered the tops with some black melamine to make the top nice and usable. Here you can see the modified small bin frame. I also added a backer piece of melamine to keep the bins or bricks from falling back. The bins in this pic still have their old labels on from our first sort which was mixed sort with color/type. You can see how I made spacers from the cut off pieces of the shortened frame to fill the gaps between them. Some of the brick bins are a bit crowded, I may sort some out, or stack em to save space. I had a few PAB cups of some colors I stashed in the closet to keep the bin more manageable, for now they are ok. if they get too full I may go thru them and retire some of the scratched up bricks. My wife's contribution to the room, this awesome embroidery of the girl robot minifig... The closet is a pretty good size too and has some room for bins as well, definitely going to pick some up next time I'm at ikea... The big re-sort was pretty brutal, but seemed to go a lot faster than the previous sort, no doubt because a lot of types had been separated out... sorting the types from previously sorted-by-color piles as pretty soothing to the old OCD though... anwyay, that's it, hope you've enjoyed the pics!
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Hello everybody, I just had to post this because I was so excited. My family and I just finished sorting what we estimate to be around 600,000 bricks by color last night! We started in January when we purchased another collection and decided it was time to get everything in order. I have been spending 2-5 hours a night sorting parts out parts almost every single day. It was such a relief to finish the final bin of tiny parts last night. Now of course the urge to start sorting by style is taking hold...wish me luck.
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New in-depth Ultimate "LEGO Storage Guide" (Free guide!)
henrysunset posted a topic in General LEGO Discussion
I'm Tom Alphin, author of The LEGO Architect book. For the past 6 months, I've been working on a new in-depth guide exploring LEGO Storage topics. I'm pleased to announce that my LEGO Storage Guide is ready for people to enjoy (and give feedback.) The guide is extensive, with 10 chapters and around 50 pages of free content: Section I: Organizing, Sorting, & Storing LEGO Bricks — The guide walks you through the process of understanding your LEGO collection, exploring different ways to organize your collection, great storage solutions for a LEGO collection of any size, and additional tips and tricks. Section II: Displaying & Storing LEGO Minifigures — This section explores some of the best ways to show off and protect your favorite LEGO minifigures. The guide is informed by detailed surveys of around 200 LEGO enthusiasts. The data analysis helped me prepare LEGO storage recommendations based on the size of your collection and other factors. The guide is well researched... It contains results from a detailed LEGO Storage survey with about 200 responses, learnings from interviews with top LEGO builders from around the world, and recommendations based on numerous articles, books, and forum discussions on eurobricks.com website. LINK: http://brickarchitect.com/guide/ I hope you enjoy reading the guide, and I can't wait to hear your feedback! I will continue improving the guide in the coming weeks, and am tracking your suggestions for future improvements in the acknowledgements section. Sincerely, ---tom P.S. I'm eager to hear - what's your favorite LEGO storage product? -
[HELP] Parting with a Technic Collection?
z3_2drive posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
I briefly got back into building this year, but recently have taken interest in the world of RC and have started a custom project. Because of this as well as a busy college schedule, I've been thinking of parting with my collection, and I'm not sure what is the best way to approach this. Do I part out items and sell separately? I have already taken my most expensive items and made listings on BrickLink at a competitive price, but the vast majority of my collection is still on the shelf in sorted, wall-mounted containers. Do I sell in bulk? It seems to be the fastest way to sell large amounts of pieces, but often go for cheap and with random pieces, whereas I have neatly sorted according to color and/or part type. Change my mind and hang onto it? It's been a big part of my younger years, but my interests have changed and I find myself after performance and reliability in my projects, something that can only be done with metal. Are there people out there who snag entire inventories? I think BrickLink would be the most lucrative option as I need the money for this new project, but would also take a long time to sell everything, or at least my most valuable items. The rest can be sold in bulk, especially non-Technic pieces. Is there anyone here that has gone through the same process? I'd be interested to hear your stories. -
Ok, so before you all fire off the stock answers, let me expand a little. I've been questioning changes in the way I build recently and I'm starting to think that my creative processes are being stifled, especially in light of the current TC12 contest. I think that my approach to building is primarily driven by the way I sort and store my collection. This, in turn, is driven by the quantity of pieces that I now own. There is no doubt that my collection would be considered large, by most peoples standards, and it has spread across a number of rooms and into the garage. Getting pieces can involve walking, unlocking doors, and not inconsiderable effort to find the relevant boxes. Guaranteed that 95% of the time I will have the piece I want but, 60% of the time I find myself wondering if I can be bothered to make the effort. In the early days I could house my collection in a couple of small (ish) boxes which allowed me to access all my available pieces with a simple arm movement. I was much more inclined to tinker with builds and as a result I believe that I was much more creative. I was certainly much more prolific with the number of things I did build, even though I probably spent less time with Lego. So, back to the question ... can you have too much Lego? I have to say that form some perspectives, you most certainly can! For all those who wish for massive collections of bricks, beware! You might find there are unforeseen consequences of your wish being granted. Thoughts?
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If anyone has been following my forum posts then you know that I don't make my mocs symmetrical because I don't have enough parts too. I make one side how I want to and then either don't make the other side or just very plain. This is extremely frustrating but I've learned to deal with it. I really want to see the size and layout of peoples Lego setups and displays so I can get inspired and maybe others too. Here's what my display and setup looks like: If you haven't noticed, those beads are stored in an ice cube container...that's how desperate I am :)
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I always had a hard time finding the right system to sort and store my LEGO. As a child it was easy, since I did not care about every single piece too much or if I didn't find the right piece immediately. But as an adult I always wanted to build things myself and to store the bricks in a way that I could find everything fast and comfortable. ? I though, maybe it is helpful for some of you guys to see how I sorted my stuff... ? Here are some pictures about my system! My current collection is at around 85'000 pieces, just to give you an idea... ? These are drawers from amazon called IRIS (essy to find) and they come in very different shapes. Mine have 12 drawers but the are also ones with only 10 or less. The smaller boxes are from a local DIY-Store and what I like about them is, that they are made from plastic, which means they are very light. My most used figures are just put onto some 32x32 or 16x32 plates for easy access. And as you can see my "city" and the place where I shoot my pictures is limited but still more than enough. Currently I use my new Foldio2 Lightbox which makes shooting so much easier. ??? If you have any questions or additions, just share them! ? I'm glad to here from you! ? Sacha Edit: Sorry for the missing pictures... ?
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Thought I would share a tool I've made for generating lego labels: www.legolabels.com
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Brick Sorting Excavator
legomuppet9 posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
Please note: this is not my creation I was aimlessly looking at Lego Technic stuff on youtube and came across this: I haven't found it on here, but I thought you guys would be interested to see the mechanisms, as they look very complex for such a small model , plus the fact it looks so cool It is also vote-able on cuusoo: http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/22356 Thoughts? -
From buckets to bins: How to sort a lot of Lego.
henrysunset posted a topic in General LEGO Discussion
As some of you might have read in my previous article, I recently purchased a ton of bricks on Craigslist which I have painstakingly sorted into sets. This article covers: different sorting goals (by color, by part, etc..) how to sort it (I used a two-pass sorting algorithm) how to store it (I used drawers) Read the Article: From buckets to bins: How to sort a lot of Lego Take a look and let me know what you think... I'm especially interested to hear how your sorting and storing method differs. (I'm pretty sure it's a good storage method - it's Lord Business approved!) Sincerely, ---tom -
Hi all, As a newish member, back to the world of Lego, I have a question that is vexing me, and hopefully someone of you experienced hands may be able to help out. Basically, I am at the stage where I have numerous big boxes of unsorted lego that has been collected over time. It needs sorting, but the question is, how do you store your bricks ready for building? Hopefully; (1) if a thread like this exists with some solutions on that I haven't found, someone will kindly point me in the right direction, or (2) some kind and experienced souls will tell me how they do it, or even better, show me their storage/building areas! Thank you in advance, the prospect of not having some ideas here is daunting! Ian
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Today I finished sorting just about most of the parts in my collection that are available for use At this point, I still need to sort out things like Power Functions, NXT, and a couple of miscellaneous bins that I haven't touched in a while. They didn't follow any general rules as to what went in them so they didn't fit into my system of sorting at all. These, and the loose parts and sets waiting for disassembly will go into the master miscellaneous bin. I'll sort that out according to the same rules I have been following. I've been at this since late October. I currently have a total of 33,265 parts! I expect this to be higher as I clean up the rest, of course. It feels good to have this done; now I can get started on the ideas I've been saving up for a while now. It's a huge stress-saver as well. Does anybody else have similar stories to tell? Please share them if you do
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The current method of classifying LEGO elements used by Bricklink, LDraw, Peeron, etc. is based first on an element's shape and appearance (brick, plate, tile, round, etc.) and then on its other characteristics (modified, decorated, modified AND decorated, etc.) This has always struck me as awkward as it does not reflect the natural way one would probably classify elements when actually sorting them. For example, I have a storage container where I sort elements with clips. This container has sections for 1x1 clips (tile, modified), 1x1 and 1x2 bricks with clips (brick, modified) and 1x1 plates with clips (plate, modified). I also sort the elements with handles into that container because to me it makes sense to have commonly-connected pieces together. I imagine most builders naturally do something similar and arrange specialized elements by how they are connected. I know the subject of sorting has been discussed extensively here, but rather than talking about the actual sorting I'm interested in talking about how we might come up with a classification system that is based on function rather than form. I think since the function of a LEGO element is to connect to another LEGO element, its connection type is its function. In this function-based system, the clip plates and clip bricks would all be in the same classification as they all have at least one knob, one tube, and one clip. Functionally, they are identical. The 1x1 clip (considered a "tile" in the form-based system) would be in a slightly different category, as it has a clip and a tube, but no knob. A flag, as another example, has only clips. This kind of system would perhaps not be heirarchical, but more nebulous. As a first step, it would need a standard nomenclature for the types of connections LEGO elements can make. Off the top of my head, I come up with: Knob Tube Bar Clip Bar hole Pin Pin w/friction Pin hole Pin Axle Pin Axle Hole Cross Axle Cross Axle Hole Ball Socket And of course all the types of hinges out there and probably a dozen more I'd come up with if I thought longer. Has anyone already done this? I imagine TLG has "official" names for the connections. Does anyone know of a list that exists somewhere?
