[HN Gopher] Understanding Lego Part Numbers
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Understanding Lego Part Numbers
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 65 points
Date : 2022-01-06 11:10 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brickset.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brickset.com)
| beardyw wrote:
| >The allocation and usage of LEGO part numbers is a complex
| subject that people have devoted their lives to understanding
| fully.
|
| I hope that is something of an exaggeration.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I mean, LEGO employs some professionals who no doubt devote
| their career to understanding many things about LEGO. The part
| numbers, if assumed to also include things like brick
| stockpiles and production runs, planning of new bricks, set
| design requirements, etc. could easily be a major part of their
| job.
| mattashii wrote:
| > LEGO employs some professionals who no doubt devote their
| career to understanding many things about LEGO
|
| That is not limited to LEGO: Some researchers from Lancaster
| University also were researching LEGO bricks (read: Playing
| around trying to set record-low temperatures for LEGO
| bricks); and found out they're excellent insulators at sub-
| kelvin temperatures:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21884755
| azalemeth wrote:
| I have personally put lego bricks in 12T magnetic fields,
| embedded them in agar, accidentally irradiated them with 94
| GHz microwaves, and blasted them with a _lot_ of RF. Some
| of my friends have irradiated them (accidentally) at the
| diamond light source x-ray synchrotron, which can deliver
| MGy doses in a short period of time. Still others have used
| them as coarse positioning blocks on high end (read:
| homebuilt) novel forms of microscopes or other high-end
| optical equipment. They 're _fantastic_ for prototyping
| stuff quickly, or, in a pinch, acting as a dimensional
| reference. (Yes, really!)
|
| You can put them in a vacuum. They don't degas much.
| They're magnet safe and can survive being in really high EM
| fields. They've got a high melting point. They don't become
| too brittle at sub-K temperatures. Blocks continue to mate
| as temperature varies -- Lego's process is fantastic at
| minimising temperature variation. They're really quite
| radiation resistant (many plastics fail horribly if you
| shoot them with >1 kGy). A child (or student!) can make a
| symmetric structure with them given a vague sketch design.
| A single "1x" wide Technik piece has a persistence length
| of about 80 cm. Structures you can build with lego are
| therefore really remarkably strong.
|
| Every lego is made to _insanely_ tight tolerances to
| published, well-known dimensions, and, best of all, if they
| break (an achievement!) you can buy another one for
| absolutely nothing in science-money terms. (The finance
| dept. look at you a bit weird when you put fifteen copies
| of "Spaceman playset" on an expenses claim form though).
|
| I frankly think that most experimentalists _somewhere_ in
| their life have some lego.
|
| (I have a "Lego MRI" set that is only available to
| professionals!)
| Ruthalas wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what is a "sub-Kelvin" temperature? As an
| absolute scale, isn't it impossible to be off the bottom of
| that scale?
| detaro wrote:
| a temperature below 1 Kelvin.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| Ah, thank you!
| fragmede wrote:
| But they don't have to reverse engineer the numbering system
| to find it out. Day one they just get told "here's how the
| numbering system works. Don't tell the Internet. kthx."
| kloch wrote:
| They are probably told how to query the internal parts DB
| which is enough of a challenge just when searching by
| shape/color/version.
|
| I doubt anyone at LEGO fully understands all of the
| naming/numbering convention decisions that have evolved
| over 70+ years.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Given that part numbers are quite old, and that they
| rerelease parts with other numbers, you have far more faith
| in the ability to trivially understand legacy systems than
| I do.
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