#3DPrinting a Major Challenge for #LEGO
http://3dprintingindustry.com/2013/12/17/will-lego-3d-printing/
At the moment 3d printing really dosen’t pose a problem for Lego. 3d printed objects - even on expensive industrial printers let alone cheap hobby printers - don’t have anywhere near the precision of Lego bricks (which are currently made by injection molding). To quote wikipedia:
“The machines that make Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 2 micrometres”
This type of precision is needed to insure the bricks fit together properly even in large models. If the bricks were less precisely manufactured then you would no longer be sure that they’d meet and fit together if you were building, say, a large rectangle. You can see this problem today with cheap clone products.
Perhaps someday 3d printing will advance to the point of being able to produce ‘good enough’ bricks for many uses. For some limited uses it already is today. For example printing out track for Lego trains. Since track is somewhat larger then most other brick types a track layout can absorb imperfections easier then a Lego model. Another is printing special single use nicks. By limiting the number of printed bricks in a model you reduce precision problems.
But for most purposes printing entire brick collections is still at least a few years off. And it may be that the inherent limitations of 3d printing tech may never really make it practical for many uses.
Nevertheless this does raise interesting questions about which possible futures the Lego Group should probably start considering now.