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A LEGO mold, retired after pressing out 120 million bricks.

Interesting trivia tidbit: Who is the world’s largest manufacturer of tires?
LEGO at 306 million per year (Bridgestone is #2 at about 200 million).

Not too surprising for a company that manufactures 1.7 million bricks per hour.

13 responses to “Breaking the Mold”

  1. That is interesting. Nice shot.

  2. Killer. what brand are lego tires sold under? Fascinating fact.
    I have unopened sets of lego’s from the 60’s, the ‘pre-model’ phase where the only instructions were from your imagination.

    Lego rules!!!

  3. Some people say the real #1 is Matchbox with 100 million cars and 400 million tires per year 🙂

  4. Could be the one which made the bricks that Google’s Larry and Sergei used to jury rig their first CPU farm ..uh cottage. Wouldn’t that be sweet?

  5. They used LEGO Duplo blocks (the bigger ones) for the early RAID farm. They tried less expensive blocks, but they were not rigid enough to hold the weight.

    Then they got a real rack:

    Google’s First Production Server

    Victor: uuuh…… "LEGO Group" The bigger ones even have size markings – "56×38 R" – like big boy tires.

    signs of life

    Jkaljundi… interesting…. maybe they were quibbling about a tire vs. a solid wheel. =)

  6. I’m amazed they only do eight bricks per cycle. Assuming a (fast) 5-sec cycle time, that’s <6 kbricks/hr, so they have a lot of injection molding machines. And at that rate, 120 million represents less than 28 months of work. They must have a busy bunch of diemakers.

  7. You can’t buy just regular Legos at the local toy store here, only the sets for making trucks or space ships or whatever. I tend to pick them up at garage sales.

  8. I wonder where this is; I understood Lego to be exceptionally protective of these molds. I mean that is entirely understandable given the markup on their (admittedly precisely manufactured) plastic blocks.

  9. In a building @ LEGO Land !

  10. Perhaps the next time I’m in Denmark I’ll see if I can capture a scene so well.

  11. Interesting information! Thank for sharing.
    Plastic Injection Mold – Basics

  12. The caliber of information that you’re offering is merely wonderful.Businessman

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