It's interesting to me that Lego can't be easily made at home in 2026. That whatever they do with plastic, dye and injection molding cannot be easily replicated.
It's interesting to me that Lego can't be easily made at home in 2026. That whatever they do with plastic, dye and injection molding cannot be easily replicated.
Making even vaguely consistently-repeatable injection molded parts at home is hard work.
The injection molding of a Lego brick is spooky-consistent and very precise. Bricks made 40 years ago work the same as bricks made today do.
Besides that: Cost. Maybe I need 200 1x4 bricks for some project. In the best case, I can spend days or weeks getting the process just-so and eventually smoosh out 200 good-enough bricks (all of the same color) at the cost of all that time, equipment, and some ABS pellets.
Or: 1x4 bricks are sold at $0.15 each from Lego, in any of 40 different colors. So I can just skip all of that work and buy 200 perfect bricks in whatever mixture of colors I want for $30. If I need other bricks for my project, as well, then I don't have to retool for that -- I can just add them to the order.