New personal Lego dark age looming?

[Bublehead]

@aminnich, start looking at machines and vehicles around you for inspiration, that’s what the designers at TLG do, they collect pictures of neat things and then sit around and bounce ideas off each other. We are your bouncees, so keep an eye out. Before you know it you are stalking farm equipment or construction equipment as it tools down the highway next to you. Having too many bricks is kind of the problem, because you haven’t seen anything you think would test the limits of your collection. Start thinking bigger. Look at my MOC, everyone said why is it so big!?! Well, because it challenged me.  

And on the subject of 3d printed parts, look at the parts @efferman has available online... maybe start designing your own and having them printed. They are pretty cheap at 5 to 7 bucks for a specialized part.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Bublehead

[aminnich]

I have a list of like 5 MOC ideas... I start building and just dont find the enjoyment in designing something 

I have been on and off working on the GSK55 crane and a new build, but both are far from done 

7 minutes ago, Bublehead said:

And on the subject of 3d printed parts, look at the parts @efferman has available online... maybe start designing your own and having them printed. They are pretty cheap at 5 to 7 bucks for a specialized part.

 

Cheaper not to have a middleman :)  Better to own the printer 

[Omikron]

That's a good advice. I have a list of at least 5 mocs that I want to built and somewhere along the road I always see a really interesting thingy in a video or real life and I become really curios with "How does it work" or "How did they make it work that way" and then I have a basic concept to transfer the mechanism in the lego and I immediately run into "lego problems" like scale, angles, lack of correct pins, weight and power concerns and many many more.

But it feels so damn good to overcome this obstacles and make the device work!

[Bublehead]

42 minutes ago, aminnich said:

Better to own the printer 

Unless the medium is SLS nylon like efferman uses. Those printers start a $6000 for a desktop model. So $5 to $7 ain’t bad per part. I own an abs 3D printer but strength of parts are no where near SLS nylon or IM ABS.  They are good for low strength applications or greeblies.

[agrof]

@Cumulonimbus I am also in the very same situation, but I am positive about the future, although I sold many LEGO, I'll keep a good amount in case.

18 hours ago, nerdsforprez said:

Ever heard of, or read the book, "who moved my cheese?" - Good little read. 

That cheese moves sometimes in life is not always evidence that something is wrong.  Even if we assume that is the case.  Sometimes it is good counsel to just move on as well and find where that cheese has moved to. 

Thanks for this good little read, it really helps me a lot to map my current life situation (work, private and overall myself)!

[Cumulonimbus]

Wow, never thought so many would feel the same way.  (TL;DR warning, lots of text ahead)

I understand that temporary lapses in the building is normal and I have experienced those a few times as well. But this time, something has changed:

First, I get the feeling that I have outgrown the possibilities of Lego. I’m a designer and product engineer by profession and have the experience  that in another medium, like metal or wood the design freedom is so much larger because you’re not bound to size and shapes of Lego parts. Like most of you here, I used to see it as a challenge to translate a model into the Technic building system, but it becomes more and more frustrating that a function can’t be built in a good way because the bricks don’t allow it. In my MOCs I tend to be very ambitious and think a model should have the correct proportions of the real thing, realistic functions and be as structurally sound as possible. This often means very long building times and many iterations, often to a point where a good compromise seems impossible. At those moments I feel more and more restricted by the Lego building system.

Secondly, as a creative person, I’m always looking for innovation and new solutions or products. Today, I get the feeling that everything has been done already at least once in Technic. Most real machines with interesting functions have been modelled countless times by either TLG or as MOCs. Increasing the scale doesn’t bring much advantages either. So I wonder why I should I start building another supercar, crane or front loader if I can simply buy a very similar model or instructions for it. So I ask myself, what is the point, the goal or the motivation to see a MOC through to the end? The motivation used to be playability: when I got a front loader set as a kid, I made a dump truck to play along with it, then added a trailer to transport it, etc. As said before, I rarely play anymore, nor do I have kids in my surroundings which do.  When I grew older, collecting became the main drive: own an interesting representation of every real machine I find fascinating and learning something about it in the process. Once you own multiple versions of trucks, shovels, cranes and excavators, this goal is not longer there.

A third thing is that I like to build useful stuff besides Lego, products which fulfil a function when they’re built. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to see a product which I thought of, being transformed to a real thing and seeing it being used. I know that a hobby should not meet the same constraints as a day-time job such a time, money  and functionality. But I find it increasingly difficult motivate myself investing huge amounts of spare time into something that will just sit on a shelf when it is done. At the same time, it is hard to explain to the outside world why you took months worth’s of free time to build a toy car. I guess it is different if your models are good enough so sell instructions for or even the models themselves like some of the professional builders here. But to be honest to myself, I don’t think I will ever reach that level, at least not in Lego.

On the topic of 3D printing, I have an Ultimaker 2+, which is a great FDM machine, but the tolerances are nowhere near the level of the real injection moulded parts. The Form2 (which uses a SLA process)at my work could deliver the required accuracy, but those parts are brittle and tend to shatter when stressed. This makes 3D printing not really suitable for Lego bricks ath the moment. Even the professional processes  like the SLS-process Shapeways uses, has its limitations.

So I guess the conclusion so far is that building in Lego lacks the satisfaction and fun for me to justify the required effort and time at the moment. We’ll see how this evolves, it might just be a quarter life crisis, I hear those are popular . For now, I’m not considering selling any Lego yet, but I might store my collection out of sight for a while. @nerdsforprez Thank you for the tip, I will check it out.

[Lipko]

Your reasons are perfectly understandable, I think I'm in the same boat (my dark age started with not having time, but honestly I could make time if I really wanted). I don't know if my burning out would have been delayed if I had felt to be a little more successful.

I guess my coming back to Lego (if there will be any) will be having kids or doing scale modeling with system bricks.

Though I'm really tempted to get a Chiron, but I can't justify to spend that much on a 10-12 hour building experience (maybe I will buy it anyway and sell the set as used?)

Edited May 26, 2018 by Lipko

[agrof]

@Cumulonimbus Oh man, You perfectly described how I feel... in my profession. I am also designer in packaging industry, I used to work a lot with steel and other materials with higher freedom grade, but in last years I lack of challanges and steel solutions, I am pushed more and more for making money by implementing existing designs coming from customers (copy-paste hell), instead of making exciting designs AND money, or develop new products in R&D. The creative me is even more being pushed back since I act as team leader, so other tasks must be done too.

 Actually I feel the same a bit with LEGO, but I still feel the temptation, I just regret the time to sit down and do it actually. I believe, I used MOCing to cover the emptiness of my daily work - which worked well for a while. I am confident now about the necessity of change (but a bit Haw in person - see the reading from @nerdsforprez), and I am working more on this nowadays.

@Lipko For some reason I also find the Chiron interesting (altough the real car really does not touches me at any level)... I think buying, building and selling as you got bored of it, is a viable plan, especially if You can wait a bit and get the set for lower price.

Edited May 26, 2018 by agrof
typo

[Lipko]

@agrof Luckily it's the opposite in my work. I'm not a leader and I have some freedom to work on projects that are not directly related to our usual tasks, but improves our processes greatly (something that's usually a thing that's never get done due to continuous fire fighting) and this project satisfies my creative needs. The biggest such project, if anyone interested, is a programming project of a test environment to prepare and perform automated test sequences for controlling analog and digital inputs and data acquisition, climate chamber controlling, automatic test evaluation, etc. A system that's capable to run long term (few weeks or months) fully automatic endurance tests and also single test sequences.

[Tommy Styrvoky]

For 3D printing I have had some experience with fdm printing, and I have had some success with printing Lego compatible parts. With PLA they feel similar in strength. With ABS I have had issues with warping and the overall appearance looks worse than PLA. It wouldn't be too expensive to get a decent fdm machine such as the lulzot mini, or Prusa Mk3. Also one of  nice things is if your part breaks, it only takes 10-30 minutes to replace the part (depending on the size).

 

[Bublehead]

4 hours ago, Lipko said:

buy it anyway and sell the set as used?)

@Lipko, exactly how I picked up my Porsche for $180, which is what it was really worth to me. The “fresh out of the box” experience wasn’t worth the extra $120. And the thing came pre-built, so I followed the instructions backward, put the parts back into their bags and boxes, waited 2 weeks, then built it like it was fresh out of the box. And I didn’t have to put on the stickers, the guy did a bang up job putting them on for me