What Happens To LEGO® Material Before It Arrives At Your Home ?
LEGO® has definitely influenced a lot of children. It has built many a kid’s imagination and mental ability since the 1930’s . It kind of makes someone think, how are these freaky little things made? Well LEGO® materials are made as you obviously know of plastic. ____ Plastic to be exact.
These LEGO® materials go through processes, which are a bit more complicated than a LEGO® Mindstorm set, and a bit more technical than a LEGO® Technic set. LEGO® material plastics start off as anything else does as raw materials and go through a very precise process that LEGO® has been using for years, and have yielded a series of LEGO® Materials that has lasted the same. Here is a brief walkthrough of how LEGO® Materials come to be.
First the LEGO® material start as small plastic granules, these are ordered from the makers and are carried by trucks to different factories that are the one that actually make the stuff.
Then the granules are sucked up from the trucks and stored in Silos. These LEGO® materials arrive in different colors, white, blue, red, light gray, dark gray, yellow, black and green. The LEGO® material then goes through a process wherein it is mixed and melted, at around 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 323 degrees Celsius. Once the LEGO® material reaches optimum temperature, the liquid slush is fed into a machine that sort of resembles an ice cube tray, only with more holes and is much more expensive.
These machines provide high pressures, just enough to compactly mold the melted material into the LEGO® bricks and figures we use today. Once the liquid is molded inside, the machine cools the liquid down to make it solid again and then ejects it into a bin that catches all the molded LEGO® material. This process lasts at most, five seconds, and one LEGO® Factory produces millions of LEGO® bricks each day.
The formed LEGO® material then goes into a process called stamping. The LEGO® that goes through this process is selected, because not all LEGO® bricks have prints. The LEGO® material is stamped with whatever prints it needs, eyes, details, lines, and what not.
The next step the LEGO® material makes is the assembly. The LEGO® figures that need several parts like human and animal images are assembled using just the right amount of pressure to keep them together but still be possible to pull them apart, like the hands for the standard LEGO® man. Care is taken here as to not over attach the parts as well as to make sure that the parts are in their right place, which is why the whole process is automated, and only done by specialized robots.
The LEGO® material is then transported, with full automation to packaging areas, where the required amounts per brick per box is then distributed and placed in boxes. The boxes are already labeled and folded as they pass under machines that choke up just the right amount of LEGO® inside. The amount is pre-programmed into the computer per LEGO® set.
The LEGO® kits, all bright and shiny are then stored in warehouses where it’ll be collected again by trucks, and then delivered to toy stores where those cute little hands will pick them out, and will eventually be the machines of transport which will place them, most likely under your sofa.
