Printing LEGO

This is kinda click bait. I printed MegaBloks. Around the time ToysRus was closing, Mega Bloks had the TMNT license and a lot of different sets were coming out. I didn’t want to but I started collecting. The Technodrome was one of the sets. It was huge! It was also expensive- around $200. I said “one day”. When ToysRus was closing I went looking for it again but they all sold of course.

Months later I was at a ROSS. Dress for Less. The Technodrome was there, discounted for about $80. PLUS, I had a connect at that time that could get an employee discount. So I got it for about $60. Its almost 3000 pieces. So I saved it for a rainy day… or rainy week. A few years passed and something happened in 2020 that made us all stay home. So there was no time better than that to start putting the Technodrome together. It took about a week! We spent one whole day just separating and organizing all the pieces.

Towards the end, there were a few more parts to put together. Some of these pieces broke. More than one broke. They were these Gold “H” pieces, not blocks. I wasn’t surprised these broke. There’s something in the toy world called “Gold Paint Syndrome”. If any plastic toy part is painted or molded with this gold paint, it becomes brittle over time and then with just a bit of pressure, it’ll snap. This has happened to my Transformers Transmetal Megatron. These “H” piece were gold and they snapped. So there were a few panels that didn’t get to go up. It still looked good though! Then maybe another year later when I got a 3D printer, I tried to recreate those pieces. It didn’t work out well, I was still new to printing so I put it off for another day when I was more experienced. That day was yesterday.

I opened the old 3D model I made a few years ago and looked at the measurements. I made some small adjustments and then took it into the slicer. I use cura to slice, I set the setting for PETG using a 0.2 nozzle. Most printes use 0.4 size nozzles but since the piece is pretty small I figured this would be best for details. It printed out good and it didn’t break! The only issue was the angle in piece. I made some adjustments, changed the angle by 2.5 degrees, and it came out perfect. Now the Technodrome is finally complete!