As foretold, the second installement in the LEGO Microscopy series has arrived.
Today we take a closer look at a part of a system that made constraction possible, and at the same time, led to its downfall. The (in)famous ball joint socket!
The original socket served as a receptacle for the ball joint itself and allowed for free poseability. It had to be durable enough to withstand the spherical rotating motion and repeated disassembly.
The socket was composed of two major parts namely the bed and the arcs. Let us see how the interior of these parts is designed:
The bed of the socket has a spherical depression in which the ball rests and rotates. The two slopes at the sides provide added support and prevent the ball from flying-off easily.
The two arcs hold the ball in place and provide the necessary friction to the joint. These are the parts under the most mechanical stress and usually when something on the socket fails, it is exactly this.
As you can see on this Metru socket, the edges of these arcs are worn out and deformed with long term use.
The arcs have holes inside to accomodate the spherical shape of the ball joint. The internal rim of these holes is getting milled out with repeated use, which eventually leads to the loss of friction and drooping limbs in figures.
On the other side - two sets of numbers. One of them most likely position within the mold, the other perhaps the part ID.
And that is it for the old school ball joint socket!
What’s that? Did you expect some major socket breakages to appear in this topic? Unfortunatelly for you, but fortunatelly for me, I do not own a single broken Bionicle socket
The old design depicted here is simply too reliable for normal use and I have never put the new 2008 fragile design under much action at all. They can’t break if you have them in a single pose after all.
And the lime plastic? As far as I’m concerned, the claim that it is more fragile then the other colors is just a myth. I have yet to find any good evidence to validate its truth.
So despite the lime plastic becoming an inside joke in the Bionicle community, unless someone has done a thorough quantitative analysis of the socket breakages showing that the lime ones are indeed more prone to break, you should not take this claim seriosly.
But didn’t you just admit that you don’t typically move your models around too much?
I can absolutely validate the claim that the lime plastic is worse; more of my lime sockets are broken than unbroken, and I have more broken lime sockets than of any other colour, despite having fewer overall.
Plus, the damage to the lime sockets is far more severe; while other colours just crack at an edge, or maybe have a small part of the socket fall off, I have had multiple lime socket parts split entirely down the middle. This issue is most severe with the 2007-style “hand” sockets.
Statistically, damage to the 07 lime socket has actually been reported much more.
In fact, only Hahli and Ehlek were damaged among my 07 set. I don’t have Lesovikk.
After my hahli’s sockets broke, I replaced they with Keelerak’s sockets. There is no problem with repeated attach and detach several times.
edit : Yes, this means that Keelerak’s ​socket is relatively less problematic. The problem is not all lime sockets, but only lime sockets in 2007
This is not just a joke, but a common problem that actually appeared, so it is mentioned a lot.
It is difficult to dismiss it simply as a myth or delusion. If it was actually just a myth, it should have been refuted 14 years ago.
In addition, it is a structural problem that the socket in 2008 is more damaged, which can be explained scientifically.
That is only true for the models that came after 2008 when the change occured. This was done as a precaution because back then the new sockets seemed flimsy to me (which turned out to be true).
The lime sockets of the pre-08 old design that I own experienced the same amount of use as the other colors did.
The whole lime joint thing seems to be something that started as few independent random occurences, which then snowballed into a community-wide acceptance, without anyone actually looking into it.
Well, we would actually have to make a statistical analysis for that. But even then, most reported cases would be lime joints because of the “lime paradigm” influencing it, feeding into the snowball.
I agree, it should have, but again, no one looked into it. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing.
Yes, that is true! In fact I will update the topic with new pictures when I find some unused post-08 socket (I do not dare disassemble any of the sets), and also with actually broken pre-CCBS Hero Factory sockets. There are certain design choices which make them less durable.
For the lime plastic, ideally one should take a large unbiased sample of broken sockets (not just the reported ones) and look for a statistically significant difference in colors. Of course this would have been difficult back then and is impossible to do today.
However some things that would constitute good evidence in favor of the lime paradigm would be the following:
an official record of LEGO changing the composition of lime colored plastic in 2007.
an example of any pre-existing difference in plastic composition of lime colored parts or a proof of the lime dye physically weakening the plastic.
any proof of that particular color being produced any differently then the same parts in other colors.
an official statement by LEGO claiming the lime parts to be more prone to damage than other colors.
Until actual good evidence comes up I am not convinced by the lime paradigm.
So I’ve been considering this series of topics for a while, and I do have one I’d like you to try if you can.
Every single Nuparu Mahri shield piece I’ve ever owned has been cracked before I ever got it. It’s always on the outer side of the shield, an area I’ve been unable to determine how on earth it’s been able to shatter as it seems incredibly low-stress there, and it always cracks vertically. I’ve never made head or tail of the matter.
I
I never noticed such a thing myself, so I went to check.
I have 8 of them, and every single one is cracked on both sides.
Not evenly, either, so it’s not an intentional part of the mold. It’s gotta be some fault in the molding process for that piece.
My theory is there’s an evil nuparu shield goblin who runs about and breaks people’s nuparu shields to ruin their copies of sets such as nuparu mahri and the axalara t9.
I’m considering making an anti-nuparu shield goblin spray. Check my GoFundMe.
Wtf? I just went to check and both of mine on hand have this. Both shields are cracked on the back on the right and left, but only one on one side has cracked all the way through. Weird stuff
This is a problem with the weld line and shape of the shield.
Metallic color plastics inevitably have a weld line and are prone to cracking along this line
The two cracked parts have a weld line and injection hole Also, since the shield is basically curved, more force will be applied to the recessed injection hole
So, weld lines easy to damage
Also, Nuparu’s shield is soft plastic.
Soft plastics are known to age and crack as internal ingredients escape over time.
I’ll take a look at it later today The plastic cracking goblin will not escape my sight!
UPDATE:
All right, I am now officially back. Sorry @Ghid it took longer than expected, but I had a lot work with my auditor duties. I am going to take a look at it right now after finishing this message. I own both Nuparu Mahri and Axalara 9, so I’ll see what I can find. Hopefully no nasty surprise awaits me…
Based on my findings, I will release the third episode this weekend.
The plastic cracking goblin will not escape my sight!