Estimating volume of Lego bricks for storage of large collection.

[Donald]

Hi,

I'm looking for optimal storage of my Lego brick collection. It is about 40'000 bricks, less than 1'200 different parts, mostly from Creator Expert, Architecture and Technic sets. At the moment most sets are built up, but I'm looking to disassemble most and store the sets, sorted by part (but not color). I would like to estimate the volume per brick type. Does anyone in this forum know of list of volume/size of the bricks by design/part? Also if anyone knows of proper values of the bulk density of of the most common types of bricks, plates and tiles, please post. 

While were at it, does anyone know of a list with weight per brick?

Thanks!

Donald

[JopieK]

You can find the weight on Bricklink (look up the brick and see it's properties). I think you ask an impossible question to calculate though.

[davidwilsonwong]

no idea

[igor_andreati]

I have ~40.000 pieces, mostly creators, lots of 90's system (quite a few BURPs and baseplates) and some custom bricklink orders. It's all stored in a 80cm X 150cm X 40cm space, inside boxes and zip bags...

No idea how to estimate better than that, but i'll give you an advise against sorting out by parts. My collection is sorted this way and it's a pain to find stuff, there are too many parts that don't have a clear category to be in.

I think the best way to go is:

-determine a few parts that have a clear category, like bricks, plates, technic connectors, and any kind of part that you have a lot. These parts you'll sort by part type.

-separate big parts, like BURPs and fuselages and put all together in a transparent box.

-the rest you sort by color... if in this stage you keep seeing the same part over and over again, put them in the 1st category.

-if you have lots of minifigs and minifigs acessories, separate them too

[Peppermint_M]

Sorting is a personal thing though. I MOC, so my collection is sorted in a way that lets me access parts as I require them, but allows for a more fluid creative path while I build. So I have parts that I class as "Car" like air scoops and exhaust pipes in a box, and I have tail fins and propellers and the like in one for "plane" parts.The same goes for plants (all in one box). This lets me come across interesting parts I didn't first consider.

However I have my bricks sorted into 1 wide, 2 wide and the modified bricks all in different boxes.

 

Volume is hard to figure out too. Sadly. 

Rebrickable is a good way to get an idea of what parts you have, if you know exactly what sets you own and do not have extra bricks from mixed lots. I know all my sets, but the boxes of charity shop and second hand finds of mixed parts means it is not possible to really list all parts I have.

[Grover]

I have around 200,000 bricks in my collection.  Most are in sets that are put into Ziploc bags; the instructions and boxes are stored collapsed separately.  The bulk bricks that I have are in large gallon Ziploc bags.  I wound up with a bunch of cast off boxes from my old work years ago of dimension: 33.78 x 37.78 x 40.00 cm (~45L).  If I pack the bricks into these until they are full, it takes about 20 boxes to hold the collection (I know because I moved recently).  No idea what the weight is on that, but if you consider 10,000 pcs/45L of volume, that might give you a rough estimate.  No idea on weight, although as some have said, bricklink has weights, and you might be able to add up set weights and such.  Good luck!

[zux]

Bricklink has box sizes. You can take this and multiply by 0.5-0.75, which is usually taken by bricks.

[Donald]

Bricklink has sizes for most bricks measured in studs. I've started to estimate brick sizes in multiples of 1.6mm (Lego Units - see https://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/288/what-are-the-dimensions-of-a-lego-brick/295), at least of my most frequent bricks. I'd like to sort bricks by part (not by color). Saving space is not my main concern, but I want to order storage that is the right size. Currently I have some portable Stanley organizers, but the most frequent bricks will not fit. The 1x6, 1x4 and 2x4 bricks will take up over 2.5 liters in volume each (if I disassemble all my sets). I'll happily share my table and will later test them too (although I can only do that when I've disassembled a fair share of my sets).

[bonox]

there is very tightly defined mathematical sets for describing packing volumes of certain entities - balls in a cube for example. The problem with lego is that sometimes parts fit inside one another, or snap together, sometimes they don't. Have a look at the PAB Cup packing threads for ideas on how to minimise volume of a collection of similar parts.

Your issue is far more complex so at some level you'll need to understand that there is no definable "storage that is the right size".

Another issue is that as soon as you start building and displaying at least some items, your required storage volume drops.

Perhaps start with the available stud volumes corrected into real units, apply a fudge factor for packing (might not even need one initially), and estimate by building some different containers, folding some up out of old cardboard etc

[Johnny1360]

I guess you could take a representative portion of your collection, place them in a container until it's full. Then just divide the remainder by what you have in the container, the resulting number would give you the amount of containers you need. Or is that too simple? I understand it's fun to toss around numbers and find magic formulas, I just think there are too many variables to accurately figure mathematicaly. Sometimes you just have to do it. 

[Donald]

Thanks to all of you for your replies. I've estimated the brick size of my top 50 bricks (more than 250 of that design/shape) by creating an Excel with LEGO unit sizes - sample below; a LEGO unit equals 1.6mm. I have yet to test it with a decent amount of bricks to see if it works well enough and how much I need to add for pack density. For now I work with adding 25%. I can clean up and share, if anyone is interested.

With that estimation, I have two dozen bricks over two liters volume, a couple dozen between 1-2 liter, about one hundred between 0.25-1 liter and a big number of smaller lots. 

DesignID	PartName	H	W	D
3023	Plate 1X2	3	10	5
3005	Brick 1X1	7	5	5
3004	Brick 1X2	7	10	5
3069	Flat Tile 1X2	2	10	5
3024	Plate 1X1	3	5	5
3710	Plate 1X4	3	20	5
3010	Brick 1X4	7	20	5
3666	Plate 1X6	3	30	5