Organizing LEGOs

On Thursday before work, I ran into WalMart to get some Loctite for the bolts on the CNC machine some students and I are putting together. On my way past the craft section, I noticed some new storage containers for a little over $12. The clear plastic box has 16 smaller plastic boxes in a rainbow of colors. I grabbed one thinking I could use it for my small LEGO pieces. After thinking about the container and my small LEGO pieces, I went back to WalMart on Friday to get two more boxes.


Previously my LEGO pieces were inventoried into the LEGO Mindstorm kits I purchased from a grant I was awarded from the Quest Foundation (now Century Link) about seven years ago. Inventorying the kits was a huge job and the student groups did not have equal abilities to complete the task. This meant that the kits did not all have the parts they needed. In addition to the lack of quality during inventory time, students would spill the kits at least once while using them. So I gave up trying to keep the kits inventoried and decided to group like parts together in a master command station of LEGO pieces. I used the plastic trays that came with the kits to organize the parts. I quickly found out that students still spilled the trays and all my hard work separating the pieces was quickly mixed on the floor.

I tried other methods of organizing the LEGO pieces but the pieces still got mixed up. These experiences led me to the desperate act of purchasing another set of new storage containers. Now only one box gets opened at a time. That means if a spill happens, all the pieces are the same type. Well, that's my theory, we will see how it works during the next LEGO unit.



Finally, I transferred my small LEGO pieces into the three craft boxes. One large container is full of different types of connector pegs. If you work with LEGO robotics, you know how difficult it can be to find the right connector peg for the job. In the second large container, most of my gears are separated into different bins. The 40 toothed gears and some of the other larger gear pieces did not fit. Separating the 24-toothed crown gears from the 24-toothed spur gears gave me much satisfaction. The third bin has unusual specialty pieces.


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