Random part of the day: Hinge Plate 1X2
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random part is 19954, 'Hinge Plate 1X2', which is a System part, category Functional Elements.
Our members collectively own a total of 9,894,342 of them. If you'd like to buy some you should find them for sale at BrickLink.
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Everything hinges on this plate.
Super useful and compact to support a hinge point, or lately LEGO making builds at more unconventional angles as well using hinges, jumpers and/or A-shaped wedge plates
Certainly a long running workhorse of LEGO since 1987 along with the brick version from 1978.
2x4 plate hinges appeared in 1976 and are much larger, but still in use today as well (often as dragon tails nowadays)
As a kid, I can really only remember this part from the LEGO Studios sets (to make the clapperboard), but it's apparently been around is some form or another since 1987. I probably didn't have enough Space sets, since I was certainly familiar with the brick version, which is abundant in Castle sets.
Kind of amazing or amusing to me that this part has been around so long, but has really come into its own as the preferred way to make angled sections of things in the last 10-15 years.
I have at least a dozen of these things. Very handy part! No wonder we own just under 10 million collectively.
Like the bigger brick version, you can take these apart, but it's illegal like minifig hands and arms, and even harder to separate and put back together than minifig arms. So it's good that I haven't had need of putting two different colored halves together.
Always annoying when you can't find this part because you're mistaking it for a 2x2 or 1x4. That said, it's a useful part.
One of the best parts ever.
I used four of these to make the arms on my B:TAS Clayface, and I think I used a couple hundred to make lefthand and righthand hinge points for my modular Flash trail. I’ve modded a few sets that include them, like turning Construct-A-Buzz into a mech for Toy Story 3 Buzz (the wings use these). Offhand, I can’t think of any other times I’ve used them.
Have we had a RPotD that beats out nearly 10 million for number owned? We get a lot of remakes over classics which skews my memory a bit
The MVP (most valued piece)!
The old ones were a bit too easily dislodged in my experience. Sometimes when you want to disassemble those you have to be careful you don't accidentally lift off one half of it!
Maybe those were faulty already though?
Dr. Evadne, just not the same without Dame Hilda...
@NatureBricks said:
"Never realized this piece was updated recently. (Ten years ago)"
Apparently there's an even more recent update for it in the form of https://brickset.com/parts/design-1927 - according to the database, that version is new this year!
I guess my first encounter with this part - or at least its older version - must have been in the moviemaker set as mentioned above? I dunno, I thought I remembered having some of them before that, but I've no idea where from; that looks like the earliest set I owned to include them. Really though, I mostly remember them as being used to secure the angled Mustafar platforms in 7257 Ultimate Lightsaber Duel.
One of my favorite pieces.
@NatureBricks:
With both set and part design numbers, they started out low and switched to larger numbers as they ran out. With sets, entire ranges were reserved for specific themes, which resulted in waves with sequential set numbers. There are gaps in the 4-digit range for sure, but I don’t know about the 3-digit range except that it includes a few duplicates.
That much is fairly common knowledge. Due to the way set numbers are allocated, there’s very little chance they’ll go back and use up those gap numbers. There’s nothing to be achieved besides quelling someone’s OCD, and it’d just make things confusing for the current range of sets. It also gives some indication of what era a set is from, though this will cease to be effective as they expand into longer ranges that take more time to use up, unless they restrict usage to 5-digit blocks.
With part design numbers, that’s all mostly for their internal use, aside from the replacement parts/online PAB system. They run several different lengths of design numbers concurrently because they aren’t retired as long as the design stays in production. Often they are assigned sequentially on a first-come-first-served basis. Filling in gaps is less of a problem, and shorter design numbers are easier to fit in smaller spaces (try to read the number on the end of a modern lightsaber blade to see why that matters). I’m more surprised that it took this long for them to start using up the short numbers, than that they decided to do so. But it is still weird.
Great part, but don't put too much stress on it. 9470 does exactly that by supporting the weight of the whole model (even though it's distributed between many legs). The small hinges cylinders begin to wear with the stress and are very prone to snapping off completely. Need replacements handy.