Toy Manufacturing – A Truly International Enterprise.
Children find toys continually fascinating and derive hours of fun from playing with them, and parents are keen on giving them. Hardly any adult or child will give much thought to how the toys came to be made. Parents are happy to know that their child’s toys are made to the highest standards and leave it at that, while children’s information of toy making is usually limited to the kindly toymaker Geppetto, the “creator ” of Pinocchio. But the real-life story of how today’s toys are produced is just as fascinating.
Due to rapid prototyping technology, the toy industry has changed significantly over the decades. European artisans development of toys made from wood parts slowly grew into an industry. Handmade wooden toy parts were carefully crafted to appear life-like. Historians are still discovering toy wheels from very old cultures proving the weight toys carry in society.
Like all other manufacturing industries, the toy sector has experienced profound transformations over the past 30 years due to the massive growth of the global economy. Large-scale manufacture in the UK, and much of the rest of Europe has all but ceased. Nowadays, components for a single product can be made in more than a few different countries, with China fast becoming a major player in the international toy trade.
The manufacture of any toy, no matter how customary, begins at the design stage. Designers are either working in-house, or an outside team of professionals is employed. At Rapid Prototyping Website we explain why and how computer aided and mechanical design processes are often utilized before the prototype formation goes ahead. The toy company itself then subjects this to product review, molding, test production, evaluation, and finally full production.
When it comes to making the parts or the toys themselves, however, the process is practically always outsourced to a third party.
A very wide range of raw materials are used in the toy manufacturing process- resins, wood, fabrics, paperboard, plastics and card, metal, zinc alloy and electronic components.
The manufacturing process on its own depends entirely on the sort of toys being made. As you can see at materialise.com/rapid-prototyping, dolls and action figures are usually produced from injection-molded plastics using the rapid prototyping technology, whereas toy cars and trains tend to be manufactured from die-cast metals, and hand or spray-painted afterwards. Components for self-assembly kits and board games will require a professional printer, while dolls and stuffed toys are practically always sewn and stuffed by hand. Many toy makers purchase components from one vendor and then assemble the final product at another facility.
Nowadays the emphasis is on conventional toys made from high-quality, durable, traditional materials. The vast majority of traditional toys are made from wood, metals, fabrics and environmentally-friendly plastics, and are produced to meet, and in many cases exceed, international regulations on quality and safety.
Visit the materialise.com/rapid-prototyping to learn that in a more and more globalized economy and the use of rapid prototyping methods in both design and manufacturing processes, it is important to combine great value with great quality and a number of toy manufacturers are capable to do just that.


