this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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Hot take: 3D printing toys kinda sucks (lemmy.world)
submitted 18 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) by squaresinger@lemmy.world to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
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I used to print quite a lot of toys for my kids, but I stopped doing that, since it feels mostly like a waste of plastic.

3D printed toys are rarely enjoyable. The toys are usually either not interesting enough (think static, non-movable, single-color figurines like the low-poly-pokemon series), or not durable enough or both at the same time.

My kids liked the printed toys when they got them, but they barely looked at them after like 10 minutes and then they ended up rolling around the house until they broke, usually very soon.

I love 3D printing, I use it a lot for all sorts of things, but toys are just not a very good application for 3D prints, in my opinion. It's just not worth the plastic.

Edit: Just for context: I've been around the block with 3D printing. I started about 7 years ago and I've been the 3D printer repair guy for my circle of friends ever since, fixing up everyone else's printers. I design most of the things I print myself. The reason I am posting this is because pretty much everyone I know who has a printer and kids prints toys all the time, and any time I'm at any event where someone can shoehorn a box of give-away low-poly-pokemon in, there is one there.

IMO, this is all plastic waste and nothing else.

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[–] monotremata@lemmy.ca 2 points 14 hours ago

Thanks! I haven't actually published these pieces yet. (Well, the slide-glide cyclide thing was published by someone else, but I think it was later taken down--there may be plans for the original mathematician to sell them?) The puzzle box is just a little too kluged together to really publish; I modified a lot of things after the fact to get it together, and I'm not comfortable publishing it in that state, but I also don't really want to put in the work to finish it. The kaleidoscope would actually be okay, but it's limited--it's a bit tricky to actually cut the mirrors, and it really only works to reflect things right up against it. I want to design an adapter for it that will hold an acrylic sphere (which you can get inexpensively from China) so that you can use it to look at scenes as well. But I haven't actually gotten around to that yet either. I'll give some thought to publishing it as-is, though.