3D printed toys without visible layers and stripped structure? – It sounds like a fairytale. How to achieve it? Rough, fade and drafty figurines are not what children are looking for. Thanks to the technology worked out by Polymaker, which guarantees high quality and smoothness of prints. An artist Nicolas Tokotuu decided to use it to create his own line of toys, which becomes more and more popular among kids and is available in distant corners of the world.
Nicolas comes from a Pacific island called Wallis and Futuna. This small island of 10,000 inhabitants is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Toys are extremely rare there and you can buy them only in an insane price. The artist claimed, that the development of the local children can’t be no longer interrupted. Children make the toys interact by talking, waving at each other, following each other, etc. This actually makes the child dive into their own story and helps them create their own world. 3D printing allows this world to be limitless, which means the imagination of children will be limitless. Nikoss’ Toys are available for everybody on Thingiverse. Among them you can find: mammals, fish, dinosaurs or insects.
Nicolas used to print his toys with ABS and PLA, then post processing the toys to make them smooth and attractive to children. But he faced a lot of problems: ABS may be the easiest to post process but if you have children at home it is not very safe to let them participate to the creation of their own toys. The fumes from the printing can be toxic, and the acetone from the polishing process can be dangerous in many ways. Moreover, the printing conditions of ABS are quiet specific. Whereas PLA is the easiest to print, you would want to keep your child away from any of the solvents used in post processing. Furthermore, the post process itself is not easy to accomplish correctly. His story with Polymaker has begun 6 months ago and has solved all of these problems by creating PolySmooth and its new desktop machine – the Polysher.
I love PolySmooth, on one hand it is just as easy to print as PLA and children can safely watched the printing process without exposing them to fumes. No more hassle with ABS. On the other hand, I love this material because the support is as easy to remove as ABS. Last but not least, the Polysher allows a polishing process completely effortless and semi automated, while most importantly, much safer for children. Which means that children can actually participate in the creation of their toys from downloading to the end product
Nicolas Tokotuu, Nikoss Toys
Polysher bases on “bathing” of 3D prints in vapour, but not in acetone. A substance which makes your models smoother is just alcohol. You can smooth only PolySmooth PVB, a special filament produced by Polymaker. The essence of this process is the PolySmooth filament. It is perfect for print, it has well-balanced mechanic stamps and above all it reacts in aerosol of popular alcohols, like ethanol or isopropanol. If you would like to read more amout this ingenious technology, I am recommending you Łukasz’s article, which is a small encyclopaedia about Polymaker. I have recently written about use of Polysmooth in art by an artist Tian Tian, who uses it to print Qing Dynasty vases from the 13th century.
The campaign of the company on Kickstarter will be finished in 13 days and it still catches an attention of enthusiasts of 3D printing. Polymaker pledged for 100.000 $, but it collected 334.503 $! The device is just amazing and it will make a lot of noise in the future.
Source: press release: