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3D printer 299


I tried the $300 3D printer that was backed on 'Shark Tank' — my 5-year-old son and I both enjoy making toys with it

Steven John

Apr. 10, 2019, 12:27 PM

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  • The Toybox 3D Printer ($299) was designed with young makers in mind; its app and website are kid-friendly and the hardware only takes a few minutes of parental setup.
  • Dozens of pre-designed models are ready to print with one button and original designs are also easy to create, upload, and print.
  • The printer and its accessories are reasonably priced considering the cutting-edge technology, but it's definitely not cheap by any standards.

For reasons beyond my understanding, my five-year-old son Ben is fascinated with 3D printers. I'm not even sure where the young man first learned of the technology, but for more than a year now, it's captivated him. He has dreamt of using the 3D printer at our local library and counted the days until he'd be able to use one at his school. Sadly, the school's unit is relegated to older elementary grades and Ben's only in prekindergarten.

Then my wife and I discovered California-based Toybox, a cool brand that received an investment from "Shark Tank" and makes a 3D printer for just $299. It's a reasonable price to pay for an innovative item, but definitely not a "cheap" purchase that should be taken lightly. My wife and I felt it was affordable for us and we especially liked that it was easy for our five-year-old to use on his own. 

Within a few minutes after we got the colorful "Printer Food" PLA filament in place on the back of the printing unit and threaded it into the extruder, Ben had already created a custom design he wanted to print. And with the tap of a button, that's what he did.

Read more: The best STEM toys you can buy for kids

Steven John/Business Insider

3D printing has been around since the 1980s, but it wasn't common or meant for household use until well into the first decade of this century. Today, while the technology is hardly new, it's still not mainstream and that's largely because of the high prices. Many legitimate, full-sized 3D printers can cost more than a thousand dollars, and even those that are smaller and more affordable are still too complex and fragile for young kids.

The Toybox printer, on the other hand, was designed expressly for kids. Its remarkable ease of use knocks down barriers to one of the most exciting types of hardware while the well-designed app and website encourages deep exploration into design. Also, it's awesome to play with a toy you made yourself. I mean, for your kid to play with a toy he or she made.

Creating one of the pre-designed "toys" — and I'm using that term loosely because there are rings and bracelets, figurines, race cars, cups, planters, and so much more — available on the site or app requires about as much effort as sending a text message. Once the printer is switched on and warm enough, you just tap through to the item you want to make, hit the print button, and the machine will create the object right before your eyes.

Read more: The best 3D printers you can buy

Steven John/Business Insider

Naturally, custom designs take a bit longer because you have to create them first in the Creator Space. You can also upload models you found on other sites or created using computer-aided design platforms. With a bit of time spent learning how to use the system, you can essentially create anything you can imagine, even complicated pieces with multiple colors and moving parts that you can assemble after multiple printing sessions.

And if you have questions or issues, you're in luck — Toybox customer service works every bit as well as its printer. We had an issue with the printing nozzle grinding the pad on which it was supposed to print and being that the unit was brand new, I was annoyed initially. I mean, the printer is affordable by our standards, but not cheap so I expected it to work well out of the box. Not only did a brand rep get on the phone quickly with me, but he actually started a FaceTime call so he could walk me through the fix — which turned out to be about a single turn of a calibration screw.

The best thing about getting your kid a Toybox 3D Printer? When they think of some new toy they want, they can make it right then and there. Okay, maybe they can start then and there, because large objects can take hours to print, but you can at least have a ring with bunny ears in about three minutes.

Buy the Toybox 3D Printer Starter Bundle for $299 from Toybox

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Autodesk & Mattel Release New $299 3D Printer for Families

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In April of last year, Autodesk first announced its partnership with legendary toy manufacturer Mattel, saying that they would be powering the toy company’s design apps.   We are now seeing the biggest result of that partnership as Mattel reboots its classic ThingMaker product.  While in the 60s and 90s the ThingMaker was a desktop molding machine, the 21st century version is a desktop 3D printer.

Introduced in the 1960s and then resurrected in the 1990’s, the ThingMaker was a device that allowed kids to fabricate squishy toys, like bugs and flowers, by pouring liquid resin into metal molds, which were then baked within the device’s scalding hot oven.  I burned my hands more than once in trying to produce my own Creepy Crawlers.  The 2016 redux is definitely a lot safer and has the benefit of riding the massive trend of 3D printing.

Unveiled ahead of the Toy Fair trade show taking place in New York this weekend, the ThingMaker is a $299.99, family-marketed 3D printer that is controlled with a 3D printing app for iOS and Android.  In addition to managing print tasks, the app allows users to use pre-supplied models for 3D printing.  Then, when a batch of 3D printed parts begins printing, the door to the printbed locks to prevent the same burns associated with the Creepy Crawler fabricator of yesteryear.   Using only PLA and no heated bed, another safety hazard is removed, but there is no word on whether the printer will only be able to use proprietary PLA.

The ThingMaker App bears a striking resemblance to Tinkerplay, Autodesk’s kid-focused design app created through the acquisition of the Modio app.  Users can design modular characters that they can then build, once printed.  With batch printing and a quick change of filament, these characters become multi-colored creations of the imagination.

A direct tie-in to Mattel and the new 3D printer certainly opens the world of Tinkerplay up to its young target demographic more easily. Dan Pressman, creative director at Autodesk, says of the design app, “All the physical behaviors are as it would be when it was actually printed out, so you can get an idea for how it is going to mechanically move and what the limits of all the joints and sockets that you create are.”

The device is part of a larger trend that sees Mattel attempting to keep up with the times, technologically and sociologically. Apple recently began selling a Google Cardboard-style VR case for iPhone that’s intended as a reboot of Mattel’s classic View-Master device. The toy manufacturer also launched a new series of Barbie toys meant to reflect the diversity of modern consumers.  Albeit, the toys still suffer from the similar whitewashing of morphological facial features when it comes to their dolls of color and their “Curvy” would more accurately be labeled “Average”, not to mention the reinforcement of a gender binary and strict female stereotypes, but it’s a step in the right direction for Mattel.

When such brands as Barbie and Hot Wheels join the ThingMaker ecosystem has yet to be revealed, but Aslan Appleman, senior director, at Mattel has hinted to USA Today that this is part of the plan, “Obviously we have quite a few iconic brands in our portfolio as well as access to partner brands. You can imagine that’s part of our longer term strategy.”

The ThingMaker will ship this Fall, but preorders will open up on Amazon this coming Monday and the ThingMaker app is already available for download.   Appleman comments, “We’re going to use these seven months to really learn and gain analytics of how people are using it.” Marketed during Saturday morning cartoons (are those still a thing??) between Nerf and Ecto-Cooler commercials, I can tell you that I definitely would have asked my parents to buy me one.

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Michael Molitch-Hou

Michael Molitch-Hou previously served as Editor-in-Chief of 3D Printing Industry, he is now the Editor of Engineering . com's 3D printing section. He has covered additive manufacturing technology day in and day out since 2012 and has hundreds of article to his credit. He is the founder of The Reality Institute.

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