Toys are not just instruments of amusement. Over the centuries, they’ve also been tools for teaching, symbols of cultural expression, and artifacts of technological evolution. The development of plastic toys is driven by consumer demand. As people pay attention to children’s growth and development, more and more parents begin to pay attention to the choice of children’s toys. Plastic toys have durability, safety, diversity and other characteristics, favored by parents. What Processes are Usually required to Manufacture plastic toys
Certain plastics are preferred over others for toy manufacturing thanks to their suitable properties. PVC is soft and flexible, often used in toys for younger children as it is also one of the most UV resistant plastics; it is used for making toys for outdoor play. However, its use has been controversial due to concerns about potentially harmful chemicals called phthalates, sometimes added to PVC to increase flexibility. Thankfully, many toy manufacturers have started using phthalate-free PVC.
How to Choose the Right Plastic Manufacturing Process
Consider the following factors when selecting a manufacturing process for your product:
Form: Do your parts have complex internal features or tight tolerance requirements? Depending on the geometry of a design, manufacturing options may be limited, or they may require significant design for manufacturing (DFM) optimization to make them economical to produce.
Volume/cost: What’s the total or the annual volume of parts you’re planning to manufacture? Some manufacturing processes have high front costs for tooling and setup, but produce parts that are inexpensive on a per-part basis. In contrast, low volume manufacturing processes have low startup costs, but due to slower cycle times, less automation, and manual labor, cost per part remains constant or decreases only marginally when volume increases.
Lead time: How quickly do you need parts or finished goods produced? Some processes create first parts within 24 hours, while tooling and setup for certain high volume production processes takes months. A nearly infinite variety of colors, textures, and finishes can be produced in many plastics, allowing for tremendous freedom of design and functionality.
Material: What stresses and strains will your product need to stand up to? The optimal material for a given application is determined by a number of factors. Cost must be balanced against functional and aesthetic requirements. Consider the ideal characteristics for your specific application and contrast them with the available choices in a given manufacturing processes.
Making customized toys, why manufacturers would like to choose our multi-person design team?
Specialized division of labor and collaboration: Our design team can often provide a more detailed professional division of labor, such as concept designers, structural engineers, material specialists, electronic engineers (for electronic toys), artists, etc., who each specialize in different fields, and are able to work collaboratively to ensure that the design is both creative and in line with the actual production requirements.
Creative ability and diversity: Our design team can give our customers more creative collisions and inspiration exchange, and can produce more diversified design solutions. This is especially important for customers seeking new and unique toy products, as the team is able to provide more options to meet different market needs.
Rapid Response and Problem Solving: In the face of complex design challenges or urgent project requirements, our design team is able to mobilize resources and assign tasks more quickly, thus shortening the design cycle and responding to customer needs quickly. At the same time, members of the team with different professional backgrounds are able to look at problems from different perspectives and find solutions more easily.
Creating plastic toys that are both comfortable and safe for consumers is a daunting task that toy manufacturers deal with on a daily basis. Whether the toys are simple smart toys or mannequin mold designs, these toys go through a variety of rigorous processes and treatments before they reach their owners. We manufacture all of our toys in the China, with plastic and colorant purchased domestically, the majority of which consist of sound components and fasteners.