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.
I don’t even want to think about all the microplastics created when people sand their builds they’re going to throw in the trash or ignore after a week. Small comfort that most people are too lazy to even do that. People are more careful around wood dust than microplastics, it’s nuts. And like, wood dust isn’t harmless either! Don’t breathe any of it, but definitely don’t breathe the plastics!
Total agreement.
Btw: If you want to smooth your prints, get a hot-air soldering station. Set it to 300°C and carefully melt the surface. Then use a flat piece of metal and carefully push it to the molten surface. You have to be careful to only melt the outer perimeter without melting the inner structure, so that the shape stays intact. It smooths much better than sanding while at the same time annealing the plastic and creating a much stronger layer bond.
And it’s much faster than sanding.
In general, these hot-air soldering stations are perfect for reworking plastics, not only 3D prints.
The sauce shelf in my fridge cracked apart due to too many sauces being jammed into it. I used the hot-air soldering station to weld the broken pieces together.
I paid around €50 for mine, which is a very nice temperature-controlled one that goes up to 480°C. Can only recommend.
Brand of soldering station? That sounds great.
Mine is a Yihua 959D-II. It works really well for my needs, but it’s not like a professional endorsement. I’m just a tinkerer who bought the best-rated cheap thing from Amazon.
It’s fairly minimal compared to the amount of microplastics that go down the drain every time someone washes a load of laundry made from synthetic fibers. At least PLA dust will break down a bit faster than many of the other microplastics.
Synthetic fibers are a fucking nightmare too, just actively sanding it and creating all those microplastics right there, without even washing it away, possibly BREATHING it!! gives me the heebie jeebies after learning about how much plastic is in our brains.