3D Printed Toy

 

 

Investigate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Possible Solutions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evaluate and

Test the Best Solutions

 

I chose the third design, unicorn whistle due to three reasons. Firstly, the third design suits the best for girls at age of five to eight who I targeted as target audience.  I have a cousin at similar age as my target audience who likes unicorn and I thought that it is easy to modify colors of the unicorn figure which is visually appealing to girls at age of five to eight.  Secondly, I think the third design is the easiest for children to hold as it has larger body compared to other two designs.  The first design is not suitable for blowing whistle because your hands do not fit properly due to wings attached to the body.  Also, the second one is not suitable for children because the body is too skinny.  This can cause them to swallow it and makes it unsuitable to play with.  Lastly, I chose the last design due to its strength.  Children often break toys easily because they do not know how to handle things yet.  They can throw, bite or step on the whistle.  The first two designs are easier to break than the last one because it has wings and ears protruded from the bodies.  Without wings and ears, those whistles cannot be identified as any animals which children will lose interests toward the product.  However, the unicorn can possibly be identified as other animals when it loses parts like a horn.  Therefore, due to three reasons, I decided to make the third design a real product.   

 

Prototype

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evaluate and Test the Best Solution.

 

While creating a prototype on CAD, there were few problems I encountered.  First issue occurred when I tried to give curvy surface to the design.  I could create a sphere by several tools; however, I could not figure out how to create different shapes and keeping the curved surface at the same time.  In the end, I decided to make a toy that was made out of geometric shapes.  Moreover, it was difficult to attach legs and body together.  At first, I crated four legs as a base and I decided to make body on top of it.  I thought it is the easiest way to make the prototype.  However, it took me a lot of time to put four legs in proportion.  Also, although I am trying to put those legs on the same altitude, some legs were located higher or lower than where I want them to be.  In order to solve this issue, I put a picture of a unicorn as a guide, outline the shape of the unicorn and by using Push/Pull tool, I pulled out body and legs together.

 

 

 

Redesign.  

 If I were given opportunity to redesign this toy, there are three things I would change about this toy.  The first thing is that I would make the horn of the unicorn bigger and longer.  Although I measured the length of it on Google Sketchup, I did not compare the size with the entire toy.  As a result, it caused the horn to be small compared to the scale of the body.  From next time, I would like to consider the size of each part of the toy by looking at the entire thing.  The other thing I would change about this toy is the size of the whistle.  The same problem occurred to the horn.  However, when I was attaching the whistle to the body on CAD, I could look at the entire thing to figure out the ideal length.  Even though I decided the length by comparing it to the scale of the entire body, the whistle was not big enough.  I believe this occurred because the surface where I put the whistle was too small that it limited the maximum diameter of the whistle.  Therefore, when I redesign this toy, I would like to modify the toy to allow whistle to be the right size.  The last thing I want to change about this is to make it more realistic.  I could not achieve to create curved and realistic body; however, there were people who were able to do it.  Therefore, when I redesign this toy, I would be able to achieve it by asking them for an advice.