ToyBox 3D Printer Review
Product Name: ToyBox 3D Printer
Product Description: The ToyBox 3D printer is the perfect plug-and-play device made especially for your children. With its small-build design, kid-friendly user interface, and easy-to-control operation, this can be your child's toy store. Featuring the ToyBox app that displays hundreds of pre-designed toys to choose from including cars, animals, buildings, and more. Your children also have the opportunity to design their character through Block Buddy, wherein they can select different hairstyles, outfits, and face details. It is safe to say that the limitation is endless when it comes to making your print models. This is a great parent-child bonding while developing their skills and talents.
Offer price: 300 - 400
Currency: USD
Availability: OnlineOnly
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Build Quality
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Performance
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Features
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Easy to Use
Summary
ToyBox is a plug-and-play 3D printer that delivers high-quality results in a short period. It allows you to watch your kids in creating simple, colorful, and unique toys that enhance their creativity. With an easy setup and user interface, children can learn the printing process faster and start printing in no time. There is no need to install, calibrate, or configure a software because everything works through a simple app. With so much design to choose and so little money to spend, this is probably the most fun and educational tool for kids today.
Pros
Kid-friendly user interface
Easy to setup
Prints quickly and efficiently
A wide selection of pre-designed toys and offers customization
Safe printer and filament materials
Cons
Cannot print without a Wi-Fi connection
Limited to over 3 inches and simple-designed objects
Not 100% accurate prints
Prints don’t stick well due to unheated print bed
Need supervision for hot and moving prints
User Review
( votes)ToyBox 3D Printer Review
In the 1980s, 3D printing is mainly used for businesses as part of the product development. It is not a common device for household and quite expensive for personal use. And even today, fully assembled 3D printers usually cost thousands of dollars and comes with a complex setup, which is mainly for adults. But with more kids exploring their minds and creativity, it is fortunate that few manufacturers produce 3D printers for the young ones. One of these is the ToyBox Labs that developed the ToyBox 3D printer.
Founders of ToyBox Labs Ben Baltes and Jenn Chin, turn their prototype into a product that is more child-friendly. From the design to operation, it allows your children to learn and experience new things about the 3D printer. Your child will surely enjoy making and playing with their own-designed toys. But if your kids prefer to use pre-designed toys, they can take advantage of the ToyBox apps that offer a wide variety of designs. With its kid-friendly interface and automatic operation, your kids can make their toys even without too much guidance.
Overview
The ToyBox 3D printer is the perfect plug-and-play device made especially for your children. With its small-build design, kid-friendly user interface, and easy-to-control operation, this can be your child’s toy store. Featuring the ToyBox app that displays hundreds of pre-designed toys to choose from including cars, animals, buildings, and more. Your children also have the opportunity to design their character through Block Buddy, wherein they can select different hairstyles, outfits, and face details. It is safe to say that the limitation is endless when it comes to making your print models. This is a great parent-child bonding while developing their skills and talents.
What’s cool about the ToyBox is aside from it being meant for the kids, the terms they used for the parts of the printer are way different from the usual. Instead of power supply and filament, they call it electron feeder and printer food. This also applies to the filament colors, the green filament is called apple, purple is grape, and white is coconut, which comes with eight non-toxic and biodegradable printer food or filament colors that can produce 100 to 300 toys. It may sound cheesy but kids will surely enjoy this little effort made by ToyBox.
Key Specifications
- 4 mm Extruder head
- 60 mm per second print speed
- 200 microns print resolution
- PLA non-toxic plastic materials
- 7 x 8 x 9 cm print area
- 7.4 x 7.4 x 9.1 inches dimension
- 3 kg of weight
- 2.4 GHz band Wi-Fi
Design
Due to its small build and toy-like white exterior, the ToyBox 3D printer is simply the cutest machine for kids. It only measures 7.4 x 7.4 x 9.1 inches and weighs 3 kg making it easier to fit in any space. The open-metal-frame structure will get your kids excited to see the whole printing process, and of course, the final print. Also, the print bed is magnetic and flexible, so you can easily remove the prints by simply bending them. A small LCD touch screen at the bottom displays the status of the printer and other basic settings. Although the reels come a bit small at 0.5 lb., it only allows you to feed 1.75 mm PLA filament to the printer. Also, the ToyBox needs to operate and only read files that are in STL or OBJ formats.
Setup
The setup might be easy, but still, our kids need parental supervision to put things into place. But before you can start printing, you need to download the ToyBox app from Apple App Store or Google Play Store and connect it to Wi-Fi. Below are the simple steps to get started.
- Connect the power plug to a power supply and wait for a couple of seconds for the printer to heat up. The light indicator on the bottom right will stop blinking when it is good to go.
- On the screen, it shows a message that you need to go to the ToyBox website to create your profile. Just simply visit make.toys/welcome.
- After creating a profile, it will ask for a pairing code that will show on the printer screen. Type the code to the phone until the connection is successful.
- Then, attach the printer spool at the back of the printer and it will automatically feed into the printer.
- Choose a pre-designed toy or customize your own and press “print me”. It will show how long it takes for the object to get done and the printing will start immediately.
Features
Design Customization
Unlike other 3D printers, the ToyBox 3D printer allows customization to make every print special for kids. There are numerous pre-designed toys on the ToyBox website or the internet that they can try. But they can also choose to build their character using Block Buddy. It starts by printing prototypes to modify their designs, presses the print button on the phone to show the printing time, and it will show the printing time. Also, what’s great about customizing designs is it doesn’t cost any additional charge.
Fast Printing
ToyBox provides fast printing while maintaining a noise-free operation. For a 3-inch toy, the printing time only takes almost 2 hours. Even if it cannot print larger objects, it doesn’t require any tooling or machining, which is perfect for kids. There is no need for an additional person or expensive equipment for the printer to work. After you finish printing the prototype, you can easily convert it to the suggested format and print it.
High-Quality Prints
For an affordable price, producing excellent prints is a plus factor. With its compact and lightweight size, carrying and moving the printer around is very easy. It also doesn’t need a large space in your desk or room and is very safe to use, especially for kids. The design features are not only suitable for kids at home but professionally as well. And since it can print prototypes, you can reduce any waste to help in saving your cost.
Performance
Most of the results from the print test are successful but there are also some failed objects. Since the print bed is not heated, the model print does not stick very well and gets stuck to the extruder. Some parts of the object became loose that ruins the whole design. There are also a few things that we can’t consider to be child-friendly like the open frame structure, which children can easily touch. Without parents’ guidance, these issues can lead to accidents, so it is still important to help your kids when printing. But if things like this happen, just pull the power plug instantly because stopping the printer using the web print interface needs a couple of seconds to take effect. It is nice that the printer notifies you when a problem occurs but doesn’t have the ability to fix it. Lastly, complicated and intricate designs are not a ToyBox forte, to avoid making your kids sad and disappointed, we suggest sticking to simple designs for a maximum result and experience.
Conclusion
Printing with the ToyBox 3D printer is a fun time not just only for kids, but for parents as well. It allows you to watch your kids in creating simple, colorful, and unique toys that enhance their creativity. With an easy setup and user interface, children can learn the printing process faster and start printing in no time. There is no need to install, calibrate, or configure software because everything works through a simple app. ToyBox is a plug-and-play 3D printer that delivers high-quality results in a short period. With so much design to choose from and so little money to spend, it is a great 3D printer for household or professional use. Using the ToyBox 3D printer helps your children to learn new things and play with their toys after. This is probably the most fun and educational tool for kids today. If unsure this is the right 3d printer for you, check out our 3d printers section where we are sure you will find a 3d printer to suit your needs.
