Process Of Making Toys Inside Factory

CREDIT
MINILAND
WEBSITE - minilandgroup.com
UA-cam - • Production's process i...
Toy factories need the work of designers. Clients and toy company employees have a brainstorming session and, after that, designers prepare sketches of the toy in question. They include the size, colors, and facial expressions and poses, according to the type of toy (it can be a figurine, a doll, a car or some plastic food).
Sketching precedes a 3D depiction of the product, which is regularly made with specialized software. Here, depending on the equipment of each toy factory, the process can take different paths. One of them is to get the toy model with the help of a 3D printer. Another more traditional involves modelers. And, finally, top-notch technology allows a machine to sculpt the design pattern into the metal that will shape the plastic.
Modelers will work the traditional way by sculpting wax models following the 3D depiction of the toy. You may think this step takes a long time, but an experienced wax modeler can work faster than a computer. Models can also be made externally, there are factories that specialize on this. Anyway, once the model is finished, the toy factory will use it to fabricate the molds that will be of use to produce plastic toys.
After the wax model is finished, engineers will determine whether the toy should be manufactured in just one piece or in many of them. For each one of the parts, toy factory works will create a silicone mold to make many copies in hard plastic. To create this mold, a metal box is filled with silicone that takes around 12 hours to cure.
These hard plastic copies are the prototypes, but the silicone molds can’t endure a very large production (we’re talking about thousands of toys). So, the prototypes go to different places, like the art department where the workers sample paint colors, but necessarily one copy is sent to make the production mold.
Some other toy factory workers create the production molds. The hard plastic copy goes to a metal form which is filled with plaster at the midpoint, so when the plaster cures, the prototype can be removed and leaves a cavity.
Then, this cavity is filled with a mix of metals, that includes molten zinc, copper, aluminum, and magnesium. When this mix cools, it solidifies, the plaster is broken and the metal production mold is ready. The process is repeated in order to make the other half of the toy piece and the process repeats on and on until all pieces are ready.