Is anyone printing baby toys? There are tow problems that I see:
Material composition: these toys will go in my daughter’s mouth and I want to make sure they do not leach anything harmful, including anything that might be part of the industrial process, such as metal shavings.
Shape and strength: pieces cannot fall off and toys need to resist cracking over time.
It seems like item #2 can be addressed through experimentation on strength and adjusting the slicing axis. I really don’t know anything about #1.
#2 shouldn’t be much of a problem when you’re printing PLA or ABS at decent temperatures and with a somewhat thicker shell and higher infill.
However, i wouldn’t use any plastic that is not explicitly labeled as food safe and would also make sure the extruder and hotend are made from food-safe materials (aluminum and brass often contain lead and and other non-consumable metals). Sadly, his disqualifies basically all hotends and filaments on the market.
If there are metal shavings they’ll jam in the nozzle and the print won’t work. (If any debris fits through the nozzle, it’s not going to be an obstructive/physically hazardous problem for a child.) PLA is marginally edible. ABS may leach plasticizers from the polymerization process, so it might not be a good idea.
I think #2 is actually a lot more of a problem: 3d prints are brittle, and it’s hard to make things a kid can’t break.
@Ben_Norris , I was hoping that smoothing the print afterwards would help address this but I have not had an opportunity to try this yet. I am actually still building out/calibrating my machine before the first print which might be tonight.
@Thomas_Sanladerer , @ThantiK , I suspect you are correct that my nozzle is not food safe. It is the j-head that ships with makerfarm prusa i3 kits. I sent in a support request to ask for more information.
If it turns out that 3d-printing baby toys is prohibitively expensive, what do you think about using 3d-printed objects for making molds? I’m not sure if I would print a positive then form a mold around it, or try to print a negative.
Depends on the actual toy to be printed off course, but how about dipping the object into some coating? I know plastidip isn’t food safe, but maybe there’s an alternative to that which is.
@foosel , that’s an interesting idea. I wrote off any sort of paint but that may have been premature. A quick search shows that there may be some compounds designed for this. I do wonder if that will be significantly easier than making molds.
@Matt_Harrington I’d do it in addition to molds. Print a negative, spray it with a coat of the food-safe stuff, then fill it with food safe silicone rubber or similar…or chocolate, etc.
Acetone vapor baths for smoothing ABS might be good enough for getting rid of the crevices that bacteria would hide in. I do not know how that would affect how food safe it is though. You would surely need to give it a good drying time and then a good soak/boil. The acetone vapor bath is a recommended way to treat parts for makerlove, so you can be sure it would be easy to keep sterile.
@ThantiK food safe and brass is interesting as food processing machines contain brass bushings and components. And as the lead is bonded is it unsafe as going down that route just touching brass would put you at risk of absorbing it.
@Nigel_Dickinson , just because a machine has brass bushings, etc doesn’t make something not food safe, because nothing ever touches it which then touches food. Generally food safe machinery ensures that food never touches surfaces which could contaminate.
@ThantiK answer my question does touching brass allow lead into your system. Thing is only food safe plastics can be used which require higher heat and most people wouldn’t use a brass nozzle.
Second keeping oil dust and everything else clear of the printer is a bit much. Really its not practical. But I still want that answer will lead contaminate me if I touch brass or not?
Taulman3D’s materials are medical grade / food safe materials. And they bond extremely strongly, so you wouldn’t have to worry about the object fragmenting under abuse. You can hammer on Taulman nylon parts, for example, and they just bounce back.
The crevices that could contain bacterial might be an issue, though. You might want to boil the printed object periodically to keep it sterile. That is, assuming it’s not PLA, which might not survive that temperature.
I wouldn’t worry about contamination from the brass nozzle - the plastic only flows through it very briefly, so it’s hard to imagine lead leeching from the nozzle into the plastic. But I would be careful that the nozzle is cleaned - if you have bits of left over ABS or PLA on the nozzle they could transfer into the new material, so at the least you’d want to make sure the nozzle is brushed clean and the new material flows cleanly after the filament change. The hospitals that are experimenting with 3D printing dedicated printers to using only “medical grade” filament, to avoid cross-contamination between materials, but that’s probably overkill for printing one thing for home use.
The silicone coating is a great idea! That is, assuming that it bonds to the plastic enough to keep it from peeling off. I mention that because the rubberized “dip” coatings that I have tried on my prints all ended up peeling off, and I can’t imagine you want a baby chewing bits of silicone. Hopefully this works out better.
