Creating child's dreams with 3D printing

By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2015-09-06 20:10:21

Bandai Co Ltd is a global player in the toy manufacturing industry, producing many popular characters and related video games since its establishment in 1950. Headquartered in

Tokyo, Bandai is the inventor, manufacturer and master toy licensee of famous brands including the Super Sentai Series, Gundam, Dragon Ball Z and many more. The company’s products are highly anticipated in the market, so Bandai is often confronted with tight deadlines in a fast-paced environment.

To meet the market’s expectations and strengthen its leadership in the market, Bandai’s designers must complete a design cycle within several months. In this period, designers develop rough sketches, draw the 3D character on CAD software, prototype the designs for form, fit and functional testing, and create several rounds of design iterations for testing prior all before the final design confirmation.

Budget constraints also add to the designers’ pressure in submitting high-quality designs within a tight schedule. To expedite the product development process, Bandai’s management sought to simplify its design verification process while reducing prototyping cost.

The Tipping Point

Bandai had been using traditional manufacturing methods such as CNC milling and optical fabrication for prototyping since the 1990s. Although these methods provided designers with accurate models, they were expensive and required extensive operation training. Moreover, these machines occupied a lot of space and the support material removal was time-consuming and labour-intensive.

The Bandai management team first discovered PolyJet™ technology in 2006, and was soon convinced it was the rapid prototyping method the company needed. “The Objet® Eden™ 3D Printer is compact and fast, allowing designers to produce parts in a shorter time than existing approach,” said Mr Masayoshi Sato, leader of the boys’ toy division design team.

“3D printers are not just tools for us to shorten delivery time; they have become indispensable and valuable assets to our company,” he added.

“Its advantages – compressed time, accuracy and fine details – are exactly what we are seeking for and solutions to our challenges.” Bandai soon added another Eden 3D Printer to its division in 2010 to further enhance the product development process.

Fast Turnaround

For one project, the boy’s toy division design team needed to create three duplicates of a character toy for an exhibition in one week’s time. Traditional methods would have taken several days to make just one part of the character toy. Instead, Mr Sato and his team used the

3D printers to create three complete toys in just one week.

The 3D Printers greatly helped with complicated designs as well. On a different occasion,

Mr Sato’s team needed to create a toy robot. Previously, traditional manufacturing methods required that the robot’s arms and the body be assembled at the last stage of production since the joints couldn’t be securely fastened and would fall off easily. “It was indeed disappointing for both our fans and designers. Now we can produce the body and the arms in one print, analyze the joints and iterate the designs at an earlier stage,” said Mr Sato.

Bandai has also seen improvements in communication among different stakeholders, such as product designers, video game and TV program creators and marketers, because the Eden 3D Printers can be easily managed by all team members. Designers can show the models to their partners, eliminating any guess work, gather feedback immediately and even mark the 3D models as reference for design iterations.

“The Eden 3D printers have strengthened our company’s business by streamlining product development cycle and expanding our product offering with better and more accurate designs,” said Mr Sato. At time of the interview, Bandai has upgraded both of their PolyJet

3D printers to two Eden350V™ 3D Printers, with larger tray sizes and bigger material cartridges, so that the printers can operate without disruption when creating larger models.

“3D printers are not just tools for us to shorten delivery time; they have become indispensable and valuable assets to our company for product realization and design verification,” said Mr Sato, adding, “We can now pursue things that we were not able to pursue before; giving us more freedom in design while reducing designers’ stress with lower cost and much faster turnaround time.”

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