Open Toys

myminifactory

The Open Toy project is a result of a 2013 workshop at Domaine de Boisbuchet. Samuel N. Bernier had decided to use material waste from the band saw, such as cork and wood, to create toys by 3D printing small accessories with a MakerBot he brought on site. He designed six accessories that would transform the found objects into planes, helicopters, birds, and so on. Bernier was looking at Domaine's garden a week after presenting the project when he had an idea to replace the wood and cork from his project by comestible materials like vegetables and fruits. The vegetables also have the advantage of being easier to pierce without tools than wood. The Open Toys were left behind for almost ten months until Thomas Thibault, an intern in Bernier's design team at le FabShop's creation studio, started creating new parts for the collection. The rocket and submarine parts are from him. The Open Toys were presented for the first time in October 2014 during a workshop at Autodesk Pop-Up gallery in Paris. Kids present at the event transformed with great interest potatoes, carrots, eggplants, and cucumbers into cars, sea vehicles, and space ships. A digital fabrication hero had just been invented - Mister Potato. To celebrate the release of their exercise book "Impression 3D Pas à Pas," le FabShop decided to publish for free download the Open Toys files on all main 3D printing platforms: Thingiverse, YouMagine, Cults 3D, and Instructables. They hope that users of these communities will contribute big time to the Open Toys collection by creating new models. Le FabShop's designers promise to do the same in the next months. Share your "open toys" on Facebook or Twitter. Visit our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/le-FabShop/306604872773359 or follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LeFabShop.