Toys made on laser.

[Joe Hillmann]

I am looking to make old fashioned toys, like Jacob ladder, the little animals that walk down a ramp, the guy that tumbles down a ladder and other such toys. I have made several prototypes of them and the problem is there is no way I can make the toys a nice as I want them to be AND price them low enough that I could actually sell them. Has anyone here had any success with cutting out toys on there laser?

[Michael Hunter]

Simple answer - give up now and buy the toys from Ikea.
Ikea's wooden toys are really nice and their selling price is far lower than I could get the raw wood and paint for.
Very glum about this.

You don't say how you made your prototypes - with a laser or a saw?
The laser is a bit limited in that you can really only do flat things with it, but a bit of ingenuity allows things to suddenly go 3D (see LaserBuz's models).
The key is to find a low-priced material to work with : for many people this means Baltic Birch or MDF, but you may be able to get offcuts of something nicer for free or cheap?
If you properly cost your time and the laser, you will realise that you can never compete with the far-eastern stuff, but with a bit of fiscal blindness you can at least get the satisfaction of doing your own designs your own way and perhaps make some pin-money on the side.

I'm soon to be a Grandad, so toys are suddenly very interesting!

[Chuck Stone]

Joe, you also don't say where you are, but if you're making toys to be sold
in the US, you've got to take into account the CPSIA laws, too. Each toy has
to be tested by an accredited "third party conformity assessment body"
Last I heard, testing was in the $25k range for each toy. Hopefully, that
has changed..

[Michael Hunter]

If you sell them as "collectors items", rather than "toys", you might avoid the law Chuck mentions and also have an excuse to bump the price right up.

[Joe Hillmann]

I had not heard of CPSIA until now. It seams messed up that because China was selling us toys with lead in them that our government decided to pass a law that made it so only the Chinese toy makers could stay in business.

Michael,
I had thought of selling them as "novelties" or "decorations" but don't know if it is worth even bothering with. The prototypes that I have made so far are all made of 1/4 baltic birch. My plan is/was, once I get the design perfected I would then make the toys out of 1/4 maple that I would have custom cut for thickness at a local sawmill. I feel that I could sell them for enough to cover the cost of the laser time but not enough to cover the cost of the time required to glue, sand, route, and paint.

That is actually a problem that I have quite often, I can make all sorts of unique items with the lasers, but can't sell them for enough to make money on them. I have a couple of toolboxes in my store that I made with the laser. They have about $30 worth of material, 3 hours of laser time, and 4 or 5 hours to put together. Everyone who comes in takes a look at it and many people ask how much it costs. When I tell them it isn't for sale sometimes they will make an offer on it. The most anyone has offered is $50 which would mean that my time and the laser time would only be worth $2.50 an hour.

[Jim Beachler]

Joe, I create many products for children and am very aware of the CPSIA. They are not out to put anyone out of business but rather ensure that the products are made safely and with no lead where the children would chew or ingest it. They also deal with proper sizing of pieces so they are not a choking hazard.

As far as testing goes, I had my products tested and I spent around $1,000. The testing now only needs to be done for companies with over $1,000,000 in sales. Smaller companies still need to have the documentation to be able to prove that their products are safe. Documentation like invoices, bills of sale and so on to show where the product is made.

When the lead paint scare came a few years ago, everyone and their brother was yelling for the government to do something to prevent this from happening again. Thus the congress set up the CPSIA to make their voters happy that something is being done. The details are not all worked out yet but it is getting closer to completion.

[Chuck Stone]

As far as testing goes, I had my products tested and I spent around $1,000. The testing now only needs to be done for companies with over $1,000,000 in sales. Smaller companies still need to have the documentation to be able to prove that their products are safe. Documentation like invoices, bills of sale and so on to show where the product is made.

But if you manufacture yourself, that still means testing each part?

Glad to know the price is lower than what we were quoted years back.
It kept us from considering some options because we were quoted
several thousand for each piece, not the completed project.
$1,000 sounds more reasonable. Many small companies were afraid of
getting 'caught up in the net' as the regulations tried to clamp down on
unsafe products. It was looking like only the large companies could
afford the certification process, and the small companies would be forced
out of business. We just dipped our toes in the pool, then ran like hell!

[Michael Hunter]

It often happens when new rules and regulations are introduced -

The few accredited test houses are overwhelmed at first and put their prices right up.
More test houses enter the market and the testing cost becomes reasonable.
Later, there are too many test houses and the cost is low as they fight for the business.

Saw all this when CE marking for electronics was introduced into the UK.

[Jim Beachler]

But if you manufacture yourself, that still means testing each part?

If you think about the testing process, you do not have to do each product but rather the parts to the products.
For example, I use 20 different colors of paint plus lacquer to finish my products. I took 1 ounce from each of the colors and lacquer and mixed it all up. Then gave the testing company a sample of this mix. At first the balked as they wanted to test each individually. Their thinking was that by doing each separately, I would know which color or lacquer was giving me the bad numbers (not to mention, higher pricing to me for multiple tests). I told them to run it and if it came back with too high of a lead count, I would test each one until I find the culprit. Needless to say that since I source all of my finishes from the USA, the test came back well below the acceptable limits. As far as the wood goes, it is a natural product so it doesn't require testing. Concerning the security of the pegs and pieces placed in the products, they can be randomly tested by my employees (me) as long as it is done a regularly scheduled and documented schedule.

It took me quite a bit of time reading and asking lots of questions, until I figured out how to do this. When it first started, nobody knew what was going to happen and how to make it happen. Like most programs put together quickly by the Congress, they just said to do this and it will happen.. They didn't give any thought to the process or fallout to small businesses. They only think about making voters happy so they can be reelected.