3D printing fills gap for custom toys for kids with medical needs

A 3D printing toy shop went viral on TikTok when printing hobbyist Nick Hardman started creating custom teddy bears wearing 3D printed toy models of medical devices for children with corresponding medical conditions.

"There's a gap in the market because injection molded toys can only be made in certain orders of magnitude," Hardman told Plastics News in an interview.

"In Newcastle Freeman [Hospital] in the U.K., there's nine children with a Berlin heart, and they've got a pull-along heart pump. It's not possible to make a toy … pump for nine children if injection molding is your only process," Hardman said.

With injection molding, "just the cost to make the tool is so expensive that, if you're not going to produce 50,000 toys, it's not possible … If it [weren't] for 3D printing, what I do would not be possible."

Hardman's 3D printed toy shop started two and a half years ago after he lost his engineering job amid the COVID-19 pandemic. At first, he 3D printed personal protective equipment at home to meet emergency demand.

"When there was no more demand for homemade PPE, I started trying to sell some toys [on Facebook]," Hardman said.

As a "toy shop that makes toys that don't exist," Hardman started getting custom requests. "A parent of a child with a brain implant … asked if I could make a teddy with a toy shunt valve."

When he posted the teddy bear on his social media channels, Hardman "instantly" had hundreds of inquiries from parents of children with medical conditions for custom teddies that "shared" their child's medical condition.

Hardman had the 3D printed toys safety tested at a lab and upgraded the design to use glycol-modified PET. The material is "a bit difficult to work with," he said. Sometimes "stringy" in production, "but it's a good plastic; … kids can chew on it."

The 3D Toy Shop Teddy Hospital has produced toy models of tracheotomies, pacemakers and prosthetic legs, among many others. Most of the teddies are custom-made, Hardman said, but he's had mass orders, such as one for 525 "pacemaker penguins."

"When I found out the things I was 3D printing were changing children's lives, then I just stopped charging," he said.

Hardman voluntarily sent out about 10,000 British pounds ($12,400) worth of free teddy bears for children with medical conditions. But that model wasn't sustainable long term.

"I can't just randomly send out free teddies to everyone because I'll go bankrupt," he said. "I kind of broke down on social media [and] said I'm going to have to stop; that's the end date.

"I was properly destroyed after putting over a year of work into it," Hardman said. "But then the internet came through. … The crowdfunder hit its goal, and I got my 10,000 pounds back and now I can turn out another 10,000 pounds worth of teddies. It's a bit more stable now. People can buy the teddies for the material costs or from a scheme."

The operation has taken over his entire house, he added, with 28 rotating volunteers helping to produce the toys from five 3D printers in Hardman's kitchen and spare bedroom.

One of the toy shop's Prusa 3D printers was donated and signed by the printer's founder, Josef Prusa, Hardman said.

The printers "made life a lot easier," he said. "[With] the cheap entry-level 3D printers, you spend all your time trying to fix them."

Hardman also spends a lot of time on TikTok, responding to parents and other inquirers about custom teddies while sharing the impact of the program.

The teddies "change fear into excitement" for children facing life-changing surgeries and procedures. One child was afraid to get her heart surgery, he said, and when she received her teddy that "had heart surgery, she couldn't wait for surgery so she could be like her teddy."

Another child got a teddy bear with hearing aids and "stopped pulling her hearing aids off," he said. "They're not on their own; they've got a friend like them. … There's more that happens that I don't see."

To date, the 3D Toy Shop Teddy Bear hospital has produced more than 2,000 teddies with toy medical devices and produced toys to be sewn on existing bears for another 1,000 children.

"I think the next step is to get the teddy bears out of my house," Hardman said.

It's his dream, he said, to quit his full-time job in automation to produce the 3D printed toys full time with a "centralized toy production facility with safety test, protocols."

"I'd love to have a Teddy Hospital inside every children's hospital," where 3D printed toy medical devices, shipped from the production facility, could be safely sewn to a teddy of the child's choice while they receive care.