Post by @djsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology

@djsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology 3 hr. ago

So, as most of y’all following me know, Andrew and I manufacture custom toys up in the north Georgia mountains with a small crew of talented folk, creating little bits of #revolutionaryJoy that we sell at https://mountaintowntoys.com/ as well as some retail locations in the local region.

We do this using mostly hobbyist or “prosumer” grade equipment, using techniques that our handful of folk have learned from other small teams of handfuls of folks or less that have developed particular techniques and methodologies we could learn from and adapt to our needs.

This is a thread about technology writ large for the small audience. That’s all of us.

#revolutionaryjoy

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DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-lab

@djsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology 3 hr. ago

We make cool toys (and toy-related media in various flavors and levels of complexity, but that’s tangential to this thread, I think, we’ll see I guess) - little rubbery keshi-style toys to fidget with, jointed action figures reminiscent of my space opera favs of the 1970s, using recycled and recyclable materials where we can.

Most of our processes are human-driven. We’ve got little to no automation to speak of. A toy gets made because a person was sitting in front of the machine and pulling the level and waiting the right amount of time and then releasing the lever and removing the mold and letting it cool before finally opening the mold and removing the toy or toy part and repeating the whole process. We hand assemble and hand paint and hand package every toy we make.

We are small time. It’s good!

DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-lab

@djsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology 3 hr. ago

Like I alluded to initially, most of the stuff we’re doing we learned from other small groups doing experimental things in the various areas we figured we needed to learn in order to put together all the pieces of the big idea (make toy). We’re not trying to pick up the techniques of a Hasbro or a Mattel or a Hasbro or a Mattel (sorry, ran out of toy manufacturers really quickly) because the scale’s all wrong. Besides, their big idea isn’t (make toy) it’s (milk intellectual property) that just happens to produce toys.

We use a bunch of technology to do what we do at our little tiny scale. We’re using 3D modelling software and CAD software and various 3D printer technologies and even lasers blasting aluminum blocks into injection molds. In a garage the size of a two bedroom apartment.

Doing it small lets us learn the whole thing! I have personally digitally sculpted toys we’ve gone on to make molds for and then injection mold the parts to assemble the little folk I sculpted up on a laptop. I was personally hands-on throughout that entire flow from “featureless ball of virtual clay on a computer screen” to “this is an actual action figure in my hands”. I didn’t do it alone but I did each step at one point or another, often many many many many times.

DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-lab

@djsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology 3 hr. ago

We’re still learning, and it’s fantastic! We’ve got all kinds of little bumps in our processes and weirdness in some of our techniques we’re trying to iron out. That’s the work part! But it’s all doable - we know we can do it because we’ve learned enough along the way to know what we don’t know and where to learn it. We don’t learn it until it fits into what’s already working, and sometimes it takes us four or five tries to get a process to the point where it’s something we feel like we actually can depend on, and that’s also great! It gives us a range of experiences to lean on when things go weird down the road and we can think back to that one time when we saw something similar happening and this is what helped then so how could we apply that now kind of thinking. Long term learning and a base of knowledge in the field in question.

DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-lab

@djsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology 3 hr. ago

We go out of our way to find other small groups of people doing similar things and trying to find ways we can work with them. That helps diversify how we’re looking at what techniques are out there but also helps build a market of folk all doing similar types of things to cater to an audience that can learn they are there and doing cool stuff. (Remember the tangential media? Still threading through here tangentially, but I’m sure you see exactly how it’s woven; you’re good like that.) And sometimes it gives us a chance to do some contract work for a small artist and save them a bunch of overseas shipping cost and tariff cost and minimum order quantity hassles and that’s nice because (a) it helps keep our lights on but also (b) it makes smaller projects economically feasible for small artists without corporate budgets. Those are our folk!

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