![]() The packaging design starts with the digital clay model and the design sketches, which are sent to any number of artists outside of Mattel to be turned into what's known as a "gray model." This gray model typically shows the car as a front three-quarters with the same wheels that the toy will have, and not necessarily the wheels that are on the actual car. Hot Wheels used the same basic retail packaging for all its toys for a long time, but now it designs individual cards for each model with art of the vehicle and information about the car, including who designed it. Now that we've got a cast and painted toy car, it needs to be put into its retail packaging, and designing that packaging is decidedly more complex these days than it has been for Hot Wheels in the past. The end result of all this work and passion is a surprisingly faithful recreation of someone's extremely awesome car. This isn't really meant to prove anything, but it sure is fun to play with. Finally, there is the more fun track that starts several stories up and goes through multiple loops, culminating in a booster and a jump. Interestingly, the various factories worldwide also have these tracks, also built to the same exacting specifications to spot-test during production. The track testing includes making sure the cars are compatible with the various boosters, be they hand-powered or motorized, designed for straights or a boost around a corner.įrom there, they get sent down a very carefully calibrated track with set dimensions to determine how well they fare against other models. This involves setting the cars into a jig designed to check their size and dimensions to make sure they'll fit on a Hot Wheels toy track and that they'll be able to complete a loop. Race ServiceĪfter the cars are test-printed, they are then track-tested. The Mattel 3D printing lab allows for rapid prototyping of just about anything the designers can cook up, even complex moving parts. These objects are printed with a disposable support structure that is broken away after the print is finished, similar to the FDM process. The lasers (one broad and one fine) cure a shallow layer of resin per pass and are best for creating larger objects. The stereolithography system uses a vat of resin and two high-power military-grade lasers to create the printed object. Mattel primarily uses the latter, but it employs two main types of photopolymerization: stereolithography and polyjet. There's FDM (fused deposition modeling), which heats a plastic filament and squirts it out like a hot glue gun, and photopolymerization, which uses UV light to cure a resin. With consumer-grade printers, there are two main technologies at work. The Mattel 3D printing lab handles all of the rapid prototyping for everything from Hot Wheels to Barbie. ![]() So that the designers have actual physical objects to compare with the real car. Once the car has been sculpted digitally, it's sent through a revisions process to ensure that the details are correct and that the right parts are emphasized. This machine was designed to train surgeons now it lets sculptors work with "digital clay." Race Service
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