Toymaker Turns to 3D

By Sara Ferris

 Radio Flyer (Chicago, IL) knows the value of timeless product designs—the 90-year-old toy company is best known for its classic red wagon. But even classic designs must be refined and reworked to meet changing market requirements. Radio Flyer uses SolidWorks software from SolidWorks (Concord, MA) to update its existing products and develop new ones.

Radio Flyer’s Inchworm was updated with a new, safer bounce-and-go mechanism.

The company also used SolidWorks and COSMOSWorks on My First Scooter. The new foldable toy has two wideset front wheels for stability and a tapered platform that, unlike other scooters, ensures the child’s foot clears the back wheel with each kick. COSMOSWorks Designer helped the company determine the optimum design of the blow-molded platform for strength and rider comfort.

My First Scooter is a new Radio Flyer design that was modeled in SolidWorks. It features wide front wheels for stability.

“We couldn’t imagine doing our work without SolidWorks. It lets us quickly develop, prototype, and optimize sophisticated designs – like the shape of the handlebars or the action of the bounce-and-go – then rapidly complete them,” said Tom Schlegel, Radio Flyer’s vice-president of product development. “If our founder, Antonio Pasin, who hand-built wagons in his cabinet shop, could see us churning out exciting new toys using high-tech tools like SolidWorks software, I know he’d be very proud.”

Radio Flyer uses SolidWorks surfacing capabilities to quickly design shaped parts – a tricycle saddle, for example – that in the past would have been hand-carved and patterned prior to molding.