Case Study: Smoby Toys achieves 50% production cycle reduction with Materialise

Lattice Structures Enable Optimized Tooling Design for Smoby Toys

Smoby Toys, France’s leading toy manufacturer, needed faster, more cost-effective tooling to produce miniature Lightning McQueen cars—traditional moldmaking was slow, expensive for small runs, and caused uneven cooling and part distortion. Working with IPC, Smoby Toys engaged Materialise and used Materialise 3-matic and Build Processor to explore metal 3D‑printed molds with conformal cooling channels and lattice-filled internals.

Materialise supported the workflow from topology optimization and lattice generation in 3-matic to slice-level processing in Build Processor, enabling lightweight, optimized metal molds. The result: a 50% reduction in production cycle time, material savings of 12% for the upper mold part and 24% for the lower, reduced residual stresses, faster scanning, and lower AM time and cost—delivering higher-quality toys more efficiently.

Smoby Toys

Jean-Christophe Bornéat

Project Manager