Wigglitz Uses 2,700 Desktop Machines to 3D Print Toys

Wigglitz is a brand of tiny, wiggly, colorful, 3D printed toys. Launched just this year, the teeny little segmented creatures are made in the company’s own print farm. The company states that it operates the US’s largest print farm, utilizing 2,700 desktop material extrusion machines. They also said that they will order 500 more. The company seems to only use Bambu Lab machines. Surprisingly, they have a large number of Bambu Lab X1 Carbon (X1C) printers, all equipped with the Automatic Material System (AMS) for multi-color printing. For their colorful parts, having the AMS is, of course, a huge bonus, but they could opt to run a cheaper Bambu Lab machine, such as a P1P, for example. They also appear to only use standard-sized spools and lack automated build plate stacking or removal. They also don’t seem to have any sorting or part removal tools. Build platforms are removed manually, quality control (QC) is done by looking at the parts, and some smoothing may be done manually with a heat gun.

 

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Filament is all supplied on a spool, and they seem to use eSun filament. Weirdly, they seem to only use new 0.75kg or maybe 1kg spools. For this kind of operation, I would have long figured out how to move to bigger spools. Even if I didn’t want to do that, I’d order bigger replacement filament without a spool and pop it on spools to save money. You can, with a workaround, piggyback larger spools to the AMS, or use them in combination; something like that would make a lot of sense here. Generally, moving to 5-kilo spools and creating their own enclosures may also save them significant amounts of money and time. Additionally, given their volume, they would be better off ordering from Toner or another US producer that can offer them better pricing than eSun. Moreover, that would also burnish their made-in-the-USA credentials. Things like returning spools and getting deliveries on pallets would also really matter at this scale. They use the standard Bambu Lab build platforms. They do have printed purge buckets that they use to catch and empty the filament left over from the purging process.

 

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Depending on the toy, they can print around 90 to 130 per build platform. And they sell them in bags of 10 for $24.99. On direct orders, the margin seems super doable. But at scale as a wholesaler, they could be doing millions of these things, and that would make sense too. A true made-in-the-USA toy, Wigglitz is a brand of 3D printed toy manufacturer ZB Designs, which was founded a couple of years ago. Starting with keychains, they moved on to wiggly, cute fidget toys and found success. The company now manufactures and sells directly; it acts as a wholesaler but also distributes through Moose Toys.

The toys are adorable, and one could imagine toying with them idly or wanting the next one. There is a limited number of articles available online about the company and its toys. All are rewrites of PR or announcements by the company. I could find no editorial press, little toy press, and only three retailers. They have 145,000 followers on Instagram and 28,000 on TikTok, but get little in the way of conversation and reaction. I can see only a handful of posts by other people talking about Wigglitz as well.

And there are tonnes of competitors to Wigglitz. On Amazon, dozens of packs of similar 3D printed animal toys have been sold. The most popular few do 4,000 packs per month in total. All of these are made by Chinese companies in China. There are over 200 3D printed animal listings on Amazon that I could find—all Wigglitz competitors.

I can understand that something like this could be a great stocking filler, but I don’t know how long they can justify the premium of Wigglitz, which costs $2.99 or $2.49, when the Chinese alternatives are around 60 cents. Temu also has lots of listings for small, adorable 3D printed animals, and they’re priced around 14 cents each.

I do know that a lot of things would make more sense at the scale they’re operating at. A lot of optimization and other measures would be very logical and cost-efficient, but aren’t being done. Maybe they’ve been scaling too fast to notice? What I do see are hundreds of listings for competing 3D printed articulated animals. It seems like Wigglitz has had a crazy ride so far. Can they keep ahead of the competition? Can they build value in the US by making toys? What do you think?