Cardboard Modular Toy Track Sections
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current modular toy tracks, especially those without power supply, face challenges in reducing fabrication costs, ensuring safety, and allowing customization and compact storage while maintaining low material costs and safety for children.
Innovation Solution
The use of three-ply corrugated cardboard for modular sections, featuring die-cut designs with easy-folding lines and trapezoidal engagement means, allows for low-cost, lightweight, and customizable track sections that can be easily assembled and disassembled, ensuring safety and recyclability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Strength
If modular toy track sections are made of plastic or wood, then strength and durability are improved, but fabrication cost is increased
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the material parameter from traditional plastic or wood to corrugated cardboard, achieving a balance between strength and cost. The cardboard is treated with lamination and corrugation to enhance its mechanical properties while maintaining low fabrication cost.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses composite construction with multiple layers of corrugated cardboard bonded together, creating a material that combines the strength benefits of layered structures with the cost advantages of cardboard, resolving the contradiction between strength and fabrication cost.
2Stability of the object's composition
If modular sections are designed with complex interconnection mechanisms, then assembly stability is improved, but device complexity is increased
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the track into modular sections with standardized connection interfaces. Each section is a self-contained unit that connects to others through simple complementary shapes, achieving assembly stability without complex mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent designs universal connection features that work across all track sections regardless of type (straight, curved, elevated). This standardized interface system provides stable assembly while minimizing device complexity through reuse of the same connection principle.
3Strength
If track sections are made heavy for durability, then strength is improved, but ease of storage and transport is worsened
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the density parameter of the material from heavy plastics or woods to lightweight cardboard, achieving adequate strength through structural design (corrugation and lamination) rather than material mass, thus reducing weight for easier storage and transport.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses thin corrugated cardboard layers bonded together to create a lightweight yet strong structure. The corrugated geometry provides structural rigidity without requiring thick or heavy materials, resolving the contradiction between strength and weight.
4Manufacturing precision
If track sections are designed with sharp edges for precise geometry, then manufacturing precision is improved, but safety for children is worsened
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the surface finish parameter by rounding all edges and corners of the track sections. This modification maintains the precise geometric shape needed for proper track function while eliminating sharp edges that could harm children, thus resolving the safety contradiction.
Data Source
Figure 1~2
Figure 3~4
Figure 5~6
AI summary
A sectional toy track is composed of a plurality of sections (2) extending one after the other to define a trackway. Advantageously, each section (2) is made of cardboard and has opposed longitudinal edges (5) which extend from the head end to the tail end to form lateral confining walls for the trackway portion defined by the relevant section (2).