This Project contains sexual content and images please proceed with caution
Sex toys or objects crafted for sexual pleasure have occurred for centuries. The first “dildo” was a phallic stone sculpture from 28,000 BC discovered in southwestern Germany. In the 21st century, it’s theorized that the sex toy market will grow to about $52 billion by 2026. Sex toys have previously revolved around the phallus and usually resemble that particular shape. However, digital fabrication has helped the industry evolve to create toys that accommodate multitudes of preferences and shapes focused solely on achieving pleasure, thus evolving past the gender binary and eradicating stigma.
Producing most sex toys involve some sort of mold-making process. Lifelike dildos may be hand-crafted with clay by an in-house artist or modeled from a live subject and are then used to make a negative filled with body-safe silicone, which can be reproduced thousands of times. This is the process used for Doc Johnson toys, America’s top sex toy manufacturing company.
Around 2012-2015 the rise and accessibility of 3D printing took fabrication by storm, and the sex toy industry was no exception. 3D printing caused the amount of sex toy “creators” to increase significantly. Consumers could customize or find toys that matched their specific preferences and possibly print them from the comfort of their homes. The websites makerlove.com, sexshop3d.com, sextoycollective.com, dildo-generator.com, and cults3d.com emerged to provide downloadable STL toy files. Sextoycollective.com and dildo-generator.com included a “dildo sculptor” that allowed users to mold a dildo to their liking and share it with other users. In addition to dildo files, makerlove.com included exteriors for vibrators, even ones shaped like the heads of Justin Beiber and Sigmund Freud.
Aside from some 3D sex toy producers on websites like Etsy, 3D-printed sex toys ultimately failed to succeed in the mainstream market since PLA is porous and not at all safe for internal use, even if they’re sanded and sealed. However, a 3D-printed toy could potentially be made safe if a mold for the toy is printed instead of the toy itself and the mold gets filled with silicone. Sexshop3d is no longer accessible to the public, while most of the other websites listed haven’t been updated in several years. While the world wasn’t equipped to handle 3D-printed dildos in the early 2010s, the excitement around customizable toys in fun, abstract shapes helped erase the stigma and normalized using sex toys. Additionally, using 3D printing as a method to shift away from humanlike shapes pushes the market to focus on what brings pleasure beyond gender preference.
Despite its initial failure, 3D-printed sex toys are still around in the 2020s for company prototyping. Dame Products, a female-run company founded in 2014 dedicated to sexual wellness, utilizes in-house 3D printing to develop prototypes for the second iteration of their Eva vibrator (a hands-free couples vibrator). “I could not do my job without 3D printing. To affordably model things that exist in 3D space, it is truly invaluable. I don’t know how Dame would exist without it.” (Alexandra Fine, CEO and co-founder of Dame Products). 3D printing is instrumental to Dame’s journey in eradicating the pleasure gap.
Another company that relies on digital fabrication for nongendered sex toy design is Tenga, a Japanese company founded in 2005 by Koichi Matsumoto has been consistently manufacturing toys for male masturbation. Their 3D series, Tenga 3D, features five geometrically intricate cylindrical sleeves that invert to produce a variety of pleasurable sensations. The reusable toys are printed with a stretchy elastomer that’s flexible, easy to clean, and durable.
Finally, the company Cute Little Fuckers is “queer owned, trans owned, disabled owned company whose mission is to make authentic sexual expression as inclusive and accessible as possible.” The company was founded in 2018-19 by its CEO, Step. Their main goal in starting CLF was to develop adorable toys that can be used in a variety of ways regardless of gender or physical ability. The friendly look the toys have is to be a gentle reminder for users that exploration can be overwhelming and to make “learning to love yourself so much easier, and so much more fun too!” All prototypes for the toys are made from a 3D-printed mold filled with body-safe silicone.
Sources:
http://www.makerlove.com/Free-3D-Sex-Toys/index.html
https://formlabs.com/customer-stories/dame/
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/sex-toys-dildo-factory-video