Kinder Egg Turtle Toy

During my Compliant Mechanisms class at UCLA, my professor invited an engineer from Kinder USA to present us our final project: we were tasked with making a toy that could fit inside a Kinder Joy and use a compliant mechanism to enable dynamic interaction by the user. I was teamed up with fellow students and we immediately started brainstorming. Taking advantage of the popularity of fidget toys, we came up with 2 separate compliant mechanisms: a clicky ratchet paired with squishy buttons.

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Putting these mechanisms together with our favorite character idea, we landed on a tiny turtle with squishy leg buttons and a hat with a clicky ratchet mechanism. This concept provides an engaging character and a variety of ways to fidget with the toy all within the confined space allowed by a Kinder Joy.

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Having been responsible for the CAD design and manufacturing of the final concept, I gained invaluable experience in applying Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to analyze the deformation of highly elastic materials as well as experience 3D printing parts out of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). Further, using Freedom and Constraint Topologies (FACT) analysis to anticipate deformation under loading of certain geometries strengthened my confidence to analyze compliant mechanisms going forward.