I decided to design a small wooden toy truck (as shown above). Initially, I was just going for something quick and simple. After looking back over the initial design I decided it was a bit on the small size, maybe good for 3d printing or something similar, but if it was wooden I thought bigger would be better. I thought it would be fun to do something close to the scale of (in my mind) an old-school toy firetruck.
After scaling up the design of the truck body, I thought it would be cool if (for this imagined product) kids could buy one truck body, and then many different accessories that would change it. Then you could have one truck that can turn into nearly any kind of truck. While you could go crazy with options, I decided to showcase just three versions. I’m sure you could imagine many variations could be created though.
After deciding on the three truck attachments that I would start with I drew them up in 3d so that I could show the concept I was going for. Once I had the design and measurements I was going for, I decided to take the base truck and one of the attachments (the cargo hauler) and detail the design.
Overall Dimensions of Cargo Truck
There is enough info here to build cargo box attachment, and almost enough information here to build the truck body, but we will break it down even further.
The only note I would make for the cargo box is the pegs that attach it to the truck are probably long enough to not need magnets, but assuming you keep them in the design the idea is to epoxy them to the dowels. Also, it’s important to make sure the face of the magnet coming off the dowel and face of the one inset in the truck body are opposite polarity, for obvious reasons.
Truck Body Parts List
There is the design for the truck base and the cargo box attachment. The other attachments could be broken down in similar ways.
In future versions, I think it would be cool to make other parts of the truck or base be magnetic and changeable as well. You could do things like swap the wheels for tank tracks, switch cab styles, even make attachments for wings or boat bottoms. At that point it could essentially transform into almost any type of vehicle and kids could mix match different components.
