I’m creating a board game that has custom 3d pieces. I’d like to test out my print before I send it to the game manufacturer and also want to make demo sets. They need a huge tooling fee before they’ll do samples. There are app. 10 designs and no bigger than 45mm.

I’m not sure as to whether I should buy a starter printer or would the learning curve be so big that I should just have a POD company do it. I know blender really well but have never printed anything from a file. I was going to make the file from blender for the company too. Any thoughts? I think my SO and I would use it for other things, probably, maybe, if it’s not so complicated that I give up on it.

Thanks for any advice on this, I don’t know what direction to point on this and I have a ton of work to do already.

Edit: You guys are awesome. I went from totally lost to ordering the Neptune 3 Pro and it should be here next week. Thanks for everything and I hope it goes pretty smoothly, I’ll keep you posted. Thanks again.

  • CaptainFlintlockFinnEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    If your pieces are detailed I’d recommend a resin printer. I just got an anycubic photon mono x2 and I’m finding it excellent. I printed this x-wing a couple days ago.

    • fsniper@kbin.social
      3·
      1 year ago

      I started 3d printing with resin printing too. But do you think it’s a good entry point for op’s this purpose?

      • CaptainFlintlockFinnEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Really depends on the models in my opinion. Small highly detailed models would do better in resin.

        I started in FDM and then went to resin. For me resin is way easier. Far less fiddling with hardware.

    • PeleSpirit@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      The quote from the company said it was PVC, should I care about that? Great models btw, way more detail than I have.

      • CaptainFlintlockFinnEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        They said they’d do the injection moulding in PVC? If so you’d be fine making prototypes/demos in resin.

        Also, have you in to the game crafter to see if they can do what you need?