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.

  • ObservantOcelot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    3D printing has become really accessible over the past few years. Many affordable entry level printers come with automatic bed leveling and direct drive extruders, which previously only came on more expensive printers. IMO, it sounds like your use case is perfect for 3D Printing. There’s a variety of great entry level printers you can pickup right now for fairly cheap. I don’t have experience with them myself, but the Elegoo Neptune 3 or 4 seem to be well regarded for their price point. As far as getting started, Thomas Sanladerer has a great intro to 3DP that can get your started on the concepts. It’s not hard to pickup. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDJMid0lOOYnkcFhz6rfQ6Uj8x7meNJJx