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.

  • PeleSpirit@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I’m pretty sure I get what you’re saying. They have the pricing built into the quote for fixing my file, he’s already looked at what it’s going to look like and thought they would need to change a few things. I’m totally cool with that, I’m just trying to have a working file to give them and test a few things. Also, I’d like to have a mock-up to send to reviewers. Thanks for trying to warn me though, I understand what you’re saying.

    • GoldenSpamfish@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      What things are you testing? If it’s really nothing to do with the way it looks cosmetically, then you will be fine with FDM. But for mockups for reviewers, you may want to just order them SLA’d from JLCPCB. I got a part made by them and the quality was phenomenal and it was super cheap and fast. It’s slower than printing it yourself, but the quality is worlds better and you would have to order hundreds and hundreds before it costs more than buying a printer.

      • PeleSpirit@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        I’m just testing my file for the most part. I’d also like to make a few mock-ups for testing and reviewers for the crowd sourcing campaign. I’ve already ordered the printer and I should get it in a couple of days. Thanks for the source anyway, it looks like a nice place to get stuff printed.