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.
“Makerspaces” exist for a reason.
You should be able to get access to a higher-quality 3d printer (or CNC mill, or Laser Cutter) from a typical makerspace. It’d be basically a club (often near universities) where people effectively pool their money together for collective ownership.
My local makerspace is at a community college. It requires a safety class before you can use the equipment, so there’s a few weeks of spinup time. The rules will be different wherever you are. In this case, my local State sponsored the funds for the 3d printer, but I still have to pay for resin costs and whatnot when using the printer.
Good software costs a ton of money too, and you might want to find a Makerspace just so that you can get access to the $4000+ class software that engineers use. Or at least the $1000+ software? Thinking like Rhino CAD, Autotools, or a few other professional tools.
Blender is more of a 3d graphics (think Toy Story movie) kind of workflow. It can do 3d designs but its not the original design.