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.
So you can get an Ender or similar printer for $100-200 and it would mostly work out of the box, but there is often a huge amount of troubleshooting that follows. I got a 3D printer originally to try to earn extra revenue but never ended up selling anything because the hobby took over for me. I spent hours learning how it works and hundreds replacing parts (trying to perfect my machine, not at all necessary). It’s a bit of an investment of time and money but you may find that you end up enjoying it and using it beyond the scope of your current project. It’s definitely something that takes a lot of commitment to learn unless you have a lot of money you’re willing to invest towards a more no-issue printer like a Prusa.
It looks like there are a ton of makerspaces in Seattle. If you have the time, you can actually often volunteer to use the machines for free. And it would give you the ability to use other machines there, like laser cutters. I actually also volunteer about a couple hours north of you at the bham makerspace. If you happen to be in the area and want help printing stuff – or you decide to get a printer and you want help learning how to do it, you should hit me up! I’m super passionate about it and I would be happy to give you advice or help out. :)
I wish I had the time to volunteer, but that’s a great idea if things start to slow down. I just ordered the Neptune pro 3 as a starter for this project so we’ll see how the ease of use goes. I tried all the maker spaces I could find locally and they were either all booked up so you could use the space or they charged $25/half hour and I have no idea how long everything would take. I will definitely hit you up when we get a break from all the stuff we’re doing, that’s a gorgeous drive. Thanks for the offer of help, I really hope I don’t need it, lol.
Hey sounds great! You’ve made a good choice. If/when you have any issues pop up that you need a quick solution to, I’ll be around :)
Thank you, I’m kind of overwhelmed with how awesome you guys are in here. I’m from Seattle and we actually have the Seattle Freeze as a thing so I’m not used to it, lol. Well I guess you already know that, but others don’t.