this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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3DPrinting

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3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

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I need advice about whether to dive in or not (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by PeleSpirit@lemmy.world to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Shapeways.com and printathing.com

Usually can upload a file and they will print and ship to you

[–] rambos@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Never used anything like that, but I recommend it anyway. Learning about printing and modeling for printing is fun but takes a lot of time. Then you make a perfect model for 3D printer which cant be moulded...

Id go stright to design for moulding and pay someone for 3D print on resin printer. If model is not suitable for printing you can add supports or just split it in 2 parts and glue them afterwards.

But if you need a new hoby, 3D printing is awesome and affordable nowdays. It can help with your board game design as well. You can even consider 3D printing as main techology

[–] PeleSpirit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I've heard of shapeways but not printathing, thanks.