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.
For figures, and especially testing things that will compare to injection molding, going FDM is a really bad idea. It’s superior for engineering parts and rapid prototyping in basically all cases, but is has terrible dimensional accuracy by comparison, and it has a ton of trouble with thin features and overhanging shapes. This is mainly because the nozzle width is orders of magnitude wider than the pixels on a resin printer, so the slicer has to get very creative with dimensions to make complex models work at all. I am a huge FDM enthusiast, but this really isn’t the right place for it.
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.
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.
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.
It seems I’m too late to offer advice on your initial question, but I’m in the Elegoo family ane can say I’ve been enjoying my Neptune 3. There is a channel that you should check out on YouTube, guy goes by “The Feral Engineer”, he has done a ton of work on these printers and if you find his profile on Reddit he was insanely fast to message me back with a question I had for him.
Happy printing!
The Feral Engineer
Thank you, these look great. https://www.youtube.com/@Theferalengineer/videos
This is what 3d printing really shines in. Churning out prototypes for minimum cost.
If you’re already familiar with blender, you would only need to learn how to use a slicer, which is not that hard in comparison. Just import the model and fiddle around with print settings if needed.
I came into 3d printing as a complete noob, and most of my time has been spent learning to do modeling in blender/cad. Slicing and printing itself is simple in comparison. Resin might be more involved.
That’s super great to hear that the slicing should go easy. I’ve been looking at YouTube and I downloaded Prusa, it looks like if I follow the directions and don’t change much, it should be fine. I appreciate the encouragement because I am a total noob at this part for sure.
If you’re planning on doing more than one, then definitely it’s amazing and useful. If it’s just the one, then there are 3d printing services that have a decent turnaround and relatively reasonable prices. One benefit for really small runs is you don’t need to learn how to set up the printer, they’ll figure it out for you.
One thing to remember is that 3d printing manufacturing constraints are much different than injection molding manufacturing constraints.
Yes, we have lots of ideas, lol. I have no idea if we’ll follow through on them though. We’re thinking of using it for casting glass and other metals but we’ll see how these projects go.
One thing to remember is that 3d printing manufacturing constraints are much different than injection molding manufacturing constraints.
I think you’re talking about the undercuts and simple details, my representative said they built that into the price of them fixing that sort of thing. I just want to give them a clean file to work with that has the least for me to do. I also want to have some mock-ups to possibly give reviewers, so it’s okay if they look different. I really appreciate you mentioning that though, you might be referencing something I don’t know about.
I think they mean that because of the unique process that 3d printers use to create something, stuff that can be made easily on a 3d printer can’t be replicated through other manufacturing techniques, and vice versa. For example, I designed an earring that is 1 solid object, but made up of 3 separate moving pieces; like links of a chain that have no split in them. This would be an impossible task for any other kind of manufacturing process. It would be like making acar engine all at once, rather than having to make the individual parts and then assemble them afterward. You can have gaps and cavities in a print that you could never have in a cast or injection molded piece. But this method means that you also have to worry about things that you wouldn’t using more traditional manufacturing techniques.
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 :)
