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.
Blender has a ton of “movie” features, such as animation, keyframes, bones, etc. etc. Its almost entirely focused on movie-making. None of these features are useful to you, and in fact they’re harming your workflow. (They’re distracting items on the menu and manual)
Rhino, which is a freeform CAD program for industrial design has many more features. Not only is it $1000 however, but its focus on making artistic 3d printed models is obvious once you use such a program.
AutoCAD is more of an engineer’s tool. Its extremely precise but non-artistic in design. Its $4000 as well, but also the wrong tool for making a board game piece.
You’re using the wrong 3d program (Blender) to make your board game pieces. That’s all I’m saying. The people in the know would use a program like Rhino (or a comparable industrial design 3d to manufacturing tool). Blender can work, but its obvious that it doesn’t have the CAD or CAM features that a proper industrial tool would have.
Without a CAM-plugin package, are you even sure that your design can be 3d printed correctly? Have you thought about how the 3d printer nozzle (or CNC mill, or whatever you’re using) will create the end-product? Do you have holes in your design?
Do you have any overhangs that are unstable or unable to be printed?
https://www.3dprintingera.com/3d-printing-overhangs-and-bridges/
A tool like RhinoCAM-Mesh (ugggh, another $1000, but you get the gist of this hobby…) will automatically 3d print supports that will snap off so that whatever shape you wanted will be possible to be made.
https://mecsoft.com/products/rhinocam/rhinocammesh/
Just because you made it in Blender doesn’t mean its possible to 3d print. You need to double-check the “head” of the 3d printer, see if it ever collides with your design, check to see overhangs are set, etc. etc. Sometimes, its impossible and you have to go back to square-one and redesign the whole toy (or sculpture) in order for it to be 3d printed.
Tightly-integrated CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) tools check these things for you. If you’ve never thought about how the 3d printer head moves, or what angles are impossible to print, or etc. etc., then you haven’t finished your job. You want to get the CAM to double-check these things for you, and yeah its expensive but its all software these days.
So yeah, a tool like Rhino (lol $1000) plus RhinoCAM-Mesh (lol another $1000) to do this workflow. Now you can do this all manually yourself of course and “design your 3d game piece” for 3d printing (including thinking of temporary struts / braces you need to print-then-cut-out to make your designs successful). But that takes a bit more skill and manual effort, because Blender has no such CAM tools available (at least, that I’m aware of).
I’m a heavy parametric CAD user, so I’m not very knowledgeable on blender, but I do know a lot of people who use it for this sort of modeling. It does actually have some really good parametric CAD plugins for when you need mesh parts to work well with precise dimensions.
I appreciate what you’re saying but I’m not sure you’ve used Blender lately. It does sculpting, 3d tech and all that, it gets very precise. It’s not as easy to use as AutoCAD and Revit to get precise, but you can do it. All of the architects and engineers I know and work with use AutoCad and Revit and it’s for creating details for arch & hvac drawings. The company I’m working with said they will adjust the file and have that built into the price for manufacturing. I just want to give them a clean file. Thanks though, I don’t think I need it for this, the company I’m working with knows what I’m giving them and seem fine. It’s one component of a huge puzzle.
I’m not talking about sculpting. I’m talking about overhangs and other fundamental issues that 3d printers need to solve before the darn thing is printed.
I’m looking up Blender’s features, and it seems like there are features that can do this stuff (ex: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/addons/mesh/3d_print_toolbox.html), but even then…
Even in Blender’s manual, it seems like they’re suggesting you need a 2nd piece of software to do this job well.
The physical act of creating a 3d print needs to be thought of, especially in artistic designs. You will often create impossible shapes (most noticeably overhangs), especially if you’re ignorant to the whole 3d printing process. Having good software that detects these situations is… well… maybe not necessary. But it helps.
If you’ve never sent your (computer) sculptures through a CAM or thought about these issues before, I can guarantee you that you’ve accidentally made a wall too thin, or a overhang that’s impossible to print, or other such distortion that will 3d print poorly (or be impossible to 3d print).
The measurement of good software is the number of edge cases that it detects before you waste hours on a print job.
Each print job is a prototype. You gotta iterate. You 3d sculpt. Then you CAM-simulate to look for obvious errors. Then you 3d print. Then you figure out what went wrong and 3d sculpt again. Etc. etc.
The more issues the CAM-software detects before printing, the faster you iterate (ie: 3d sculpt. Find an issue in the CAM check. Return to 3d sculpt before printing to fix the issue). I have severe doubts that Blender (or even Blender + Cura, as recommended in this manual) covers as many issues as Rhino + RhinoCAM (as a random example of $1000+ software).
That’s… okay. I’m not saying you need to buy more expensive software. But what I’m saying is that what you’re losing out in terms of software is something YOU need to make up with experience. YOU need to learn about overhangs, or other such issues that can prevent a 3d print from becoming successful.
EDIT: Looks like you already ordered the printer. Well, you’ll learn soon enough one way or the other. Thinking about the print is easier than designing in the first place, but its still a process. Good luck with learning slicers + cura to get your Blender stuff to work!
Its not impossible, but don’t expect a success on your first print. And always be willing to go back to your Blender model and change it so that its physically possible to print. Iterate-iterate-iterate, that’s my ultimate advice to you. (And while good tools can quicken the iteration cycle, Blender is possible, just not ideal IMO).