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I need advice about whether to dive in or not
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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3DPrinting
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"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.
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.