I just saw a set of 3D printed replacement tiles for Terraforming Mars...very cool!
Pricewise, i think 75$ is a lot for this set, so i was wondering how much would printing this yourself? Say i had the 3D printer, what would it cost for materials and electricity? Who does this? What (entry level) printers are suitable?
Complete noob here, all feedback appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Posted Feb 6, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC
I printed a full replacement set for my brother in law's birthday. The models I used are linked the in the album picture descriptions. They were printed with prusa mk3s with mmu2's. I edited a few of the models to have multicolor instead of just color swaps on layer heights. Here is an album of the results. https://imgur.com/a/maUSdhn
Wow, really nice!
Wich printer do you use? And what were the costs for the filament?
Maybe $100 worth of filament, maybe a little more or less. Printed with two Prusa MK3S' with MMU2S' attached.
It probably cost $100 to get the colors available, but you would have enough lots of material leftover.
I had materials left over. It’s just probably about 3-4kg’s in plastic between every thing. Tiles storage etc. some colors were used more. I didn’t buy printers for this project I already had them. It’s been almost a year, hard to remember for sure.
Where did you get the .stl files?
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3153866 but I made my own modifier meshes for the slicer I use. I tried to release them but the original maker told me I couldn't. Even though they aren't even models, just blocking meshes so it knows what colors goes where.
Did you painted those?
No this is how they came off the print bed. No additional painting or post processing.
They look fantastic
Thank you :)
Hey, a post just for me, someone who loves 3D printing board game upgrades. For a normal FDM printer, a 1 KG spool of filament costs about $25. And 1 KG can go FAR. I bet an entire tileset for TM would cost me maybe no more than 100 grams, and that's me overestimating. It's going to be a bit more expensive if you shoot for a resin SLA printer over FDM, but despite resins better quality, the toxicity, price, and post processing really holds it back. As a begginer, I'd recommend grabbing a cheaper FDM printer. The Creality Ender 3 was the talk of the town a year ago. I don't know if it still is. I spent the extra money for the more rigid Ender 5 but I think the 3 will serve you just fine. And you'll be amazed what you can make if you really put time into learning the printer and 3D modeling software for it. 3D printing isn't print and play like a normal printer. It still has a lot of issues that you have to learn how to troubleshoot if you want the most from your printer. But man, designing something and seeing it come to life physically is magical. Any component that comes with my board games I don't like, I upgrade. I usually go the extra mile by finishing the print and then resin casting it, but that's a lesson for another day.
I think you're underestimating how many tiles there are in TM. I did 20 cities, 35 forest, x number of special cities tiles from cards, 9? brown tiles, capital, 9 oceans, the boxes to hold all of them would be around 800gish because the boxes are over half. I would not rec people Ender when Prusa mini is out there. Ender was a shitshow for me as it cost more in the long term from upgrades, fail prints, and endless hours of tunning and fixing the printers.
Agreed on the Prusa mini. We've got a print farm at work with about 10 Prusa mk3s, and I've got a CR-10s. I've been tinkering with mine for a while now and am just starting to get quality like the Prusas got out of the box. That extra $100 is completely worth it for new entrants into the 3D printing hobby! Side note: Once you get past the initial rush of 3D printing things, look into resin casting. That can be significantly cheaper if you want to do large batches of parts.
Ya I said that I like to resin cast my parts. :) makes them better quality than filament IMO.
But as far as how much filament you actually use, I haven't actually made my own TM set. But I guess thinking about it, depending on the infill and detail of the pieces you print, I can see that running an entire spool of filament. But even then, $25 isn't too bad for such a large scale board game improvement
Here we go... I can attest to this in pretty decent detail.
If its multi colored it takes a lot of money to get to that point. I would say a single color print and painting is easier to achieve. Lets just assume you're okay with that and then we'll move forward.
Are you handy or do you like tinkering? I am not and it's more or less left me with some large paperweights. You can still get into it without being handy but you may be hard pressed when it comes to troubleshooting.
Boardgames are what made me get a 3d printer. My FIRST one was maker select v2. I HIGHLY suggest starting with monoprice maker select series. There's SO much support out there and its highly upgrade-able.
I think mines bed is warped so I splurged as a birthday gift and got a used Prusa i3 MK2. Something happened and I have a melted cable. I'm a little annoyed here and unsure what I want to do.
I haven't actually tried to touch either printer in over a year. I keep saying "one day" but that day has yet to come. I've gotten some AMAZING stuff from thinigiverse. The maker select one absolutely paid for itself with board game organizers.
I printed a full organizer for caverna that makes setup and tear down a breeze. Same thing for food chain.
The inserts are the biggest reason why I miss having a printer. Some upgrades or small toys for kids were cool but the inserts save me a ton of money
Materials and electricity aren’t the issue with 3D printing...the issue is time. I have a printer in my classroom (introduces a whole other set of issues) but the biggest problem is getting prints started and then completed in a reasonable time frame.
I echo this. I have an Ender 3 Pro, but honestly, it just sits on the counter most of the time. Printing is very time consuming. There's the initial design, then the actual printing (which you don't have to watch, but you probably want to monitor somewhat). Then there's troubleshooting when something goes wrong. Even printing something relatively simple is more than clicking a few buttons. It is a project and a process. It's fun. I have no regrets about investing in 3D printing. But it is definitely an investment of money and time.
Printing is pretty darn cheap according to my 3D printer owning friends. They are always printing cool stuff for games.
If you wanted to do it yourself you'd need:
A Printer ($200-$1000)
Several rolls of filament for different colors (~$20 a piece)
Time (For one tile, with a color change, probably 1-2 hours. How much is your time worth?$)
Don't forget to allow extra time and money for tinkering, getting your printer dialed in, oh and we haven't even considered the trickle of electricity.
It's a terrific companion hobby, but most prints out there for purchase are appropriately priced if you're not in the 3d printing hobby yourself.
Thanks a lot for this info!
Say i had a printer and a lot of time...how much would for example a 70 pieces 3d tile set of terraforming mars have in materials cost?
Do you have a link to the files or at least example images?
Also, print time depends on resolution/quality desired.
Do you have a pic of the particular kind that you like? It would vary wildly based on the style, detail, colors, etc. Generally speaking you'll likely need a roll of filament in each other you intend to use. At $15-22 per roll, depending on the brand.
I am no soo far that i have files, but i would like to have a indication.
For example: https://www.etsy.com/nl/listing/761823354/terraformation-of-mars-volledige-set-3d
With the one you linked, assuming you did the trees in the same color as the base, you'd need a single roll of each color. In PLA or ABS you're looking at about 20$-30$CDN per roll, so yeah you'd be looking at 80$ of material-ish. Like said above though depends on the material brand, and if you want to get cool shiny metallic / glow in the dark materials or if you just want to use basic PLA colors.
Source: Have 6 Prusa i3 MK3S 3d printers between work and home and do this kind of stuff everyday for my job.
You’re probably looking at a little less than a full roll of actual filament, so probably $15-20 of material (it may actually be less as well). But others are right that you will need an investment of ~$80 to obtain all the colors you need, but those could then be used on for plenty of other projects.
As for the printer, the 2 most popular models in this hobby seem to be the ender 3 ($250) or the Prusa Mk3s ($750). Both can give pretty similar quality prints, but the Prusa is generally regarded as the option that works right out of the box (well, after about 10 hours of assembly time). The Ender 3 typically requires quite a bit of love to get it working well.
If you just wanted to do one color? About $15- 25 for a roll of filament. And only one roll would be enough to make an upgraded Catan Board.
I just finished my TM set with colonies and prelude. Overall , less than 1KG, But will still cost you around $100 because of the 4-5 colors you would need. It doesnt matter how much is the material cost. You have to buy 4-5 spools if you want those colors. Each cities at .1mm is around 1.5-2hrs depending on model. Trees are quick at 45m-60m. Oceans are nothing, but will still cost 1 spool for the sweet blue. the others are around what the trees would be, but the nuke is quite a bit slower. you also have to print the box to contain all of these tiles, and they cost around 150gish per. overall a week worth project if you already know how to print and already have a decent printer like MK2/3S. the Mini is good but there is a back order. Also if you have problems and it's the first time you had the problem, it will take you quite a long time to solve it. A lot of time is not enough.
Edit: if TM all you care about, just buy the tiles.
As you will see with 3d printing, the biggest cost isn't material but your time...
You need to slice the files, load them to your printer, load filament, launch the print, check everything goes fine during the first layers, wait a few hours for the print to finish, then launch the next if everything went well... Otherwise clean up the spaghetti, try to figure out why your print failed then start again.
And that is if you already have the STL files, if you need to create the models yourself it's much more time consuming :)
So you should only consider getting into 3d printing if you're interested in spending some time on it as a hobby. Personally I love it, but you should see it as a tool you need to learn (like woodworking tools for example) rather than a fully automated machine like an inkjet printer.
To do it yourself, tiles without a lot of precision and detail could be done in an entry level printer that would run you around $300. Depending on the kind, filament or resin is relatively inexpensive. The printers are never perfect out of the box though and there's a learning curve. You also need a program to create, or find somewhere to download the files for the items you want to print.
I live in a relatively small town and there are 3 places within 10 miles of me that will 3D print files you send them and it's very reasonable.
In a nutshell, if you want to get into 3D printing or create a lot of stuff, invest in a good device or you'll regret it later. If you're not looking to make it into a new hobby, find the files and a local printer to do it for you.
I'm looking into the Elegoo Mars Resin Printer. A guy at work is super into 3D printing and he pretty much sold me on Resin with some videos about quality.
This thing could easily make better models than the ones that come with Gloomhaven, and some prints rival very nice game components.
I couldn't tell you exactly for Terraforming Mars, but right now I'm printing a Settlers of Catan set https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3863657 and that's running me about $20 in filament, (one color) but it'll take around 100 print hours, and then whatever time it takes to do setup, and cleanup.
Thanks to yo all, all posts are really clarifying and helpfull!
I will look into the subject to see if it is a hobby in the hobby for me!
Only thing i haven’t got figured out is what this Resin printing is and what te pros and cons are in comparison to regular 3D printing.
Enough stuff to figure out!
Welcome to the dark side :)
I personally went through and did the math for every game I owned at the time, figuring out what the filament need would be (using thingverse files and a slicer) and then priced that out with printing them at my local library or university, whichever was cheaper. Then, I took that number and compared it to buying a printer and doing it myself.
In the end, it would have been about $170 to print the inserts for the things I wanted at the time, and about $250 to get the printer and materials to do it myself. Knowing that I would be buying more games in the future and thus printing more things, I decided that buying the printer was the way to go.
Ultimately, with all the physical materials I have gotten ($200 printer, probably 8 spools at $20 each), I am close to $400 total, but have been printing out lots of fun things. An important note, at least with my printer (Ender 3), unless you get super lucky, there will be lots of tinkering required to make it go great. So this can create some frustration and will be a bit of a time sink, but it is a really cool toy to have :)
I think the thing a lot of people don't get it that you don't get a 3D printer to print stuff for a hobby.
You get a 3D printer as a NEW hobby
At least 1/2 your time will be spent tinkering with the printer, it's not set and forget.