What would I need to make professional board game tiles?

March 18, 2009 4:01 PM

What equipment would I need to make my own professional quality board game tiles?

Dungeons and Dragons tiles are a good representation of what I'm looking to manufacture on a small to medium scale. In terms of printers, cutters and anything else relevant, what sort of equipment am I going to need? Or am I totally off base in thinking this is something a small shop will be able to do?

The question of budget is no doubt relevant; if you could keep recommendations in either a low (up to $7500) or slighty-higher-than-low (up to $15000) budget range, it'd be appreciated. If these aren't going to cut it though, please advise.

posted by st0rey to sports, hobbies, & recreation (6 comments total)

Forget that they're "game tiles" and tell us what they really are. Thin cardboard, die cut, printed with color images, maybe? Also, what do you mean by "small to medium scale?" The term 'manufacture' suggests, to me, a scale where your budget would be a drop in the bucket, but I could be misunderstanding your intentions.
posted by jon1270 at 5:51 PM on March 18

Seconding jon1270; its not clear exactly what you want to make. Those D+D tiles look like cardboard with a printed paper image attached on the top, probably with glue? or printed on sticky-backed paper? If you wanted to make just a single set of pieces for a game that you were play-testing, for example, you could do it with tools available at your neighborhood Kinko's. How many of these sets do you want to make?

Also - you may find more experienced answerers if you ask your question (with added details) at the Boardgame Geek forums.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:07 PM on March 18

Your local print shop can (should be able to) make glossy colour images on all kinds of cardstock, up to and exceeding the weight/thickness of those game tiles. iirc, a lot of those were cut out with a die press (if that's the word).

You can make better quality cuts with a sharp knife.

Assuming you own something like photoshop and have an ok eye and hand for art, I'd say that to make a one-off run of something the scale of one package content would cost you less than $50. If you're homebrewing a 200 run of your own game, that dollar number drops drastically.

If you ask around, your print shop might even be able to print on 'foamy plastic' (two thin layers of plastic sandwiching a dense foam core) that's about the same thickness or a little thicker. Solid plastic might be harder to cut by hand, but if the shop can do the sandwich stuff, they should be able to do solid plastic as well.
posted by porpoise at 8:38 PM on March 18

If you want to make 3d game pieces, check out this company. The 3D printer will set you back $20k but I remember hearing about a company that will let you upload your WoW avatar and they'll print it up for you for a few bucks.

If you want to get in the business of printing game tile pieces for other people... it's probably a hard market niche to get into since your local printing company (ie., Kinkos) already has the infrastructure/equipment to do this kind of thing and I can't imagine that there's enough demand unless you're a gaming insider/creators and trying to undercut their current manufacturing contractor.

Do you have a game idea? I enjoy making stuff like this (and did similar things when I was much younger - printing houses didn't have the type of equipment that they do now, or they were rare and cost a lot - so I used to do it by hand) and might be interested in working on a project...
posted by porpoise at 8:51 PM on March 18

Sorry for not being clear. I don't have a boardgame idea, nor want a simple play-testing run. Boardgame tiles are exactly what we want to produce, but they're not for a boardgame.

We're looking at starting out with 50-100 runs per week of A1-A2 double-sided color printed 20-40pt card stock, which is then die cut (I would imagine) to various shapes and sizes. I'm a little hazy on the process; for example is there equipment that will let me print directly onto large sheets of card stock, or would I have to print to something and then glue it at another stage?
posted by st0rey at 11:53 PM on March 18

$7500 could get you a color laser printer and a laser cutter, but not for A1-A2.

A1 is huge (0.59 by 0.84 meters). This is going to massively raise the cost of all equipment you buy, as you'll need to buy the giant versions manufactured in small or on-demand runs, instead of the mass-produced regular-size of the same device. The price difference can be extreme.

If your board pieces are small enough that they could be cut from smaller stock, then you could probably tool up for A3 under budget, (especially if buying used).

I don't know what your tiles are for, but an advantage of a laser cutter over a die cutter is that you can use it to cut any design, and change the cut pattern on a whim, rather than needing to get a new die expensively made.
Another advantage is that it can cut other materials, so you can make plastic or foam or wood tiles.
A further advantage is that it can engrave designs into surfaces as well as cut. (For some board-game tiles, a printed top and engraved bottom might be more appealing).

A mass-produced laser printer is going to use rollers, limiting the card thickness than can be printed on, so you would probably print onto a self-adhesive paper or film, and mount that on your board/wood/plastic. Probably spray on a protective surface coat too, depending on how much abuse you expect the tiles to need to withstand.

There are also plotter-cutters, which are very cheap. These are like inkject printers, except instead of a print-head they drag a small blade around the "print" area. But they can't cut thick card - you probably wouldn't want to use them on any card thicker than what could go through a laser printer. I don't know how they would hold up to a production environment, I've only seen consumer ones, for which I imagine the answer is "not very well".
posted by -harlequin- at 11:37 AM on March 19