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Comment by sct202 | Hacker News Reader

I've seen this brought up with board games that are now primarily made in China, because injection molding is cheaper there especially for small quantities. The US could make the board game minis, but everyone who is capable of it in the US is producing high value high quality aerospace, industrial, medical parts. It's a waste of their time to produce small runs of toy parts.

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mold making is also pretty complicated -- anything in the 1,000-1M parts produced will _probably_ be an aluminum mold (cheaper than steel) but they're still heavy and large to keep around.

I haven't met any injection molding shops in the US that do a huge amount of specialty parts like toys. The industry tries to get as many medical device jobs as possible.

I've thought about this and love board games. I don't want cheap plastic anymore. I want a reusable modular gaming system that let's me use more imagination.

This seems like the kind of thing where 3d printing is probably good enough quality wise.

Of course, the 3d printers themselves are probably being made in China.

3D printing absolutely sucks for production runs of more than a few dozen, and it produces finishes nowhere near as good as injection moulding.

Is that still the case? Even for a simple (presumably) board game piece?

Finishes are getting much better, especially with the high resolution resin based printers. But they are still slow and labor intensive compared to a "real" factory.

That's a crazy statement. It is clearly not true that every single person in the US capable of making board games now or in the future is instead already making high-grade aerospace and medical components.

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