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Vinyl boards

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Anonymous

A buddy and i have recently completed design and preliminary playtesting of a very simple board game. It uses 6-sided dice as game pieces and is played on a 10x10 grid. Our plan is to package the entire think in a tube in which a vinyl board is rolled and then the dice are slid down inside that. With that in mind, where can i get 10x10 vinyl boards?

Thanks.

Thomas

Anonymous
Vinyl boards

Give the old search function a try, there are some other threads regarding exactly what you're doing (vinyl boards rolled and inserted into tubes) including this one in which slam had some vinyl boards sil-screened for a short production run.

Best of luck!

Anonymous
Vinyl boards

Ah, thank you very much. Slam's Self publication detail log mentions simply buying vinyl by the yard, getting it cut, and then taking it to a silk-screener. That may be exactly what i need. At least now i know which way to start looking.

Thomas

Oracle
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Joined: 06/22/2010
Vinyl boards

You might also want to look into doing the screening yourself, I've been reading about it quite a bit lately.

Doing multiple colors is either a lot of work to line up (register) the screens for each print or you need expensive (~$1000) equipment that will let you set-and-forget the registration.

If you only have to print one color though, it sounds very easy to do.

I'm probably going to give it a shot for some t-shirts in the next few weeks.

Jason

Anonymous
vinyl boards

Hi. I.ve been considering similar, but have put the idea to one side because of the difficulty in keeping rolled up boards flat for playing. Weights on the edges or corners would be expensive and could cause problems with postage, yet people want to play on a flat board.
If you want cheaper vinyl for prototypes etc have you tried flooring suppliers for offcuts?

Oracle
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Joined: 06/22/2010
Vinyl boards

I was talking about upholstery vinyl that's available in fabric stores. It has a cloth backing and it's about 1/16th" thick. If it's like the one I have, the Chess Mat is made of this material. It is a nice material and has absolutely no trouble laying flat.

The 72" wide material is around $10/linear yard, so blank 18" boards would be $1.25 each, and it comes in a wide selection of colors.

Jason

Anonymous
Vinyl boards

Silk-screening as a hobby is becoming more popular, which means that the equipment to do it is becoming cheaper. I have seen kits that you can buy for somewhere around $30-50 that give you everything you need for a simple design. If you can print your design onto a trasnparency, you can make a screen to do your own printing.

Of course, most screen kits are made with smaller projects in mind, but you can get screens and squeeges (sp??) big enough for a large board.

Oracle
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Joined: 06/22/2010
Vinyl boards

As I said, you just need the expensive equipment for multi-color projects.

It's also always a tradeoff between cost and amount of work you're willing to do.

Based on the prices I've seen (and I've only been to one store that carries this stuff), a big enough screen for a game board is around $30. You can also buy the screening material in bulk for around $1/sq ft and then get a frame intended to stretch a canvas for painting and use that to make your own screen. It should end up under $10 for a gameboard sized screen, but stretching your own screen (or canvas) takes a fair bit of practice. For the first few times, you'll want to spend the money on a pre-paid screen so you can actually get going. My understanding is that the screens can be cleaned and reused if you make any mistakes, so you don't lose $30 if you screw up the screen.

I would budget around $100 for the parts and equipment to do a one-color gameboard, but once you've got the screen made, you can do a practically unlimited number of copies for a few cents worth of ink each.
One service I haven't looked into is Kinkos photocopy enlargements to transparancy. Can I give them an 8.5x11 print-out of what I want and have them photocopy to an 11x17 (or larger) transparency? If I have to use a few 8.5x11 transparencies, there will be seam-lines on the screen.

Jason

Oracle
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Joined: 06/22/2010
Vinyl boards

I bought some silkscreen supplies yesterday. I got a 10x14" frame, photoresist, and several colours of plastisol ink. I'll be trying it out this weekend (first I need to prepare some artwork).

I also got a 5-pack small 5x7 screens which turned out to not be normal screens but part of some other system, so that will be completely useless (and a $20 loss), so be careful what you buy.

Jason

Anonymous
Vinyl boards

Just a quick followup: i found fairly extensive how-to for screen printing including links to supplies. I am going to do a little more research and probably pick some up.

Another note. It seems that Color printing is not significantly more expensive than mono-chrome, just a lot more time consuming. You can use all of the same supplies and materials.

Thomas

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Joined: 06/22/2010
Vinyl boards

LordSmerf wrote:
Another note. It seems that Color printing is not significantly more expensive than mono-chrome, just a lot more time consuming. You can use all of the same supplies and materials.

Thomas

I assume you mean multi-color because one-color can be any color you choose.

Then, as I said, it's your choice of a lot more expensive *or* a lot more time consuming depending on whether or not you want to buy equipment to register the screens or do it yourself for each print.

Jason

Anonymous
Vinyl boards

Correct, you do a color seperation and then generate a seperate screen for each color. If you do this it is recommended that you use your border color (generally Black) last so that it will "contain" any bleeding that occurs in the rest of the board.

Thomas

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