About Kalkared

Some History

Twas summer of 2018 and the speed our house got filled with new board games went beyond reason. We had to start cull our games and when something was not played for long time or game just did not met the expected vibe, it had to go. And I was sorry for all the games which had to go like that, it was not fair! We had some first inserts from Folded Space or Feldherr so we knew the benefit of what insert can do for your game.

Feldherr was absolute turndown from the very beginning. Their foam solution is good for minies but there is no other space for oher components and for example Blood Rage got simply lid raised for 70mm up above normal if you had also expansions nd original KS stuff.

Folded Space always was and fine solution. Cheap and boys know their game so the insert even make sence and has some fine details. I got bothered in time that I have to glue them, got still the same boring color and in the end they fill too much space in box which could be used better for other expansions.

Inserts made by game developers are simply useless piece of plastic in 99% of cases.

In meantime I already had made for myself extremely expensive insert for complete Firefly board game. Thinking back it is something no sane person would ever buy or wanted for that amount of money (plenty of wood and aluminium box).

And then in my old job was 3d printing new hot topic a we could saw it’s growing influence in industry. As a Design engineer making a machines I was sceptical about the the quality of printed materials and accuracies because to use it in industry is not so clear and obvious.

Anyway, it was the time when my old Sid’s Civilization was for no use at home because the game was made of dozens of bags and setup or clean up time were beyond any patience. And it had even some expansions! So I snaped and said “there is no space for this!"

So I bought my first printer. I looked alot on web for a different kind of inserts yet they never met my perfectionism so I designed my own Civ insert. And that was also the last time | was searching on web for any other insert.

Now it was all about discovering what is printer capable of. I was printing from PLA as anyone else. It looked good and there was plenty of colors to choose from for a reasonably cheap money. You could see that PLA is not that much of a rigid material when there are only thin walls (and you would not dare to let one hundred kilograms heavy guy to stand on it as with PETG).

And then it started swiftly. I focused on games with a plenty of expansions which are not necessary because everything can fit into the core box. Root, Scythe, Fallout, and also Twilight Imperium with Prophecy of Kings.

 

Curent Status

• We are delivering to more than 40 countries all around the world.
• We are still focusing on games with huge amount of content with plenty of expansions. Lately for example Lords of Ragnarok, Ankh,  or Hegemony.
• We are running 12 printers (8 x Mk3S+, 2 x Mini, 1 x Voron 350 and 1 x XL) and we are capable to make around 5 standard size inserts each day. This became quite big manufacture with reasonable manufacturing capacity which helps us to cover also needs of our wholesales partners. We provide this capacity to partners outside of boardgame industry.

Future Plans

• Plan is to still grow and find new partners to work with.
• Plenty of our customers are from the outside of EU. Our longterm goal is to make new Kalkared printing centers on a different continents like in the North America.
• We also have a plan to sell digital data for hobby makers. We are still struggling with copyright stuff and how to set it correctly (if there is someone who knows thing or two about this, please let us know!).