Custom Dice ManufacturerEvery week a publisher asks us the same first question about their DND dice: "which material should my dice be?" The honest answer depends on three things — your budget per set, your timeline, and what you want backers to feel when the dice land in their hands. But material choice is also the one decision that quietly locks in everything downstream: the minimum quantity you must clear, whether a steel mold has to be cut, how many weeks production takes, and what your freight bill looks like per kilogram. At YSDICE we run six material lines under one roof, so we have no incentive to steer you toward any particular one — we would much rather you pick the line that reorders, because 26% of our orders come from buyers ordering again. Here is the comparison we walk every client through, with the real numbers from our floor in Chang'an, Dongguan.
The quick comparison
Before the detail, the whole decision on one screen. These are the working numbers we quote every week, not marketing ranges. The MOQ column shows the full-custom minimum with a new steel mold; remember that light customisation — your colours and a laser-engraved logo on our proven stock molds — starts at just 10 sets with no tooling fee, and factory in-stock designs start as low as 2 sets for gemstone and wood.
| Material | Full custom MOQ | Mold | Production | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zinc-alloy metal | 100 sets | 20–25 days · $600–$2,000 | 20–25 days | Deluxe pledge tiers, heft & presence |
| Sharp edge resin (epoxy) | 100 sets | 20–25 days | 15–20 days | Collector sets, inclusions, photography |
| Rounded resin (unsaturated) | 100 sets | 15–20 days | 25–30 days | Volume tiers with a soft hand feel |
| Acrylic (injection) | 500 sets | 20–25 days | 20–25 days | Big-box runs, friendliest unit cost |
| Gemstone | No mold needed | — | 15–20 days | Hero pieces, no tooling cost |
Two things jump out of that table once you have stared at it as long as we have. First, gemstone is the only line with no tooling at all: every die is carved by hand from stone, so a gemstone order is really a materials-and-labour order, which is why it can start absurdly small. Second, acrylic's 500-set floor is not gatekeeping — it is the physics of an injection press, which only earns its famously low unit price when it runs long enough to pay for its own setup. The rest of this guide unpacks each line the way we do it across the table from a buyer, including the mistakes that cost real money.
Metal: weight sells, and it's made fresh
Zinc-alloy dice are die-cast on our three in-house machines, plated in one of 12 finishes through two dedicated plating partners, then numbered by hand with baked enamel. Every metal die we ship is cast under one roof at Dongguan Yushun Hardware Co., Ltd. — the registered Chang'an, Dongguan factory behind the YSDICE brand — which is exactly why we can promise the same alloy, the same bath chemistry and the same enamel recipe on the reorder you place a year from now.
The process explains both the price and the feel. Molten zinc alloy is injected under pressure into a hardened steel mold — the same $600–$2,000 tool we archive for your reorders — and each shot produces a blank that is trimmed, deburred and polished before it goes anywhere near a plating rack. Electroplating is a batch process: antique bronze, gunmetal, brushed gold, rainbow and eight further finishes each need their own bath sequence, which is why finishes are chosen per run rather than per die. Then comes the slowest station of all: a technician with a fine brush hand-fills every numeral with enamel, and the sets are baked so the paint cures down into the recess instead of sitting on top of it. A 7-piece zinc set weighs roughly four to five times its resin twin, and that heft is precisely what a $60-plus deluxe pledge tier is selling — backers open the box, feel the weight, and understand where their money went before they read a single face.
One thing most buyers don't know: we keep no metal stock, on purpose. Plating oxidises slowly on a warehouse shelf — so every metal run is cast to order and arrives bright. The practical consequences: full-custom metal runs from 100 sets, production takes 20–25 days after sample approval, and if your campaign timeline is tight you should start the free 3D design early, because the mold itself needs 20–25 days before the first article exists. The other consequence is happier — because nothing sits in storage, the finish your photographer shoots is the finish your backers receive.
Sharp edge vs rounded: the feel decision
Sharp edge sets are poured in epoxy and sanded five grits deep by hand — edges stay crisp, faces stay optically clear, and inclusions read true. This is the line for sets that have to photograph well: dried flowers suspended mid-die, metallic foil, colour-shift glitter, a liquid-core D20 with a floating dragon eye. Epoxy cures water-clear, which is why inclusions look like they are floating rather than embedded in fog, and the hand-sanding is what keeps edges crisp enough to catch light in product photos. The cost of all that is labour: each die passes through five successively finer grits under a human hand, which is why sharp-edge pricing sits above rounded resin even though production runs a brisk 15–20 days.
Rounded sets are cast in unsaturated resin and tumble-polished: softer in the hand, friendlier in cost, and the natural choice for a standard tier that has to land under $30 retail. Tumbling takes time — rounded runs are 25–30 days, the longest of our resin lines — but the payoff is a comfortable, worn-smooth feel that table players roll for hundreds of hours. Our colour matching holds run after run: clients have reordered a year later and matched the first batch, because we record every pigment recipe against the archived mold. If your art direction depends on a precise teal-to-copper swirl, that recipe file is worth more than any single production run.
How to choose between them: if the die is the product — a collector's piece, a campaign centrepiece, the hero image on the box — pour it sharp. If the die is part of the product — the set inside a game box, the house dice of a café — round it and spend the savings on packaging. Plenty of successful campaigns do both, sharp for the deluxe tier and rounded for the standard, from the same approved artwork.
Mixing materials in one order
You don't have to choose just one. Materials can be mixed in a single order with matching fonts across lines — metal for your deluxe tier, rounded resin for the standard tier, acrylic for retail. One QC, one container.
This matters more than it first appears. Running tiers through separate factories means separate colour standards, separate font renderings and separate inspection regimes — and backers absolutely notice when the deluxe D20 and the standard D20 wear different numerals. Because all six lines run under one roof, we cut every tier from the same approved 3D artwork, match Pantone references across metal enamel, resin pigment and acrylic masterbatch, and put the whole order through a single a two-stage inspection — once at the workshop that made them, once again before dispatch — with a photo report. It also consolidates freight: one shipment, one customs entry, and if you take the DDP option, one landed price you knew before you signed anything.
Acrylic: the volume workhorse
Acrylic is injection-moulded: plastic pellets are melted and shot into a steel mold in a cycle measured in seconds, not the hours a hand-poured resin batch takes. That cycle speed is the whole story of the material. Setup is expensive — the press has to be mounted, dialled in and purged — but once running, each additional die costs very little, which is why acrylic owns the friendliest unit economics in the catalogue and why its full-custom floor sits at 500 sets rather than 100.
What surprises buyers is the range. Injection acrylic is not the flat single-colour die of a dollar-store board game: our lines run 2-, 3- and 4-colour swirls, glitter, translucents, glow-in-the-dark and pearly marble effects, blended in the barrel so every die is unique while the run stays consistent. Where acrylic genuinely differs from resin is inclusions — you cannot suspend a dried flower in an injection press — and edge character, which is moulded rather than hand-sanded. If your product is a core box that ships with dice in every unit, a classroom pack, or a wholesale SKU that has to hit a price point, acrylic is not the compromise; it is the correct engineering answer. Production runs 20–25 days, and in-stock acrylic designs start at just 10 sets if you want to feel the material before committing to a run.
Gemstone and wood: hero pieces without tooling
At the opposite end of the economics sit the lines with no mold at all. Gemstone dice are carved and polished from solid stone by hand — amethyst, agate, obsidian and a rotating cast of semi-precious materials — with numerals engraved and gilded one face at a time. No tooling means no tooling fee and no tooling wait: minimums start at 2 sets and production runs 15–20 days, which makes gemstone the fastest route to a genuinely spectacular object.
Where gemstone earns its keep in a commercial line-up is at the top of it. A hand-carved amethyst set makes an extraordinary top-tier reward, a giveaway that gets screenshotted, or the hero image that sells the resin tiers below it. Wood plays a similar role at a warmer register — light, quiet on the table, and increasingly requested by buyers whose audiences care about natural materials. Both lines share one honest caveat: because each die is shaped by hand from natural material, no two sets are identical. For a hero piece that is the appeal; for a 500-unit retail SKU it is the reason we will point you back at resin or acrylic.
A practical note on ordering these lines: stone varies by lot, so if a specific vein of purple agate or a particular grain of walnut matters to your listing photos, ask for photos of the actual carving stock before we begin — we send them as standard on gemstone orders above ten sets. And because the 2-set minimum makes experimentation nearly free, several of our long-term clients use gemstone as an annual limited edition: same engraving files, a new stone each year, zero new tooling, and a product their audience has learned to wait for.
Matching material to your sales channel
After enough projects, material choice sorts itself by channel more reliably than by taste. These are the four buyer profiles we see most, and what we usually end up building for each.
The crowdfunding publisher. Two or three tiers, a hard deadline, and backers who expect the deluxe tier to feel deluxe. The pattern that works: metal or sharp edge for the top tier, rounded resin for the standard, all cut from one approved artwork. Start the free 3D design before the campaign launches, so the mold's 20–25 days run while you are still collecting pledges instead of after.
The retailer or distributor. Unit cost and restock speed rule everything. In-stock designs from 5 sets let a shop test a dice shelf for under $500; when a line proves itself, light customisation from 10 sets puts the shop's own brand on the winners without a cent of tooling money.
The content creator. Community drops live and die on photographs, so sharp-edge epoxy with inclusions is the default — and because drops are small, the 100-set full-custom floor and the 10-set light-custom route both fit. Samples of stock designs arrive within a week and the cost is refunded on your first order, which makes the evaluation stage effectively free.
The game studio or TCG brand. Dice in every box means acrylic at volume; a companion metal collector's die — the pattern our Genius Invokation TCG line follows — carries the premium SKU. Studios also lean hardest on the paperwork: SGS material reports and EN71 / ASTM toy-safety testing, which YSDICE arranges as a matter of routine whenever a market requires it.
Five material mistakes we see every month
Some of the most expensive lessons in this industry are entirely avoidable. These five cross our quoting desk every single month.
1. Making the budget tier metal. Zinc is dense — that is its charm — but density ships. A metal-heavy order that sails through sea freight at 25–35 days becomes painful by express courier, and a sub-$30 retail SKU cannot absorb the per-kilogram cost. Keep metal where the margin lives.
2. Cutting a mold for an unproven design. A $600–$2,000 tool for a design nobody has bought yet is optimism, not strategy. Run 10 light-custom sets on our stock molds first, let real sales pick the winner, then commission the steel — the mold fee is refunded against reorders anyway, so patience costs nothing extra.
3. Expecting inclusions in acrylic. Flowers, foils and liquid cores belong to hand-poured epoxy. An injection press cannot suspend anything — buyers who fall in love with a sharp-edge photograph and order acrylic to save money end up with neither the look nor the savings.
4. Matching colours across materials by eye. Metal enamel, resin pigment and acrylic masterbatch each render colour differently. Give us one Pantone anchor per colour and we match all three lines to it; approve colours from screens alone and the tiers will drift apart.
5. Leaving freight to the end. The material decides the weight, and the weight decides the freight. Ask for the DDP landed price per material at the quoting stage — it has flipped more than one metal-versus-resin decision, in both directions.
Timelines, budgets and a worked example
Stack the stages and a fully custom project is a two-to-three-month undertaking: a free 3D design of every face within 3 days, mold cutting in 20–25 days, a physical sample in 3–5 more, then the production window of your material — 15–20 days for sharp edge, 20–25 for metal and acrylic, 25–30 for rounded resin — before freight at 3–7 days express or 25–35 by sea. Payment runs 50% deposit with the balance before shipment, by T/T, PayPal, Alipay/WeChat or Alibaba Trade Assurance. None of the early stages commits you: the 3D design is free, and stock-design samples are refunded on your first order.
A worked example from a recent campaign-style project: a publisher with roughly 800 backers split the order three ways. One hundred metal sets carried the $79 deluxe tier, four hundred rounded resin sets carried the $29 standard, and five hundred acrylic sets went into retail distribution — three materials, one artwork, one container. Dongguan Yushun Hardware Co., Ltd. has produced this exact split, in different colours and quantities, more times than we can count, and it works because each material does the one job it is economically built for. By the publisher's second reorder the mold fees had been substantially refunded, at which point the tooling had effectively cost them nothing.
Not sure? Send your art and target unit cost to queenie@ysdice.com — Queenie will come back within 3 days with a free 3D proof and a price for each material so you can compare the lines side by side, with the freight already worked in.
Queenie has cast, poured and shipped custom dice from Chang'an, Dongguan since 2018 — and still answers every project inquiry herself. Questions about your run? Write to queenie@ysdice.com or message us on WhatsApp.
