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So I work during the day as a 3D modeller/animator and have had a couple of my models printed using various rapid prototyping techniques.

I was wondering if anyone here has had (or knows of someone who has had) success making minis for 40k using this sort of thing?

Given the how affordable some of the methods now are, and the variety of materials available, I was thinking about making some models this way. I'm also interested in the possibility of printing parts to make moulds out of for "base" bodies ... was thinking about dark eldar bodies moulded at home from a variety of pre-posed parts, then printing the detailed top stuff since I'm not sure a home moulding setup could achieve the level of detail I'd like.

3D for me is fast and flexible, I do it every day, so I think I could churn out the models and digital sculpts very fast (especially for rank-and-file soldiers etc, where it's mostly posing/varients on a couple of base meshes).

Thoughts or experiences from anyone would be good thanks

I have only started scartching the surface of 3D with Zbrush, and I'm loving the program. I got into it because I saw that 3D printing was becoming a reality, and I primarily like to sculpt maquette-sized pieces.

One thing that concerns me about the 3D printing is the somewhat grainy finish that the output printed models have. Most all that I have seen have this grain, and it's difficult for me to tell how bad it really is.

With the small scale that we work at for this game, I would think that the slightly grainy output would be a hindrance. It would be hard to use some standard painting techniques on models made this way as those techniques would only draw attention to the grainy texture you'd more than likely want to hide.

As far as making molds of pieces you make, I think that might be better, as that might help to lessen the amount of grain that appears on the finished cast pieces. I am only guessing there, though.

What are your thoughts on this issue?

The grain could be a problem.

I know there are a couple of places that print to stainless steel now and I really want to get a test print done to see if this is worthwhile, especially for mould making (and the option of these being vulcanise-able for professional mould making and pouring is sort of alluring).

There's also some other materials available and really I think the success of 3D print to the table top is going to come down to this choice of material.

Finally I think the grain also might be able to be somewhat eliminated by preping models for print a little better.

I use zBrush and Maya for most of my work too, it's incredibly fast for getting this sort of thing done. And I mean fast as in once you've got some base meshes for, say, a Dark Eldar warrior it's a quick transpose, model some weapons, variants of helmets, variant spikes of armour, damage/gear variants ... I imagine it would be no problem to do 40 individual warriors over a couple of nights.

With a little more work, putting on a quick rig (including some facial) this process could be even easier and applicable across multiple units.

I was thinking that surely GW or some other companies must work with digital sculpting on at least some level ... it's just too well suited for modular work to ignore I would have thought.

I'm pretty sure both GW and Warlord Games have digital sculpting.

Might be doable and it's certainly affordable. I did a quick search and one company charges $75 for a 3 cubic inch "part".

Amazing stuff, especially once they bring the price down. At $14,900 for the printer, it's outside most people's price range to have one at home right now; that said, imagine in a few years when it's just a few hundred dollars, like when plasma TVs first came out, they were similarly expensive.

Yeah, there are also some printers in the $4,000 US range (perhaps cheaper now) that do small volumes but I'm not sure of the quality or the materials they're capable of. And $15k isn't in the realms of inconceivability (primarily because my occupation would allow me to write it off as a tax deduction).

There's also the question of cost of materials.

I've also priced up models at a number of places and I'm confident that I could get the model cost down to significantly less than $75.

Most places charge on volume, and you can make parts hollow, although I'm not sure how fragile a hollow mini would become. Anyway with optimisation I think less than $20 a model is entirely do-able.

Also, printing sort of 'sprew' pieces, to be assembled at home, might reduce cost too.

And this brings me to another possible application of 3D printing ... I have access to a 3D scanner too, which is decent enough for scanning small objects to use as reference (the small details get lost - it's a cheapy). I thought maybe scanning some of my mini's in and then creating replacement heads and arms and things, to plug in to the existing sockets, might be an interesting experiment. On a more simple level a scan could help just to keep my own models at the correct scale.

Sounds great. Maybe the lower price per model is good but honestly, how many originals do you need? I assume you're going to design them, use the 3d printer to make a proto and then use resin or plastic casting to make the product.

Once you have an original, plastic injection molding is the way to go and much cheaper per model. A plastic injector would run you about $3000 (USD) and the per model cost would be much lower (plastic's cheap).

all rapid prototyping methods are not created equal. The cheap model printers you guys are talking about will not get you anywhere near the level of resolution you need for a 28mm mini. In fact in my opinion none of them do, at least without a lot of post print finishing. the ones that come closest are still in the $150K+ price range.

asmith wrote:all rapid prototyping methods are not created equal. The cheap model printers you guys are talking about will not get you anywhere near the level of resolution you need for a 28mm mini. In fact in my opinion none of them do, at least without a lot of post print finishing. the ones that come closest are still in the $150K+ price range.

I don't think buying a printer is really on the cards right now anyway, instead I'm looking at various printing services offered. If you've had experience with lack of quality on models then I'd definitely like to know your thoughts on various companies, materials and processes.

I know that 16 microns is a pretty standard level of accuracy for 3D printing now, some examples of this level of detail here:

http://www.3dtotal.com/services/3dprinting/3dprinting.php

I've seen some other places significantly cheaper than that one, also offering 16 micron services. Not on my laptop so don't have bookmarks but they are out there.

There are great alternatives to this. For example there is the Makerbot and the Shapercube, which make home printing much more of a reality!

If this technology continues to mature, do you see an alternative method of producing Character models and special models (rather than the current white metal method) The reason I say this, is that Moulds are the most expensive item (I believe this is correct?) so if a machine is making an individual model based on a "File" as a opposed to a Mould, it can reload a new file and start producing a new model without changing moulds?

Will this change Mass Production as Industrial 3D printers for specialist models whilst injection moulding continues to churn out the bulk of models? Could be interesting for Forge World which have limited production high cost items. Maybe this is worthy of another thread?

Printing is always going to be slower (and thus more expensive) for anything on a production scale. If you are talking about a garage business with only 20 or so copies being made there might be an application. For larger quantities you can commission a sculptor for ~$200 and hire a place that cast figures in metal for ~$300 in tooling and material costs to cast your own figures, so we are not exactly talking about big bucks for the current way of doing things.