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In a decade or so's time, when the majority of homes have a 3D printer, I imagine GW going the way of HMV and Virgin megastores. These stores went into gradual decline due to the public being able to spend 20p on a CD of music you have chosen rather than on a £10/£15 chart CD. So when it costs £30 in ten years time for a tactical squad from GW, or less than £10 on a home 3D printer, then many people (who don't care about copyright law), will surely go the way of homebrew. Now I'm not advocating this illegal practice, but it must be taken into account when considering the future of GW. Nobody thought laser drives on home pcs would have the effect on the music industry that it did, so lets not underestimate the impact 3D printers may have. The templates will be all over the net. (And GW won't be the only ones)
What do you think?

GW should not be worried yet. 3d printers are still very far from being available to the average household, and what you get from a 3d printer is still inferior to the products GW makes.
In time, GW will have to adapt, like all companies have to.

Besides that, I'm not sure what people would print, the free files floating around online are absolute crap, and anyone with a decent amount of skill knows the real value that their output is worth, they aren't going to make 3d design files freely available to the masses unless they have a way to make money off of it.

We have this thread every week. No. Not now, not until we have actual replicators and post-scarcity socialism and stuff.

People claimed copied cds would be inferior, whether this is true or not, it made no difference. Now it won't start to have an effect until 3D printers are common place, and even then it will only be a gradual decline. But it will happen, not just in the minitures industry either.
When everybody has a 3D printer, there will be far more people with a large amount of experiance and skill with them. That alone will bring prices for templates down, some people will even do it for fun, like they do with program and mmorpeg design (I have a friend who created a parallel tibia so we could go hunting via LAN without spawning grounds being overcrowded for example.).


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And he did that 8 years ago!!!


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 lord_blackfang wrote:
We have this thread every week. No. Not now, not until we have actual replicators and post-scarcity socialism and stuff.

Sorry I hadn't seen this thread the entire time i've been on dakka. I must have been very unobservant.

Probably in a couple decades we'll have affordable 3D printers. Also, versatile and powerful home PCs will be no more, replaced by lame tablets, cloud nodes and I-somethings with built-in DRM and the processing power of a dishwasher.

I think real competition from 3d printers is closer than you might think. GW is probably looking at how they might make $$$ using this technology. If they are not already doing it they should start in my opinion. Here are a few example I have made using a Makerbot. It is a pretty low end 3d printer and can't do really great detail but I think for some models it is serviceable.



Thunderfire Cannon



One of these weapon mounts/shrounds is printed, the other came from the kit.



An ADL. Proportions are off (I did not have the actual model to work from) but otherwise servicable.

I was the "artist" on these adn my skills are not great. With more talent I think these could be even better right now.

Thake it for what it is worth.

That's amazing! I estimated over a decade... but if you can do that now with what you claim is little experiance and a low quality printer...
You'r not pulling my leg are you? You did really make these on a 3D printer right?

Yeah, 3D printing is at that stage, even higher for those with CAD experience/skills.

Wow!

It's not a matter of quality. Even garage hobby companies tend to 3D print their master models nowadays and then recast them in resin or metal.

But printers of this quality will never be common household items, they simply aren't useful enough for the majority of people. Who needs them? Artists, hobbyists, designers, architects. Not enough to make them affordable on the level of everyday tech like gaming consoles or dishwashers.

Well yes, but im sure when the regular printer was invented the same thing was said. Who needs to print things? I myself could think of plenty of things the 3d printer could be used for.

If GW are clever enough, they could profit from the 3D printing. By selling digital 3D files for people to print at home if they want.

Well how many people thought the same thing about computers, house hold printers, tablets, and PDA (now just smart phones)

Technology is limited at first because people seem unsure of how a new device will affect their lives, because people are fond of the status quo. Then when you realize that your smart phone can give you driving directions right to the tiny blue tooth in your ear while you're driving, or buy tickets for anything while waiting on a bus, or... you get the idea.

3D printers will probably find a spot in the average home. Missing a small peg for a shelf? Print out a new one. The people will find a use for it, just because the market hasn't realized it yet doesn't mean it won't become a high demand.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
It's not a matter of quality. Even garage hobby companies tend to 3D print their master models nowadays and then recast them in resin or metal.

But printers of this quality will never be common household items, they simply aren't useful enough for the majority of people. Who needs them? Artists, hobbyists, designers, architects. Not enough to make them affordable on the level of everyday tech like gaming consoles or dishwashers.

Of this quality? No. Give it a couple years, 3D printed materials will be indistinguishable from something professionally cast.

It might be a while before we see people with 3d printers in their homes, but I can certainly see where it's possible to make models today for costs on par with buying them new from GW.

There's still an issue of fine detail, but the ones I have seen coming out of my local university's imaging labs are very close to the real thing. Part of the detail issue has to do with the fact they were scanned through a 3d scanner.

In the states we have maker spaces cropping up all over the place. Split the cost of the printer and scanner with your community. Buy your plastic and go to town.

Until you get into very expensive printers, the quality is just not there yet.

It will be eventually, but it will be a while.

Do a search, this thread does indeed come up regularly.

Here is how it goes;

1 - Wow, 3d printing! I just discovered this, do you think this will change our game?
2 - wow, look at what we can make?
3 - Wait a second, that quality is terrible. Well how much is it for the better quality?
4 - Better quality is very expensive and very slow, but has its uses for masters for casting or such.
5 - hmmm...guess this was not as big deal as we thought....

They will get there, they are not there now if you want quality.

Don't get me wrong - for making custom bits or masters.....it may be a good thing, and will get better.
Or if you want low quality prototypes....then yes.

Print a marine at high quality, he will take an hour, and cost over $10. Although, if gw keeps raising their prices....

GW, just like most producers of small easily manufactured items, need to take notice and get in front of the coming changes.

GW needs to make files compatible with certain 3D printers then licenses users to print their own armies. Perhaps you spend $50 for a space marine template or $10 for a special character. This would be nearly 100% profit to GW as they wouldn't have to produce, package and ship those models. Meanwhile regular consumers would gladly pay to print their own.

Will files show up on the internet? Absolutely. However, the software industry has already dealt with pirating and figured out that you can't stop it so focus on the paying clients. This attitude change has worked wonders. Heck, GW could even provide some basic marines for free while charging for certain poses etc.

Point is, there is a viable way forward for GW. The only question is whether they will learn from other industries that have gone through this or if they will repeat the old mistakes of trying to sue everyone to keep the cat in the bag... Interestingly, the oldest affected industry were the first books that were hand copied by monks. The monks were ultimately put out of business by the printing press; if they had gone ahead and become typesetters then they could have kept with it for a few hundred more years... Old habits die hard though .

Some of the more current ones include book publishers (they just can't catch a break), music and software. Essentially book publishers and software makers found out that most people want to pay for the product. Yes, people will happily copy, distribute and otherwise steal it. So you make it reasonably difficult to do that while making it far easier for someone to give you their money. The honest people will stay honest and the crooks, well, there are always crooks anyway. The music industry is a little different. Most people know that Amazon and iTunes is a great distribution method while the RIAA hasn't figured out that going that route is far better for them. In part it's due to how that industry is structured, which makes the mob look downright nice. So, it'll still take them awhile to figure it out.

I'm only slightly worried that GW management has no clue what to do. Their recent litigation against a few companies, along with trade terms they like to impose shows that they don't really think globally and simply don't understand how tech really works. However, I do have hope that they'll hire the right people at some point that can show them the way.

Regarding quality. The pace of innovation in today's world is simply astounding. I can walk into about 3 local stores that sell 3D printers; meanwhile the number of 3D printing related kickstarters is just insane. You can bet that the quality level is going to go up in a very short amount of time and that prices will drop like a rock. I wouldn't estimate 10 years. Instead it's probably closer to 2; 3 at the most.

Yep, 3D printers have a bright future ahead. Internet piracy? Not so much.

Our generation has enjoyed a high degree of online freedom, but we're moving into an internet environment where controls are becoming tighter, and technical barriers are erected to limit what we can and can't do with our devices. Actually, a future dominated by the Itunes App Store strikes me as more likely than the post-capitalist free for all envisioned by the maker culture.

3D printing won't find the lawless environment p2p networks and CD copiers found in the 90-00s. By the time it becomes popular and affordable, industries affected by this technology would have plenty of time and resources to adapt.

davethepak wrote:
Until you get into very expensive printers, the quality is just not there yet.

It will be eventually, but it will be a while.

Do a search, this thread does indeed come up regularly.

Here is how it goes;

1 - Wow, 3d printing! I just discovered this, do you think this will change our game?
2 - wow, look at what we can make?
3 - Wait a second, that quality is terrible. Well how much is it for the better quality?
4 - Better quality is very expensive and very slow, but has its uses for masters for casting or such.
5 - hmmm...guess this was not as big deal as we thought....

They will get there, they are not there now if you want quality.

Don't get me wrong - for making custom bits or masters.....it may be a good thing, and will get better.
Or if you want low quality prototypes....then yes.

Print a marine at high quality, he will take an hour, and cost over $10. Although, if gw keeps raising their prices....

I've actually known about 3D printing for quite a while. It was months and months ago that one printed an ak47, and months before that that it was first shown on tommorrows world on Euro News. I've also had discussions about it with my friends, I fancied one to do with GW this time (you know it being dakka dakka and all) though and decided to bring it up after posting on another thread. So I am not an overly impressed teenager.
This is the first time I have seen evidence of such good quality printing avaliable to the general public though.
Lastly, If you think 3D printing not a big deal... remember this thread in 20 years time...

Question is, how long does it take to print something in 3D?

I thought a simple gun bits could take an hour or two to do.

10 years ago it would have taken me an hour with the processor of a huge desktop computer plugged into the internet to download a 118page pdf document. 3 weeks ago it took me a few seconds on a wireless device that is primarily designed for communication and also fits snuggly into my hand, whilst at half signal, to download the 118page cypher data slate.

I don't know all that much about 3d printing, except that they're quite expensive compared to a bucket of casting resin and some moulding wax, but I think the possibility is there. I'd give it five years before they're in regular use for home copying of GW products, but that depends on the availability of accurate files needed to make the products, and I think that's where the stranglehold will be - GW is litigious enough without people copying their minis en masse, and they'll have to expand their legal department fivefold...

That didn't work for the music industry or the movie industry though. Now Agent_Tremolo makes a very valid point that industries affected by the 3D printer will have learnt from these mistakes, but I'm not convinced. The internet makes it far too easy to get hold of templates, even non-official ones that are very close to the real thing. Combine that with technological advancement and the dramatic price reduction of technological hardware once it has been in the market for a while and refined and I honestly see it as a losing battle for GW if they decide to go down the route of sue sue sue.


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Much like what clively says ^, they can benefit greatly from it if they instead embrace it and join in by selling the templates themselves.

Poly Ranger wrote:
That's amazing! I estimated over a decade... but if you can do that now with what you claim is little experiance and a low quality printer...
You'r not pulling my leg are you? You did really make these on a 3D printer right?

Not pulling your leg. The printer I used for these models cost about $2000. Material is next to nothing. I think the Thunderfire is abut $1.50 in plastic. As for my modeling skills I have worked as an Architect for 16 years so I do have CAD experience, but the skills I used to make these models could be learned in a week or less of study. The CAD models probably have 20 hours or so of work in them. Up close you can really tel a difference but on the table they look fine.

^^^ so which of the razorbacks weapons are fake? i cant tell and its bugging me

It will happen, and I personally believe it will happen quicker than most seem to think. 20 years? You're kidding yourself if you think it will take that long. A few years is my guess. 5 at the most and I think that's being pessimistic.

The question really is whether GW will attempt to do something to take advantage of the situation, or stick their fingers in their ears humming a tune and praying it never happens. Given how long it has taken them to catch up in the online era, I rather suspect the latter.

But I don't think 3D printing will kill all model companies (or any other manufacturers of goods susceptible to reproduction). People thought that about the music industry, and iTunes is now flourishing, along with a bunch of other paid services that have cropped up recently.

There will be piracy of course. That's a reality of the world as it currently exists. Savvy companies will find ways to continue operations.

Will it kill GW? I doubt it. It might have an impact, perhaps even a significant one. Plenty of people still buy CDs at a brick & mortar store though, and so will people continue to buy GW kits. I personally think they will be way behind the curve and it will hurt them more than it really needs to, but they'll survive.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
It's not a matter of quality. Even garage hobby companies tend to 3D print their master models nowadays and then recast them in resin or metal.

But printers of this quality will never be common household items, they simply aren't useful enough for the majority of people. Who needs them? Artists, hobbyists, designers, architects. Not enough to make them affordable on the level of everyday tech like gaming consoles or dishwashers.

This sounds like what I hear right before every other tech step forward. 2d printers used to print good awful slow and people saw industrial printers that could make copies and print 20 pages a minute and said "the average consumer will never need those features. "

Now most people won't buy a printer that couldn't do those things

 ninjafiredragon wrote:
^^^ so which of the razorbacks weapons are fake? i cant tell and its bugging me

The lascanon one is the 3d print. :-)