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http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/01/10/ces_video_shapeways/

I haven't watched this yet -- it seems interesting though a bit blue sky.

Um... Wow.

When that becomes available the public, The sky will really be the limit. One would be able scratch build and replicate more or less anything.

Wow, I wonder how much it would cost to 'print' a Leman Russ?

How about thousands of pounds in lawsuits?

Useless for small miniatures since the end product is grainy and you'd have to sand every surface.

lol with that we wont need to put up with GW 's out dated old tank models.

lemanrus and rhino are seriously hideous .

ive made a baneblade i wonder if i should send it on hers a picture this thing takes forever to make though sheepishly i looked at a model online just like it it was a model i copied off of oh well it looks good i hope

I wonder how grainy it is.

whatwhat wrote:How about thousands of pounds in lawsuits?

No reason to think that if this technology comes into home use. It would be no different to scratch building something from plastic card, except with this you design it all on the PC and print out a new turret for your tank.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

whatwhat wrote:How about thousands of pounds in lawsuits?

No reason to think that if this technology comes into home use. It would be no different to scratch building something from plastic card, except with this you design it all on the PC and print out a new turret for your tank.

Nothing apart from the fact someone is making a profit out of their IP.

This is the same thing they use to make the World of Warcraft characters.

http://www.figureprints.com/

I'm glad to see the technology become available to a larger market.

There is a site I found the other day, http://www.ponoko.com/
that is apparently like Cafe Press for plastic things. I haven't really had a chance to dig into their capabilities, but I was thinking along the same lines as this, making small conversion parts for figures. Mostly wings.

whatwhat wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:

whatwhat wrote:How about thousands of pounds in lawsuits?

No reason to think that if this technology comes into home use. It would be no different to scratch building something from plastic card, except with this you design it all on the PC and print out a new turret for your tank.

Nothing apart from the fact someone is making a profit out of their IP.

Maybe if you do it through this company right now and there's profit involved. But I imagine in years to come people will have these printers in their homes, it'll be scratch building of the future. Scratch building is free apart from the raw materials costs, and no one has ever been done for scratch building a new turret for their rhino or whatever. Except now you'll be designing it on the machine and printing instead of whittling from card. Furthermore the drawing on the machine will probably make use of vector art, you'll be able to create domes and curves scale accurate to real life objects, cutting and sanding the curves in a turret or aeroplane wing to scale is very difficult by hand.

And when people design models they'll put the files up on the internet, and people can download them and print off wargames armies and model kits themselves. Assuming you're prepared to make 3D scale plans through a drawing package, you'll be able to make plastic kits of anything obscure, real or fictious, that takes your fancy.

Well that's a long way away. Even the most basic cad printers cost thousands, and they've been around for decades.

This is sort of old tech. The only "improvement" this company seems to be selling is the service of allowing the public access to their printer. Sort of like Kinkos for 3d printers.

The 3d plastic printers have been coming down in price for a while, and there's also one that "self-replicates".

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

The commercial quality ones can be a bit pricey, but almost affordable to the fanatical (10's of thousands).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printer

Personally I'm not very interested in them, since the product produced is often very grainy, and requires a lot of post-production clean up. Often they're used to rapidly prototype parts, to make sure they fit together, do demoes, that sort of thing.

i agree with bigtoof as they are not very interesting

It looks like a piece of digital technology that will certainly improve in time, though whether it will become a cheap as a toaster is another matter.

Think of it as being like a high end photo scanning or printing machine. There are entry level machines that do good prints in small sizes but something capable of scanning or printing a medium format photo to a high quality and size is several thousand pounds. It's within the reach of a well-off enthusiast.

The other thing is you need to input 3D model files. Most people are never going to bother to learn how to make their own files.

Kilkrazy wrote:It looks like a piece of digital technology that will certainly improve in time, though whether it will become a cheap as a toaster is another matter.

I think it will come along, especially if there is serious investment in it. The computing power of desktop machines is coming along leaps and bounds, and standard printers are getting better and cheaper all the time. Same with digital cameras and projectors for your computer - a few years ago they cost thousands of pounds, now they are hundreds. Who knows what we'll be able to produce through computers in 20-30 years time.

All that is needed now is a cheap, easy to use 3-D scanning technology. There is a system that some movie or video game studio (I can't recall which right now) uses for 3-D scanning of actors to aid in motion capture, especially face animation. Combine that with the 3-D printer and you could copy anything without any design skills.

There was an article about this in Finescale Modeler about a year+ ago: the author used CAD to 'scratchbuild' a small 1/48 scale piece for a diorama (a fuel tank on a gurney or trailer, I believe), uploaded it to one of these kinds of companies, and got himself the figure in the mail shortly thereafter. The downside was the fragility of the figure in question; while it held good detail and was easy enough to prep and paint, it was only really good for dioramas and display purposes, and even then he was making a relatively small and simple piece. Still, the fact that GW, Wargames Factory and others are using the technology shows that it's only a matter of time before those who are able to 'sculpt' in the medium will do so. And really, why not? As long as they're not violating IP by trying to sell copied designs, it doesn't strike me as that different from copying ideas, garage kits etc.

These aren't going to replace standard cast injection molding any time soon. Too fragile, crusty, and inaccurate. Its certainly useful for the types of things advertised in the video but not so much for high quality high strength miniatures molding.


They could make gundams pretty damn well though.

warpcrafter wrote:All that is needed now is a cheap, easy to use 3-D scanning technology. There is a system that some movie or video game studio (I can't recall which right now) uses for 3-D scanning of actors to aid in motion capture, especially face animation. Combine that with the 3-D printer and you could copy anything without any design skills.

Several game companies do that. I produced a promo video about it a couple of years ago.

The technology is still very expensive and the data requires a lot of clean-up.

I just don't think a lot of people need a setup at home for 3D scanning and printing. The idea of commissioning models from 3d artists and then sending the data to a printing service seems more useful.

I tend to wonder if such technology would at least give GW cause to lower their prices at the risk of being trumped by their own players...

I happen to have a sample piece made on a 3d printer, and it amazing. It is a raptor head (dinosaur, not bird) and the detail is incredible. The best 3d printers are not grainy at all.

Looks liek I need to make some friends in the local uni's engineering department. Scanning would make things a lot faster, but there are indeed quite a few 3D models of 40K vehicles etc. already floating around the intortubes. And one well-rendered model each for a Warhound, Reaver and Warlord could print out a whole Titan legion. Hell, for the price of one each of those (over 2 grand, since Warlordds have to be custom-built regardless), you could hire one of the aforementioned uni students to design the files and print you a couple copies.

Same goes for a whole wing of Thunderbolts.

I wonder how much the materials cost?

Hmmmm.

A better use would be to make your own molds using similar technology.

It´s cheaper to buy one from FW than to prototype them.

Breotan wrote:This is the same thing they use to make the World of Warcraft characters.

http://www.figureprints.com/

I'm glad to see the technology become available to a larger market.

This is not the same technology. One of my ex-bosses runs the figure prints company and the mater printer was in the work kitchen making the test figs months before they were advertised. No, this is quite different.

The WoW figs are some sort of resin dust that is glued together. There's a tray of the dust and then layers of glue are added on and the same immerges out of the tray of material. That dust got into everything. : / As you can see in the demo, the object is created from a top down process where the liquid plastic is molded/sculpted on to the object, getting rid of the tray of resin completely. This material looks to be WAY stronger, as the other material would break at the drop of a hat; VERY fragile. There would be no way that you could create a napkin holders, bracelets or anything that will be under motion.

While similar in concept, the actual machine looks like it's advanced greatly.

Keep in mind that there can be a big difference between 'game quality' and 'print quality' 3d models... Ones made for a computer game can cheat and float, use texture maps for a lot of detail, and don't have to worry about being assembled in real life.

True, but I was very excited to see a couple of things in the video. The first was the multi-layered ornament who's layers spun inside each other. The second was the plastic puzzle piece that was being moved around toward the end. Both those things showed me that the pieces were clean (they moved fluidly), and that they were durable.

What I think this would be great for is custom pieces for existing models: damaged tank plates, custom heads, unique standards, etc.