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 kodos wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:

What if GW offered a heroforge type of site where you could customize poses and equipment for everything in your army and they printed it and shipped it to you? What if new colored printing tech was made affordable to companies like GW so you didn't have to paint anything and didn't look like sand? Why would people want plastics?

difference between getting your army now or wait 2-3 months until it is printed
as even GW would not be able to set up a printer for each order coming in, so people would have to wait until their unit is done

not talking about that much more people need to work on the factory to maintain those things, increasing the costs and in addition to waiting time there would be a higher price too

so why would people want to have cheap plastic now, when they can wait months for their more expensive 3D printed unit

How many of those people that buy the not so cheap plastic from GW now have everything assembled and painted in 2-3 months? A small fraction would be my guess. I don't even think 75% of the people that play wargames want to paint them.

 Monkeysloth wrote:

How many of those people that buy the not so cheap plastic from GW now have everything assembled and painted in 2-3 months? A small fraction would be my guess. I don't even think 75% of the people that play wargames want to paint them.

Remember, GW has done their Made-to-Order items too. Those were normally 6 week waits, or it was when I ordered them. It's been a while since I've seen one offered, but I would chalk that up more to the pandemic. People are willing to wait for stuff if it feels exclusive or limited. The exact type of stuff that GW pushes.

How much would a 3d printed and 3d painted squad that takes an hour to manufacture (we're beign super optimistic here) cost, when you know what GW charges for a sprue that takes 1.5 seconds to cast?

I can see GW offering a $100 3d-printed-commander-with-your-face-on-it, and with great success, but armies, no way. We'll have holograms before we have printing that efficient.

I think the impact is more severely felt for the niche-scale producers, 6mm - 15mm scifi and fantasy. Especially true if you are in the business of making GW-esque proxies.

Just looking at the active Facebook groups and Discord groups for Epic and Warmaster, the vast majority of the painted pics being shared are for either home or contract-printed miniatures. I think that definitely gives the perception that it is taking a bite out of an already small market.

There are a number of advantages to just running a print farm as opposed to relying on moldmaking and casting services. Timelines, up-front investment (depending on the printers used), etc. For the proxy market, you could also push the envelope a lot closer to the existing IP's than you normally would. If you get a C&D letter, you just tweak the design somewhat and keep printing, rather than having to junk molds etc,

 lord_blackfang wrote:
How much would a 3d printed and 3d painted squad that takes an hour to manufacture (we're beign super optimistic here) cost, when you know what GW charges for a sprue that takes 1.5 seconds to cast?

I can see GW offering a $100 3d-printed-commander-with-your-face-on-it, and with great success, but armies, no way. We'll have holograms before we have printing that efficient.

Don't know. But I have seen people, on this very forum spend $5000 USD just to have someone else paint their army. GW sells you that with a monthly payment plan and you just get it.

As for speed. Well, there are commercial ones that make ours look stupid slow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=O2thSsQrZUM&feature=emb_title

Only a few minutes for a 32mm figure. And that printer is over 4 years old.

 Overread wrote:
This is something where GW has a very clear edge over many of the competition; especially so when its all in-house and easy to communicate (those dealing with factories in China have not just a language barrier, but also vast distances and all the rest to contend with).

The biggest advantage GW has here, and the greatest obstacle that everyone else has to contend with, is that at GW the people sculpting and designing the miniatures can work side by side with the people engineering the molds and can ensure that the output of the production process is not only going to look good but be relatively easy to assemble and robust enough to stand up to regular gaming. When dealing with China, that level of interaction and oversight does not exist and the ability to go back and forth with the sculptors to make adjustments and changes in order to ease reproducability, etc. is not an option. Thats how you end up with things like Wyrds malifaux minis where a models face ends up being a separate piece from the rest of its head, and all the frustrations that come with that - at GW that same sculpt could be adjusted slightly to prevent the need for that and allow it to be cast in a single piece with the same (or better) fidelity and detail. Beyond that, GWs sculptors work so closely with the mold engineers that they generally have a good understanding of production and design limitations that they may need to work around and sculpt with these things in mind from the get-go to ensure that the amount of rework needed to accommodate the mold engineering process is as minimal as possible. Companies like Wyrd, Kingdom Death, and others obviously don't have that benefit, not just because the sculptors there have zero interaction with the toolmakers but also because in many cases the sculptors are freelancers and contract employees who are getting paid to deliver 3D files that look good and match up as closely as possible with concept art designed and posed by 2D artists and as a result don't even necessarily have terms like "reproducability" or "manufacturability" or "ease of assembly" in their vocabulary because thats not even a consideration to them insofar as their ability to get paid for the work.

Don't know. But I have seen people, on this very forum spend $5000 USD just to have someone else paint their army. GW sells you that with a monthly payment plan and you just get it.

As for speed. Well, there are commercial ones that make ours look stupid slow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=O2thSsQrZUM&feature=emb_title

Only a few minutes for a 32mm figure. And that printer is over 4 years old.

Carbons printers (and the handful of other similar technologies out there) have lower accuracy/resolution than the average Anycubic, Elegoo, or Phrozen resin printer (I've looked into them for business needs in the past). They aren't quite as fast as you're being led to believe either, the prints in those videos are sped up rather than real time - like the red molecular structure print at the start of the video is actually sped up about 7x faster than reality. They also don't sell you the printer, you have to essentially lease it to the tune of $40k per year plus a first-time setup and installation cost of ~$25k. That of course is in addition to the cost of the resin and materials themselves. Theres a number of other things if you look under the hood that basically disqualify them (at least for now) from being useful to anyone other than a fortune 500 company manufacturing highly priced low-detail luxury goods in limited quantities. For the most part this isn't expected to improve as there are mathematical and phsyical limitations inherent to the technology that they are using to achieve these results that prevent them from being scaled significantly further. Thats not to say that there won't be breakthroughs in 3d printing that make mass-manufacturing with them more accessible and more possible, just that those printers are still much farther down the R&D pipeline than any of us would probably like them to be.

Great points all, chaos0xomega.

One huge improvement I can see happening is a rigid material to replace FEP and basically allow any size of build plate an do away with all faffing about with the vat.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
How much would a 3d printed and 3d painted squad that takes an hour to manufacture (we're beign super optimistic here) cost, when you know what GW charges for a sprue that takes 1.5 seconds to cast?

I can see GW offering a $100 3d-printed-commander-with-your-face-on-it, and with great success, but armies, no way. We'll have holograms before we have printing that efficient.

Not saying they're going to replace HIPS products with 3D printed stuff, but we could see them replace their resin cast products with 3D prints. AT and Necromunda both have resin products via Forgeworld even though they started with HIPS products. GW could turn to doing this for items where they don't see the demand for cutting a mold for HIPS.

Kingdom Death has already moved it's resin products to 3D prints.

Kingdom Death has already moved it's resin products to 3D prints.

Thats not entirely accurate. They only completely switched to photoresins for certain sculpts/product lines, others they use the photoresin for a limited run and do traditional resin for the main run (or vice versa, forget which way it was).

 silent25 wrote:

Not saying they're going to replace HIPS products with 3D printed stuff, but we could see them replace their resin cast products with 3D prints. AT and Necromunda both have resin products via Forgeworld even though they started with HIPS products. GW could turn to doing this for items where they don't see the demand for cutting a mold for HIPS.

They might. I wouldn't be surprised if printing is already faster than spin casting for small runs.

thedespot29 wrote:
I think the impact is more severely felt for the niche-scale producers, 6mm - 15mm scifi and fantasy. Especially true if you are in the business of making GW-esque proxies.

Just looking at the active Facebook groups and Discord groups for Epic and Warmaster, the vast majority of the painted pics being shared are for either home or contract-printed miniatures. I think that definitely gives the perception that it is taking a bite out of an already small market.

There are a number of advantages to just running a print farm as opposed to relying on moldmaking and casting services. Timelines, up-front investment (depending on the printers used), etc. For the proxy market, you could also push the envelope a lot closer to the existing IP's than you normally would. If you get a C&D letter, you just tweak the design somewhat and keep printing, rather than having to junk molds etc,

That's a very good point you're making. For me it's more reason to convince Vanguard Miniatures to expand beyond proxies, but yeah...it's a tricky thing. The clients basically want Epic back, companies such as Vanguard Miniatures, Onslaught Miniatures, and others cater to that need. But they kinda become redundant as soon as people can print whatever they want (and those are then exact copies of GW designs, not stuff inspired by it). I do wonder what will happen if GW does finally decide to bring back Epic.

I know that some indie companies tend to get an existential crisis every time someone opens up a kickass 3D printing service, but I sometimes wonder how big the threat would be. The problem I think, as you also describe, is the niche we operate in. 28mm scaled indie companies are doing just fine, there doesn't seem to be that much existential fear for 3D printing peeps, at least not at the levels I see when dealing with companies who make fleetscale or 6mm stuf.

On a personal level- 3D printing is still hassle enough that not everyone can or wants to do it (or indeed has the space, especially in a flat). Once it becomes as easy as ink/laser printing, it will almost certainly shift.

From business perspective, it might spell the end of tiny, one-man businesses that stay afloat by the skin of their teeth at best of times, because yes, if I can buy an STL file and print off 20 models for a game easily, why would I wait weeks to get the toys delivered from some shed in Shropshire?

Like with so many things, it'll probably see people pivot, with those companies replaced by enthusiasts supported by patreon or just treating model-making as a hobby that pays for itself.

Yeah, on one hand I can have my own, custom Titanomachina minis printed but then I have to painstakingly remove the supports that were added, and then other post-printing prep-work before the parts will fit as intended, or I can put together a GW plastic kit that is easily snipped off the sprue and goes together like a dream.

Nurglitch wrote:
Yeah, on one hand I can have my own, custom Titanomachina minis printed but then I have to painstakingly remove the supports that were added, and then other post-printing prep-work before the parts will fit as intended, or I can put together a GW plastic kit that is easily snipped off the sprue and goes together like a dream.

Personal experiences may vary

In my case, the more GW cuts up their minis, the more bored I get when trying to glue them together, just so that they can make a bespoke, dynamic miniature of which I usually need another five in the army, whereas most of my prints are single part and supports go away with hot water and a slight pull.

Lets just say that, for me, post processing printed minis have so far been much, much less of a hassle than putting together current GW sprues.

Then again, I don't really feel that plastic minis and 3d printed ones are comparable nowadays, unlike with resin casted ones.

 Albertorius wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
Yeah, on one hand I can have my own, custom Titanomachina minis printed but then I have to painstakingly remove the supports that were added, and then other post-printing prep-work before the parts will fit as intended, or I can put together a GW plastic kit that is easily snipped off the sprue and goes together like a dream.

Personal experiences may vary

In my case, the more GW cuts up their minis, the more bored I get when trying to glue them together, just so that they can make a bespoke, dynamic miniature of which I usually need another five in the army, whereas most of my prints are single part and supports go away with hot water and a slight pull.

Yeah, I've noticed that removing the supports before curing makes life so much easier. I've been having issues making sure that hexagonal plugs fit hexagonal sockets that doesn't make them burdensome to play with, but I still envy the production value of the GW plastics even if I'm not interested in the miniatures or their associated games anymore. Not that GW hasn't had their mistakes; the multi-laser on the Sentinel kit, for example. Maybe I need to talk to my printer-guy. Thing is though he's an award-winning C&C tech, so I'm inclined to defer to his work rather than argue.

Nurglitch wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
Yeah, on one hand I can have my own, custom Titanomachina minis printed but then I have to painstakingly remove the supports that were added, and then other post-printing prep-work before the parts will fit as intended, or I can put together a GW plastic kit that is easily snipped off the sprue and goes together like a dream.

Personal experiences may vary

In my case, the more GW cuts up their minis, the more bored I get when trying to glue them together, just so that they can make a bespoke, dynamic miniature of which I usually need another five in the army, whereas most of my prints are single part and supports go away with hot water and a slight pull.

Yeah, I've noticed that removing the supports before curing makes life so much easier. I've been having issues making sure that hexagonal plugs fit hexagonal sockets that doesn't make them burdensome to play with, but I still envy the production value of the GW plastics even if I'm not interested in the miniatures or their associated games anymore. Not that GW hasn't had their mistakes; the multi-laser on the Sentinel kit, for example.

It's more a case of personal nitpicks, I think: I got fed up with multi parts with RRT, and nowadays the bigger the number of parts, particularly for small minis, the more annoyed I get, even though the final result might be cool.

 Albertorius wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
...

Lets just say that, for me, post processing printed minis have so far been much, much less of a hassle than putting together current GW sprues.

Then again, I don't really feel that plastic minis and 3d printed ones are comparable nowadays, unlike with resin casted ones.

+1 to that!!!

Nurglitch wrote:
Yeah, on one hand I can have my own, custom Titanomachina minis printed but then I have to painstakingly remove the supports that were added, and then other post-printing prep-work before the parts will fit as intended, or I can put together a GW plastic kit that is easily snipped off the sprue and goes together like a dream.

This kind of highlights the real barrier with current 3d printing is that it falls in the 'not easy' category in the triad of "Good/Cheap/Easy"

At this point, I've got my support settings dialed in to the point where removing them is anything but 'painstaking' - almost all of my supports instantly snap off with no marks at all when I give the model a good twist. The rest are usually supports that I've accidentally put at too steep of an angle that end up stuck to the sculpt, I snip those off post-wash. But that did take a lot of research, trial and error, and tweaking...as well as actually learning that I could get away with them being that thin!

Plus even pre-supported models don't always work in every machine, even if you ignore that there are clearly some who just click auto-support and then add a few through to those who custom every single support and make certain something prints.

Even on the same machine a variation in resin and settings might well mean one set of supports works and another fails.


It's complex and when you wait hours to get a print out of the machine and it fails it doesn't feel as nice as when you open a plastic box from the store and all the bits are already there and work (by and large yes there are errors, but they are far fewer in general).


Right now 3D printing is its own hobby within a hobby

Pretty sure most artists pay below-minimum-wage to someone in South America or Eastern Europe or similar to do their presupports and it shows.

There's also some designers who are clearly aware of how to design for 3D printing and those who don't. Some make some really nice models that are just a nightmare to actually support; whilst others realise that supports are part of the game and both design the core and slice it so that the model has nice natural areas to offer for supports without you having to battle with fine supports in high detail areas.

once saw an interview with a 3d sculpter and he said that it is essential for a good model that he know before he makes the how and with which material it will be cast

so just making a 3d render without ever thinking of how it will be cast won't result in good models

 kodos wrote:
once saw an interview with a 3d sculpter and he said that it is essential for a good model that he know before he makes the how and with which material it will be cast

so just making a 3d render without ever thinking of how it will be cast won't result in good models

Some people at both sides of the customer-creator divide seem not to realize that fact.

For people with extensive 3d printing experience: what is the logical argument that leads to the conclusion that "3d printing will make 'traditional' miniature making process obsolete"? Aside from rapid prototypes, I simply don't see how 3d printing can become more economical than 'traditional' production. 3d printing is simply a means to produce products that can't be produced via other means (i.e. CNC). The way I see it, 3d printing is more versatile version of vacuum forming without the need to set up your negatives to form the positive.

For people with minimal 3d printing experience: 3d prints are 3d prints, and injection molding plas-kit is injection mold-plas kit. Unless it actually becomes more economical to "print" a sprue, the two will coexist.

If anything, when it comes down to GW, the most plausible shift they can afford may be that they will have 'base' injection mold kits supplemented by small scale production of upgrade kits that may be 3d printed.

 skchsan wrote:
For people with extensive 3d printing experience: what is the logical argument that leads to the conclusion that "3d printing will make 'traditional' miniature making process obsolete"? Aside from rapid prototypes, I simply don't see how 3d printing can become more economical than 'traditional' production.

The thing is whilst the machine itself isn't cheap, once you get going and can print reliably well the cost of material to keep it running is much less than the price to buy brand new models. In addition the cost of most 3D model files is also much less than a regular model and you can make as many as you want.

So what people "want" to see or hope to see is the market shift and for even big firms like GW to suddenly start supplying home printing files to print your army. The justification being that you do the production and get cheaper models. More models - less cost - happier gamers.


However I don't see that happening any time soon. As I've noted above right now the market works for the few doing it partly because there are fewer doing it and because its basically teams of 1 or a few designers. So low costs work for sales because its not supporting many at once. A firm like GW couldn't easily survive on such a model and would have to likely downsize like crazy or shift the entire business into production and supply of 3D printers and accessories/supplies.


Basically people want cheaper models and see 3D printing as a means to that end.

 skchsan wrote:
For people with extensive 3d printing experience: what is the logical argument that leads to the conclusion that "3d printing will make 'traditional' miniature making process obsolete"? Aside from rapid prototypes, I simply don't see how 3d printing can become more economical than 'traditional' production.

For people with minimal 3d printing experience: 3d prints are 3d prints, and injection molding plas-kit is injection mold-plas kit. Unless it actually becomes more economical to "print" a sprue, the two will coexist.

If anything, when it comes down to GW, I think they will have 'base' injection mold kits supplemented by small scale production of upgrade kits that may be 3d printed.

Comparing 3d printing production to plastic injection is a loss. 3d printing will never be as economical at scale as plastic injection. Now, comparing to resin casting, it's a lot closer when you compare cost per model in materials, and even the other surrounding costs (labor; molds for resin casting vs. FEP sheets, etc.) are pretty similar. Yes, it takes 3-4 hours to print a full build plate, but that full build plate might hold 6 or more models depending on scale (only height of the overall build impacts time), and hand-casting in resin, moving to a vacuum chamber, demoulding, cleaning and preparing mould for next cast, etc., comes in fairly close to that time as well (perhaps even longer?). Also, with resin casting, you will have to make new molds periodically, since each one is really only good for 30-50 pulls depending (less if it's a more intricate model).

It's not quite as close when comparing 3d printing to metal spin casting, since you typically can do more runs of metal in bigger molds that last longer. But, the price of tin, which is one of the main ingredients in most white metal casts, historically can fluctuate pretty bad, which means margins likewise fluctuate. Easier to predict and control even resin casting in comparison (which is part of why many smaller companies go with resin casting, plus slightly less expensive equipment required).

So, if 3d print production vs. resin casting production are fairly close right now (resin casting might be slightly more economical at the moment, but not by much), then as 3d printing tech improves and resin costs come down, there will be a point where 3d print production is flat out more economical than resin casting, for low to medium volume (100 pcs or so a month, say). If you need 1000s of models per month produced, then you will probably want to invest in injection molding, which has a very high start up cost (steel mold making is not cheap), but then the price per part in materials and even labor is a fraction of either resin, metal, or 3d printing.

And note, I'm not talking about people occasionally printing some files on their own instead of buying physical products. I am looking at the production of physical products for sale here, and I do think that smaller companies may start shifting to direct 3d printing over resin casting eventually. Not all of them, to be sure, but it is becoming a completely viable option.

There's already a couple print-only companies including a loot crate type thing with a dozen minis a month. Last I saw the person had 8 Marses and went through 3 print runs a day which is probably already better than what a single person can handle with spin casting.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
There's already a couple print-only companies including a loot crate type thing with a dozen minis a month. Last I saw the person had 8 Marses and went through 3 print runs a day which is probably already better than what a single person can handle with spin casting.

There's definitely that, too. Once you start a print, you can go do something else. Including go to bed and check on it in the morning. Not something you can do with resin casting or metal spin casting.

 Valander wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
There's already a couple print-only companies including a loot crate type thing with a dozen minis a month. Last I saw the person had 8 Marses and went through 3 print runs a day which is probably already better than what a single person can handle with spin casting.

There's definitely that, too. Once you start a print, you can go do something else. Including go to bed and check on it in the morning. Not something you can do with resin casting or metal spin casting.

Wait you're saying there comes a point where you can leave the printer printing and not come back every half hour to make sure its still printing?

 Overread wrote:
Wait you're saying there comes a point where you can leave the printer printing and not come back every half hour to make sure its still printing?

With my resin I have no choice, it's in a timeshare workshop and I go home while it's printing.

With my FDM I just trust it enough to hit print and leave the room for 18 hours. Tho I admit I often peek just to gloat.