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I just heard about this last week. Has anybody run into the maker bot yet? A cheap 3d printer is really appealing, but can it hit the resolution needed for miniatures? I suppose even for custom bases, shoulder pads, special weapons it could be worth while.

http://www.makerbot.com/

Known about this one for years, theres a place in my town, called protospace, where a bunch of hardware geeks pool their money to buy tools. They threw a huge party about two years ago when they bought theirs.

Do you know if it can handle the resolution for miniatures though?

From my experience playing with one in the hacker space out here, no. It can do detail, but not the fine detail you would be looking at in a mini without retooling it to some extent. The extruder just does not get super fine details.

The technology is still out on this.

Best wait till the middle of next year or so. That will give you a better idea of how they are progressing.



If I were to compare this to something, I would point at a Commador 64, and then point to one of todays top of the line computers. THATS where the tech is at right now, the lvl of a Commador 64.


Most of the 3D printers out now are rough production models or back room jobs. They're coming leaps and bounds though, and I can see the time that you may be buying your armies in a program, then you end up 3D printing them yourself...in the future.

http://www.zcorp.com/en/home.aspx

http://www.desktopfactory.com/


A little bird told me about this at the beginning of the year. There is a discussion in the archives here on Dakka about it, but I was pointed to by one of my people and we started discussing futures, and investments.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/212440/the_3d_printer_revolution_countdown_print_your_own_pc_coming_shortly.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/3d-printing-2011-2

Interesting thing for the Makerbot cupcake is the automated build platform.
http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2010/09/13/makerbot-automated-build-platform/

Voxeljet just released a rolling conveyor belt rapid 3d prototyping unit as well. (bigger than makerbot cupcake)
http://www.voxeljet.de/en/


Mean while in the land of 3d printed bikini's

Yeah, after really looking at the stuff being printed my excitement has dropped a bit. The ABS plastic printers clearly don't give a seamless look. Thanks for the articles Grot. Hopefully these things continue to progress to a home nerd use quality...

Dakka user RiTides has a wealth of engineering experience and is also a bit of a guru with regard to 3D printing - I'm sure he will be able to fill in the blanks, if needed.

A lot of the research on getting these better is coming from here:
http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page
Makerbot is a variation on these.
When I've stopped painting my Eldar (2014?) I'll try building one for making scenery, etc.

Grot 6 wrote:Most of the 3D printers out now are rough production models or back room jobs.

If not for the word "most" in your comment, I would have to disagree 100% with you. While I do not have and specifics about the model of 3D printer, I have a friend who works in sales for a medical tool supplies company and their 3D printer(s) can handle incredible detail. He has created 3-4 Revenant Titans (the Forgeworld ones) that are indistinguishable from the real thing. Literally. Weight is close, detail spot on, everything. Well, once they're painted, I mean. You're really just limited by your skill with and quality of the CAD program used to create your design.

So, the tech is there right now. It just depends on how much money you have to throw into it. For the cost of the machines, materials, and software to use it, I wonder if it's not more financially sound to simply buy from Forgeworld?



Ghidorah

They say a Reprap is around £400 to build.
Running costs are the spools of plastic, and loads of time to run it.

Grot 6 wrote:http://www.pcworld.com/article/212440/the_3d_printer_revolution_countdown_print_your_own_pc_coming_shortly.html

Look at the picture at the bottom of the article.
There's your answer to the detail issue.

Ghidorah wrote:While I do not have and specifics about the model of 3D printer, I have a friend who works in sales for a medical tool supplies company and their 3D printer(s) can handle incredible detail.

I agree with you - 3D printing in medical devices companies (even a few years ago) was pretty damn good. I've seen some surgical guides being printed and the detail was fantastic, even though they were essentially throw away drilling guides.

Hi there.
http://moddler.com/index.php

somebody watches the colbert report

yea i thought the same thing make minatures when i firs tread abotu the maker box on tomshardware.com but yea the detail doens't look like it is there but eventually the technology will be there. but to be honest it'll be decades before i think it'd be worth it to print yout own minis vs buying them. a good full army is 3-400 so unless you wanted to print alot of models to recoup the cost and thus have to sell them probably illegaly as you'd be infringing on trademarks in alot of cases then it i sprobably bes toto jus tkeep paying for plastic crack... give it a decade or so though

G00fySmiley wrote:yea i thought the same thing make minatures when i firs tread abotu the maker box on tomshardware.com but yea the detail doens't look like it is there but eventually the technology will be there. but to be honest it'll be decades before i think it'd be worth it to print yout own minis vs buying them. a good full army is 3-400 so unless you wanted to print alot of models to recoup the cost and thus have to sell them probably illegaly as you'd be infringing on trademarks in alot of cases then it i sprobably bes toto jus tkeep paying for plastic crack... give it a decade or so though

*wall of text/run on sentence you for 53,859,725 damage*
*you die*
*wall of text/run on sentence may loot this corpse*


Punctuation is your friend. Even attempted use of it will make you our friend.



Ghidorah

its $1300 what do you do for a living that makes that CHEAP. I know in the grand scheme of things it not a huge amount of money but not sure I would go as far to say it's cheap though

It's possible and the technology exists to make 28mm miniatures but you require very high quality machines currently it isn't wortht the cost just for making miniatures.

lukewild1982 wrote:its $1300 what do you do for a living that makes that CHEAP. I know in the grand scheme of things it not a huge amount of money but not sure I would go as far to say it's cheap though

Well, that is the cost of a high spec PC, so it is not that expensive. Though obviously you need to know you are going to use it enough before you buy it

I have watched a few videos of this thing in action. Its a cool bit of kit and you coul do some great stuff. It can't really do anything that can go beyond the same level of detail from a single piece silicon mold. For making interesting terrain pieces and bases I think you could do a great job in it, not sure why you would go to the expence though. The plastic it uses is not that good a price on the basis of doing lots of items. Also it costs £1300. Thats a lot of silicon for molds and resin/euratheyne for molding that you could buy for the same money.

Being able to do a 3D print though, that is awesome. Also it looks wicked.

Ghidorah wrote:
So, the tech is there right now. It just depends on how much money you have to throw into it. For the cost of the machines, materials, and software to use it, I wonder if it's not more financially sound to simply buy from Forgeworld?

Ghidorah

If you have to buy a printer then yes it's going to be about 100 times cheaper to get the forge world models. The printers that you'd want today run between 50-200 thousand US.

SilverMK2 wrote:

lukewild1982 wrote:its $1300 what do you do for a living that makes that CHEAP. I know in the grand scheme of things it not a huge amount of money but not sure I would go as far to say it's cheap though

Well, that is the cost of a high spec PC, so it is not that expensive. Though obviously you need to know you are going to use it enough before you buy it

yeah but its not that cheap either is it

lukewild1982 wrote:yeah but its not that cheap either is it

Again, depends how much use you are going to get out of it.

So it's £1300 for a makerbot, and £400 for a DIY version.
There are ways to use the rig to run as a 3d scanner

You'll probably make your money back by printing scenery or big resin parts, maybe.

SilverMK2 wrote:

lukewild1982 wrote:yeah but its not that cheap either is it

Again, depends how much use you are going to get out of it.

you'd have to be making alot of stuff to recoup, and you'd need templates to actually print. unsiure if it comes with scanning equipment but even if it does you'd have to buy ne model to produce more, plus as mentioned if you try to recoup costs by sellign any copyright infrigment could result in legal fees and judgments costing much mroe than the machine itself (though i do like the idea of abs plastic minis)

You don't just have to copy other peoples stuff. It's entirely possible to make models using computer software and print them with this machine. I have some experience with 3d modeling and it's a lot easier than sculpting.

of coarse you could make your own models and that would be cool. I just don't think that was the origional poster's intent

Ah the Makerbot. The home kits, as many have already said, are not quite there yet. A friend of mine has however had 28mm models printed for him, by larger commercial printers, at about $40.00 a fig. He has a degree in 3D design, so he did all of the layers and textures on the figs himself, he is currently working on his own miniature game. He had the figs printed to see what they could do and so that he could make molds off of them.

A bunch of our local boys were talking about 3D printers and I think when the tech is better/cheaper, there will be printed games/armies available.
It could be a great little mini-revolution in mini-gaming, people with designs and ideas selling/sharing them for others to print and play.
How awesome would it be to some day print out that extra Razorback/whatever for your army, though unless GW is looking at this tech I suppose it would not be official (read: legal).
It will be interesting to see where these machines go and just how user friendly they will become.

osore wrote:Ah the Makerbot. The home kits, as many have already said, are not quite there yet. A friend of mine has however had 28mm models printed for him, by larger commercial printers, at about $40.00 a fig. He has a degree in 3D design, so he did all of the layers and textures on the figs himself, he is currently working on his own miniature game. He had the figs printed to see what they could do and so that he could make molds off of them.

A bunch of our local boys were talking about 3D printers and I think when the tech is better/cheaper, there will be printed games/armies available.
It could be a great little mini-revolution in mini-gaming, people with designs and ideas selling/sharing them for others to print and play.
How awesome would it be to some day print out that extra Razorback/whatever for your army, though unless GW is looking at this tech I suppose it would not be official (read: legal).
It will be interesting to see where these machines go and just how user friendly they will become.

Makes you wonder if Games-Workshop has seen the writing on the wall and has decided to simply cash out before the wave hits them.. I'm sure the people that once made VCR's and 8 tracks would have loved to see what was going to happen in the future.

There's something you should all consider. I've used a FDM "printer" and some other 3D printers in the past quite often and they tend to break down quite often. It's not just a one-time-buy deal.

Due to the progressing technology on these things, many require occasional visits from a technician due to a fluid blockage or a recalibration or one of the many things that can go wrong.

But hopefully if we continue the VCR analogy, the tech will start getting cheaper and more reliable. Here's hoping, anyway!