Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I found this article on the NPR website. It has some interesting points about the availability of 3-D printing, its legal ramifications,
and what exactly is making it more widely available.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/02/19/171912826/as-3-d-printing-become-more-accessible-copyright-questions-arise?utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130219

This should probably be in off topic or discussions, and you messed up the url tag (which stops me from viewing it, because I can't copy/paste the url on account of using a phone, which lacks such niceties as a mouse).

I've always been interested in the idea of 3d printing; it's actually the prospect of it becoming widely available in the future that led me to learn how to do 3d modeling, since a sufficiently high-res printer would provide a much nicer interface than hand-sculpting.

If GW was cutting edge and plugged in to their fan base, I'd expect them to make "printable" models in the future and sell the plans on a single person liscense.

Instead, they'll raise prices and drive people towards tech like this (kinda like books and scans now).

 Lobukia wrote:

Instead, they'll raise prices and drive people towards tech like this (kinda like books and scans now).

I know what you mean. Kind of like how girls keep dressing up in really short skirts and driving men towards rape. They have it coming, you know?

Theft is theft no matter how in vogue it is to blame the victim.

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:

Instead, they'll raise prices and drive people towards tech like this (kinda like books and scans now).

I know what you mean. Kind of like how girls keep dressing up in really short skirts and driving men towards rape. They have it coming, you know?

Theft is theft no matter how in vogue it is to blame the victim.

Clearly others wont share your sentiment when it comes to GW. So instead of snark, what do YOU propose should be done about it?

btw comparing GW's plight to legitimate rape is a tad bit morose...

People who have the money support the company producing the products they like/the local store selling them (for wargamers, where they play as well). People who don't can't give the company money anyways, and particularly in the case of the rules the high pricetag would prevent people who could afford either the rulebook or an army, but not both, from buying either. Thereby GW profits are at worst increased slightly by unauthorized free copies of their rulebooks.

Far more threatening with 3d printing is the prospect of benevolent third parties creating their own quality designs, and distributing those freely, because they like creating something good and seeing it disseminated/they enjoy the positive attention such an act would bring them more than they want some small amount of money.

 lazarian wrote:
Clearly others wont share your sentiment when it comes to GW. So instead of snark, what do YOU propose should be done about it?

btw comparing GW's plight to legitimate rape is a tad bit morose...

He is not comparing the action of rape to the action of 3D printing copyrighted material.
He is however comparing the act of self-righteous justification of illegal / morally wrong action. Expensive miniatures don't make GW an evil, moustache twirling company full of greedy bastards.
You are not defending the poor and oppressed people by stealing their copyrighted toys.
And even if they really are like that, it doesn't matter. It still doesn't give you the right to go and break the law.

It's not about sentiment, it's about double standards.


A little disclaimer, "you" was not used personally towards you Lazarian.

I dont see 3d printing becoming a key component of anyones business model anytime soon. Too dangerous (in terms of piracy) and doesnt make a lot of sense overall. Models are for thr most part the driving force in the hobby, people give others their money for the pretty pretty shiny models. A company wants their product to be represented well, they don't want to lose out on quality control, and as a result deal with little johnny who used the offbrand 3d printer material that resulted in a horrible misprint, or little timmy who digitally added a large lifelike phallus to his prints. Not only that, but it IS actually cheaper (not including tooling costs) for injection molded plastics than it is or ever will be for 3d printing. Now, if we could print mold tooling
.. we'd be talking something big...

High-quantity injection molding will always have the advantage of scale, but so far as smaller companies are concerned? I could easily see one of the "actually run by people who understand business" companies (which is what? Every wargame company but GW? ) releasing a basic starter setup/promotional models free to encourage new players to get involved. Assuming that the cost of the plastic used in the printer is brought down as the resolution possible at a given price-point drops, which would pretty much be a prerequisite for the proliferation of 3d printing to the point where this would even be a relevant issue.

And then of course there's the smaller resin miniature companies, who'd likely see the overall quality of their pieces jump if they could produce the master designs in a digital environment.

 Macok wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
Clearly others wont share your sentiment when it comes to GW. So instead of snark, what do YOU propose should be done about it?

btw comparing GW's plight to legitimate rape is a tad bit morose...

He is not comparing the action of rape to the action of 3D printing copyrighted material.
He is however comparing the act of self-righteous justification of illegal / morally wrong action. Expensive miniatures don't make GW an evil, moustache twirling company full of greedy bastards.
You are not defending the poor and oppressed people by stealing their copyrighted toys.
And even if they really are like that, it doesn't matter. It still doesn't give you the right to go and break the law.

It's not about sentiment, it's about double standards.


A little disclaimer, "you" was not used personally towards you Lazarian.

Exactly. You've hit the nail on the head.

To get back on topic, however, I've often wondered how 3D printing will affect GW and the miniatures business. I have got to think that it will do to the miniature industry what the MP3 did to the music industry... GW will have to adapt, profit margins will probably not be as high.

Although, on the other hand, they won't have to deal with their extensive and costly manufacturing and distribution operations anymore... it will be really interesting to see how this shapes up. As someone mentioned, I am guessing they will license out designs to consumers who will then do their own printing.

The shift to everything digital may be why GW is doing some fairly perplexing things right now, such as making Death From the Skies direct-only. Pure speculation on my part, however.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
High-quantity injection molding will always have the advantage of scale, but so far as smaller companies are concerned? I could easily see one of the "actually run by people who understand business" companies (which is what? Every wargame company but GW? ) releasing a basic starter setup/promotional models free to encourage new players to get involved. Assuming that the cost of the plastic used in the printer is brought down as the resolution possible at a given price-point drops, which would pretty much be a prerequisite for the proliferation of 3d printing to the point where this would even be a relevant issue.

And then of course there's the smaller resin miniature companies, who'd likely see the overall quality of their pieces jump if they could produce the master designs in a digital environment.

Ahahahahaha XD you actually think other miniatires companies understand business?? No, no most game companies don't, beyond the absolute basics (which GW seems to ignore).

Yeah moving to general discussions

 Macok wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
Clearly others wont share your sentiment when it comes to GW. So instead of snark, what do YOU propose should be done about it?

btw comparing GW's plight to legitimate rape is a tad bit morose...

He is not comparing the action of rape to the action of 3D printing copyrighted material.
He is however comparing the act of self-righteous justification of illegal / morally wrong action. Expensive miniatures don't make GW an evil, moustache twirling company full of greedy bastards.
You are not defending the poor and oppressed people by stealing their copyrighted toys.
And even if they really are like that, it doesn't matter. It still doesn't give you the right to go and break the law.

It's not about sentiment, it's about double standards.


A little disclaimer, "you" was not used personally towards you Lazarian.

It is worth pointing out that while the price of their models certainly doesn't "make GW an evil, moustache twirling company full of greedy bastards", their pattern of improper and unethical overreach in "protection" of "their" IP, up to and including (alleged) fabrication of evidence in legal proceedings (redux), scarcely can be said to put them on the side of the angels.

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:

To get back on topic, however, I've often wondered how 3D printing will affect GW and the miniatures business. I have got to think that it will do to the miniature industry what the MP3 did to the music industry...

You mean it will, alongside other advances in technology, dramatically lower the barrier to entry for smaller independants, resulting in a rapidly expanding market that cuts into the expansion of the existing major players? Because that's what's happened with the music industry (along with the rise to inexplicable new heights of their existing and already more powerful, relevant, and profitable rival in the film industry, and the entrance into the mainstream/meteoric rise of the games industry, none of which did anything but decrease the rate at which their profit is growing). Also what will very likely happen with miniatures/wargaming as well; we can already see the leading edge of this today.

Give it 10 years. A 3D printer that is cheap enough for a hobbyist but advanced enough to make usable miniatures with little to no stepping is still a long ways away.

And on top of that, you need the digital 3D file of said miniature. We just got a really nice scanner at my work that could do the job. It was $30k.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Ahahahahaha XD you actually think other miniatires companies understand business?? No, no most game companies don't, beyond the absolute basics (which GW seems to ignore).

Unless the point is "if they understood business they'd be in a different industry" (in which case ), yes, to a sufficient degree. At least some of them. They engage and work to foster goodwill amongst their fanbase, and try to keep their product accessible to newcomers while expanding and refining it to the benefit of the established players. If we're using GW as a base metric for the industry, that's practically economic genius.

chaos0xomega wrote:
. Not only that, but it IS actually cheaper (not including tooling costs) for injection molded plastics than it is or ever will be for 3d printing. Now, if we could print mold tooling
.. we'd be talking something big...

lol uh yeah I guess molding is cheaper if you don't include the tooling costs.... But that's not a fair comparison at all.

Tooling isnt that expensive these days, and theyre researching alternative composites/ceramics that promise to make it even cheaper still. Considering that the cost of printer resin is much higher, and the current cost of printers is equivalent to mold tooling, it balances out... except i can produce hundreds of copies of a model via injection molding in the time it takes one model to print.

 nectarprime wrote:
Give it 10 years. A 3D printer that is cheap enough for a hobbyist but advanced enough to make usable miniatures with little to no stepping is still a long ways away.

And on top of that, you need the digital 3D file of said miniature. We just got a really nice scanner at my work that could do the job. It was $30k.

I give it two or three for it to become available, and another two or three for it to actually become popular enough that any business would bother trying to exploit the market.

How many open source 3d modeling programs are there? To say nothing of the more or less identical in quality "professional" ones? Like the issue of turning any random 3d model into a usable file isn't going to be jumped on by hobbyist programmers the instant good 3d printers are a thing they own?

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tooling isnt that expensive these days, and theyre researching alternative composites/ceramics that promise to make it even cheaper still. Considering that the cost of printer resin is much higher, and the current cost of printers is equivalent to mold tooling, it balances out... except i can produce hundreds of copies of a model via injection molding in the time it takes one model to print.

Who is "they"? I agree molding is of course faster to produce, but not nearly as fast as what you are saying. Printers are slow but not that slow.

 nectarprime wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tooling isnt that expensive these days, and theyre researching alternative composites/ceramics that promise to make it even cheaper still. Considering that the cost of printer resin is much higher, and the current cost of printers is equivalent to mold tooling, it balances out... except i can produce hundreds of copies of a model via injection molding in the time it takes one model to print.

Who is "they"? I agree molding is of course faster to produce, but not nearly as fast as what you are saying. Printers are slow but not that slow.

They is the plastic industry...and they have actually achieved this goal to varying degrees.

There are epoxies which are used for short run injection molds that are readily available (few hundred to a thousand shots). They are refining methods for using aluminum molds to achieve medium length production capabilities (few thousand to a hundred thousand or so). They are using laser sintering to create steel molds in the same way 3D printers create objects which are capable of production runs of several hundred thousand shots (only a bit less durable than traditional milled steel molds).

Prices have dropped dramatically on injection molds in the past 10 years as CNC machines become cheaper and the software (and people who are capable of using that software) is more commonly available. As opposed to having to have a machinist who has 10 years of training running a mill by hand (or programming each cutting pass manually) the computers are able to handle much of that work. Granted, fully automated CNC machines are still pricey - but as more and more of those are entering the second hand market...you see garage shops like Proxie Models picking them up and doing work after hours.

http://proxiemodels.blogspot.com/

So, yes - injection plastic tooling is getting cheaper. It is much, much faster to produce. It isn't outside the reach of small companies and there are a lot more options available as opposed to going straight for a rather expensive tool steel mold made by an old guy who is still using pantographs and 3-ups to get the job done.

Regarding the speed of production...the printer I have access to takes about 4 hours to produce a miniature on its highest resolution. A manual injection machine can easily produce several hundred shots in that amount of time - with each shot being a sprue of a dozen or more figures. It is quite reasonable to say that the injection molding is capable of producing hundreds of copies for every one print.

See Sean's post?

That's why I like when he posts. It's like the Dakka Discovery Channel whenever he posts!

I agree with him, but that's on a factory scale. Hobbyists aren't going to be cranking out a production quantity from molding, but counterfeiters might. I can see a hobbyist using a 3d printer for a few models for his army, but it's kind of apple to oranges because said person would have no use for a mold that could crank out hundreds of parts.

I do - and I have actually been looking into having molds cut for a few different common conversion items we use (weapons are one of the ones I am looking at really hard).

We burn through weapons by the hundred in our local group - and being able to turn them out on a small 10-20 ton press kept in the empty stall of the workshop would be great.

Granted, once I got a press - I would look at doing a whole lot of other things in plastic in order to help justify the expenditure. When you looking at only the material expenditure on a mold, it is actually really cheap. I can pick up an aluminum blank for cutting molds into for only a bit more than I spend on silicone rubber for resin molds. There are other factors which come into play - but "power users" are actually seriously looking at doing hobby level work in their own homes using injection molding.

 Macok wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
Clearly others wont share your sentiment when it comes to GW. So instead of snark, what do YOU propose should be done about it?

btw comparing GW's plight to legitimate rape is a tad bit morose...

He is not comparing the action of rape to the action of 3D printing copyrighted material.
He is however comparing the act of self-righteous justification of illegal / morally wrong action. Expensive miniatures don't make GW an evil, moustache twirling company full of greedy bastards.
You are not defending the poor and oppressed people by stealing their copyrighted toys.
And even if they really are like that, it doesn't matter. It still doesn't give you the right to go and break the law.

It's not about sentiment, it's about double standards.


A little disclaimer, "you" was not used personally towards you Lazarian.

Oh good lord, "self righteous"? Where did I say anywhere that anything legal was ok? Where did I say I was better (that would be self righteous, you know) than someone?

All I said was that I saw an oppurtunity here... one that I think GW will miss, and one that their intentional choice on their part will lend itself to more people participating in illegal activities. Comparing what I said to justifying rape is beyond dumb and disingenuous. I wasn't justifying anything. Saying that not enforcing a speed limit will lend people on that road to speed more often just is a truth... that's not "self righteous" nor is it "justification"

Putting an endangered duck crossing next to a gunrange would be dumb... would be making an illegal activity more attractive and is a poor choice.
Pointing out that it was dumb is not condoning that illegal behaviour, its just pointing out that its really stupid to pretend one won't lend itself to the other.

False analogy,
Appeal to emotion,
Appeal to motive,
Judgemental language,
Straw man,
Appeal to ridicule...

Were you shopping fallacies?

Swing and a miss.. BIG time..
For such many words you completely missed the point and found intentions when there was none. As a bonus you even managed to accuse me of something I *explicitly* mentioned was not the point. And for a double bonus, something someone else said.

My post was not attacking you, all I did is translated Xenocidal Maniac's words into something like this:

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time [...] a moral code that glorifies it.

Of course not literally, but close enough.

Now, as a home exercise, how many of those can you find in your post?

 Lobukia wrote:
False analogy,
Appeal to emotion,
Appeal to motive,
Judgemental language,
Straw man,
Appeal to ridicule...

Lobukia wrote:

 Macok wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
Clearly others wont share your sentiment when it comes to GW. So instead of snark, what do YOU propose should be done about it?

btw comparing GW's plight to legitimate rape is a tad bit morose...

He is not comparing the action of rape to the action of 3D printing copyrighted material.
He is however comparing the act of self-righteous justification of illegal / morally wrong action. Expensive miniatures don't make GW an evil, moustache twirling company full of greedy bastards.
You are not defending the poor and oppressed people by stealing their copyrighted toys.
And even if they really are like that, it doesn't matter. It still doesn't give you the right to go and break the law.

It's not about sentiment, it's about double standards.


A little disclaimer, "you" was not used personally towards you Lazarian.

Oh good lord, "self righteous"? Where did I say anywhere that anything legal was ok? Where did I say I was better (that would be self righteous, you know) than someone?

All I said was that I saw an oppurtunity here... one that I think GW will miss, and one that their intentional choice on their part will lend itself to more people participating in illegal activities. Comparing what I said to justifying rape is beyond dumb and disingenuous. I wasn't justifying anything. Saying that not enforcing a speed limit will lend people on that road to speed more often just is a truth... that's not "self righteous" nor is it "justification"

Putting an endangered duck crossing next to a gunrange would be dumb... would be making an illegal activity more attractive and is a poor choice.
Pointing out that it was dumb is not condoning that illegal behaviour, its just pointing out that its really stupid to pretend one won't lend itself to the other.

False analogy,
Appeal to emotion,
Appeal to motive,
Judgemental language,
Straw man,
Appeal to ridicule...

Were you shopping fallacies?

This post is so full of rhetorical problems I don't even know where to begin. The hypocrisy, the pot calling the kettle black, the, the... oh my. Just don't even know where to begin. And I don't really have the time or inclination to get into it with someone who so clearly isn't in my league.

I guess you calling me "beyond dumb and disingenuous" was your way of throwing the gauntlet down, but, you know, I'm not interested in taking the bait. I am curious what exactly is "beyond" dumb and disingenuous, though. Perhaps you can enlighten me. It must be really awful.

But, go ahead and keep blaming the victim if it makes you feel better about yourself. Maybe you can call yourself Little Plastic Robin Hood.

Macok wrote:Swing and a miss.. BIG time..
For such many words you completely missed the point and found intentions when there was none. As a bonus you even managed to accuse me of something I *explicitly* mentioned was not the point. And for a double bonus, something someone else said.

My post was not attacking you, all I did is translated Xenocidal Maniac's words into something like this:

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time [...] a moral code that glorifies it.

Of course not literally, but close enough.

Now, as a home exercise, how many of those can you find in your post?

 Lobukia wrote:
False analogy,
Appeal to emotion,
Appeal to motive,
Judgemental language,
Straw man,
Appeal to ridicule...

Don't be so hard on him, Macok. He just wanted to try out a snide little list he found on a Reddit debate once. I like how he shoehorned "shopping fallacies" into the post, even though he isn't entirely sure what it means. Give him credit for stepping up to the big boy table, though.

^ oh grow up. Its sad reading you posts. try and stay on topic.

I love the idea of being able to print my own models, i run guard so printing my own custom guard reg would be great ^^

If we could stick to the topic at hand rather than trying to score cheap points over each other.

Thanks.