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I was up at the Gadget show yesterday and I saw two stands that were showing off 3d printers. One was company that were selling them for £1400, with a £100 discount on the day. From what I could see the quality was very good. To to make they designs they had some material that looked like string being feed in from a spool.

The other option was on the Microsoft stand. They were using a Kinnect to scan in members of the general public and print of a 3d head model. I have to say that the quality was so, so, but that could be down to the settings for the show to make print outs faster.

So with Microsoft being involved does this mean it's reached a tipping point? Does it mean that the nightmare for GW could now just be around the corner?

I don't things have yet evolved much past the last time we had this thread. I'm not hassling you, just saying that in 3 months since then there may not yet be much more to add to that conversation.

I don't think the entry of Microsoft means much. They are always late to new technologies, and often jump in half-heartedly.

What I think is going to be a big difference, actually, is the type of 3D printer. You mentioned it had material coming off a spool. This is a filament line of plastic, either ABS or PLA (probably PLA). It runs through a printer where's it's melted and printed exactly like a inkjet printer. This process, actually, kind of sucks. It's not awful for crude mockups, but it's pretty slow and the resolution is never really going to be great.

The ones to watch are UV reactive resin (DLP). Essentially, you take a tray full of special liquid resin (read: expensive). Under that you put a DLP printer, just like the kind you might have in your living room. The software takes your model, slices it up into a billion little horizontal slices, and then projects it into the resin. It cures from the lithing, and then it projects the next size. Repeat, until printed. If you google the Form1 printer, it's of this type - I think this is going to completely drink extrustion-type printer's milkshake, and over a very short term - 2 years tops. DLP printing is cheap in hardware and design, even if the resin isn't, and the resolution is far better.

Potentially yes. But what is the material costs? If it costs for example £25 (i have no idea of real cost) for enough raw material to print a tactical squad and £20 to buy a box, it's not worth it. As with normal printers, I expect the actual printer to be lower priced, and all consumables to be higher.

If it does workout cheaper to print your own, expect eBay to be full of 'marines of space' and variations on other names, all with minor changes to the actual model.

The Colour Company in the UK offers a walk-in 3D printing service.

Admittedly that is a relatively specialist graphics company with outlets in central London where there are a lot of media companies.

Hey, you know something else Microsoft jumped into that really made people enthused about the technology?



Yeah.

The simple fact is that Microsoft is losing a lot of potency. With the rise of Linux, Google and Apple (particularly in market that Microsoft are trying to enter; Linux is starting to become quite important, particularly in terms of Valve and their Box; and Apple and Google pretty have most of the touchscreen market cornered), and Microsoft turning up in markets fashionably late with mediocre products (Surface, Kinect), Microsoft are flying very close to the sun.

Also, is this the domain of Microsoft? No. When somebody within the 3D Modelling market with plenty of fans (Google, possibly?) makes it, then people will start to listen. For now, 3D Printing is very much an expensive novelty.

Ouze wrote:If you google the Form1 printer, it's of this type - I think this is going to completely drink extrustion-type printer's milkshake, and over a very short term - 2 years tops. DLP printing is cheap in hardware and design, even if the resin isn't, and the resolution is far better.

I think you've got it exactly right. Between the superior quality, as well as the far more expensive resin refills (there's a reason most printers cost approximately the same as 2x respective ink refills) I've got no doubts that this will win out very quickly in the mainstream.


But I don't think that 3d printing will hurt GW any more than piracy actually hurts record labels. What I predict will be a renaissance for 3rd-party sculptors. Imagine, rather than buying models from, let's say Puppetswar (as an example), instead you could just buy their design (for a fraction of the price) and do it yourself. Not much different than a paperback-vs-ebook concept. As for GW, I think it will just encourage them to create a product that their customers are willing to pay for. Additionally, it gives GW the option to simply create printable files; if they do this (they won't) then they could be ahead of the curve and greatly increase their profit margins simply by embracing the change and cutting out all of their physical manufacturing costs.

Think about it: the cost of 5x Space Marines is what? About $30 US now? Imagine if that 5-pack was only $10 and it was a downloadable print file. Then what would be the reason to stop the consumer from simply printing out that file six times? Easy: variety of sculpts. Create dozens of Marine sculpts; if they're cheap then GW customers will buy them all. If the average GW customer spends $80 on troops choices (an eastimate based on C:SM army composition and 2nd-hand market prices), then all GW has to do is create about 12 different sculpts to get the same revenue from its customers; all the while having wiped out their own manufacturing costs beyond paying artists.

Then, are you ready for the most diabolical idea? Solicit fans to create sculpts for the company. "Send in your 3d sculp idea, if we like it then we'll make it available and send you a $50 gift certificate". Suddenly GW's total production cost drops to virtually nothing; and they really can live the dream of sitting back on their laurels and brand name.

But none of the GW stuff I've suggested here will ever happen, because GW is an old-timey company that honestly seems to view the Internet with an equal mixture of non-understanding and hatred.