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Found this while browsing.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/new-matter-mod-t-a-3d-printer-for-everyone/x/889879

I have no idea how useful this would be, but their proposed price is $250 (plus some for shipping), and they're claiming that their design uses a non-proprietary material for filament that runs about $30/kg (less than most inkjet printer ink cartridges).


Could anyone with more experience in 3d printing take a glance over their specs and such and kick in opinions. I'm considering this one.

Looks very interesting.

What do you want to do with it? If you want to make little trinkets and whatnot as in the video I guess it's ok, but I can't see a use for wargames beyond some fairly crude scenery with obvious print lines.

For comparison, the printer I use for miniatures has an x/y resolution of 0.015mm and a layer depth of 0.025mm. MOD-T is 0.2-0.4mm x/y (the nozzle is 0.4mm itself) and layer depth 0.2mm. Massive price difference obviously, but as I said it depends on what you want it for.

So I'm hardly an expert on this topic, but I do have some experience with recreational 3D printing. Ultimately it comes down to what you want to use it for. The specs that they quote for the price they're offering, as well as the material cost is phenomenal, but the resolution is not quite where you would need to be to print quality 28mm figures.

To give you an idea I used a stratasys uprint printer http://www.stratasys.com/3d-printers/idea-series/uprint-se to print some terrain I designed. It came out descent for what I wanted to do and here's the initial results:



This printer has a 250 micron layer depth and you can see from the second picture that you get a spaghetti strand texture to the print. It wasn't a big deal for me since I was printing mostly low detail, flat surfaces that I could sand and fill with liquid greenstuff which I then used to make silicon molds. In the couple of cases that I did try to do higher detail it just looked like string sprayed all over.

The MOD-t in this Kickstarter has a similar layer depth of 200 microns so I would imagine that you would get similar results. Compare this to the layer depth of the printers at EnvisionTEC http://envisiontec.com/ which lists GW as one of the companies using their printers. They have layer depths of 25 microns and the best I have seen that is commercially available is 16 micron http://ipfl.co.uk/connex500/. Then again the printer costs $250,000, so it's a little out of most peoples price point.

My thought wasn't to print finished figures, but perhaps parts and scenery. Being used to dealing with mold lines, I can't see having to do a little sanding or filing to be too much of a bad thing.

Given that I could afford $250, and not $250,000 for hobbying around with, it doesn't seem like a bad place to start, and not too much of an investment if it doesn't work out. I mean, that's what, 2 land raiders?

Andrew, what machine are you using?

I still dont get how Indienogo projects make money, its so unsecure...

How is it any worse than kickstarter? I thought they were largely interchangable.

Nope, Indiegogo charges you immediately, regardless of whether or not the project funds, etc.

Are you sure? I don't recall that from past projects I did there. Maybe that's an option?

Looking at their site, it seems that there are two options;
Flex Funding: Where they charge 4% if you meet the goal, and 9% if you don't, but you always keep the funds
Fixed Funding: Where they charge 4% if you reach the goal, and 0% if not, and refunds are sent to contributors.

I haven't been part of a flex funding campaign, and this 3d printer is fixed funding, so if they don't make the goal (which they already did meet) you'd be refunded.

Nope they charge you right away. If it doesn't make it's funding, you get refunded.

3D printing is going to revolutionize the miniatures market. The tech isnt quite here yet, but its just on the horizon. 3D printing and laser cutting are going to make small scale scenery and minis evolve!

You do know that GW nowadays has all of its miniatures 3d printed right? The tech itself is there, I guess the next step would be mass production through 3d printing...

And if you want to cancel your pledge, it is a bit more of a process than on Kickstarter...

The structure look very cheap, especialy the Z axis, I would wait to see real user review before buying one. In the video they look like they are more exited about theire software to share objects that the printer itself.

InvaderBen wrote:
The structure look very cheap, especialy the Z axis, I would wait to see real user review before buying one. In the video they look like they are more exited about theire software to share objects that the printer itself.

I got that vibe as well.

It's the 3D Printing corporate wet dream to sell us 3D image files, that cost them nothing, to print stuff using a device and materials we buy from them.