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New models seen before they're released. Quality as good as injection molded.
https://spikeybits.com/2019/06/3d-printing-threatens-gws-revenue-skitarii-dunerider-spotted.html

God damn, it's been a while since I clicked on a Spike Bits post. Still a garbage website.

Long story short: 3D printing will not replace people buying models. It will have a nominal impact. People are already 3D printing heaps of stuff (hell, Titans). Here's the kicker...much like people who buy recast resin items, those people were likely not going to pay the money for the product anyway, so GW isn't actually losing a sale. This is not a defense of the practice, but a fact considered by manufacturers.

Better quality "lower end" printers are still only doing about 85% of the quality of normal HIPS without investing a good chunk of money in it. There are high end printers who are printing about equal with HIPS but they're still pretty expensive. That painted Sister of Battle from a few weeks ago at the GW show? 3D printed. You can see it on the model.

Everyone is using 3D printed stuff for rapid prototyping. We're not that close to picking up a super reliable $200 printer off Amazon and printing HIPS-quality items (nor in a timely fashion).

Yes, 3D printing will have a big impact on the market, but it's not going to bankrupt anybody. Loads of people won't bother. Some can't be bothered with the tech. Some don't have the time or money. Hell a lot of people don't have the space for a 3D printer, etc. Some people can't be bothered with the software, apps, updates, etc. Some won't want to spend the time doing it.

The Best Outcome

In my opinion, the best thing that can come from 3D printing is for GW and other companies who charge way more than is reasonable for their kits...to dial it back. No offense, but regardless of the quality of plastic production nowdays, a 10 man squad is not worth $60 USD. There are other GW products which are even more egregious. Hopefully 3D printed alternatives actually give them a bloody nose and they realize that their pricing models are getting pretty ridiculous (what young teenager can afford to "get into" a GW game nowdays?) People will still buy kits, 100%. It'll still be easy to disqualify armies and models from tournaments if TO's deem it necessary.

Some people will still pay the price of a small car for badly produced resin Titans, lol. It'll have an impact, but it's unlikely to bankrupt anybody. I do think - however, as printers get better the "boutique" shops like Forgeworld will disappear. Their prices make even GW's prices look reasonable. The days of huge resin models being limited or special, are gone.

what young teenager can afford to "get into" a GW game nowdays?

The answer is none of them. Without a job you can't buy gak from games workshop, it's why I've moved off of 40k.

Yep, short of healthy financial support from a parent, they've gutted the "go to store with your allowance buy a miniature" market --- I'm sure it's simply not a big enough financial consideration for GW to worry about.

 Sir Heckington wrote:

what young teenager can afford to "get into" a GW game nowdays?

The answer is none of them. Without a job you can't buy gak from games workshop, it's why I've moved off of 40k.

A young teenager alone cant, but one with parents and or those that get a yob for various reasons could.

though then again with the whole kill teams thing and soon warcry its honestly not that bad. still about as much as a new console system or half of a good gaming rig.

but 40k proper as a full on collection for an army no not even some young adults or current adults can handle that.

Honestly the only real effect 3d printing will have is a bunch of niche garage games and miniatures may pop out and a TON of 3rd party bits.

this may cause GW to reconsider the abysmal spread of special weapons in their kits or they double down and charge extra for separate upgrade sprues.

Assuming 3D printing reaches a point where it's got GW quality without the GW price, I think the best option for GW would be to start selling diecast and/or wooden models in stores, and selling the schematics for plastic models online. Or heavily reduce their plastic prices. Or both. I think a lot of folks would buy the metal and wooden models, if only for the novelty, while it would allow them to expand their market into "poorer" demographics. They *might* take a loss on the plastic models and schematics, but if they get more people interested in the hobby, they'll be able to make it back via book sales and hosting tournaments.

The best outcome is a way to get Cyclic Ion Blasters for less than $3 per blaster, as opposed to $50+tax per blaster from GW.

I worked for a miniatures company - we used the thinnest layer 3d printer on the market. It costs more than my life. The results still needed heavy manual work to have the level of smoothness and details that were needed for silicone molds. If you don't care about rough edges and layering effects, the raw prints are fine, but the desktop ones I've seen are much rougher than the super-fine one we used and their quality is still fairly low by my standards.

Some of the videos I've seen are honest admit that they spent a lot of time smoothing the model. Others aren't and try to pass off the result as something that came out of the printer. I did that work several years ago, so it's possible the gap has been filled and quality is better on some printers - but even in that linked page you can see the layering effect is pretty bad on the skitarii transport.

I don't have any skin in the game, so I really don't care if people 3d print their whole army. I personally wouldn't want to deal with the low quality nor would I want to spend hours sanding and scraping 20-30 infantry for my army. However, it may be worth it for custom bits like bionic legs and such - but I'd rather just buy that stuff than mess with printing it and fixing the print.

We have a guy here who studies at tech school in Elblang, and just uses the schools facilities after hours. Free very good machines and material, he just take from school. He does a ton of recasts of FW models or weapon parts he later sells to people localy and in other countries. They are very good quality, and the store owners around here hate him, but can't really do anything about him, as his painted FW stuff is unrecognisible from GW stuff.

Karol wrote:
We have a guy here who studies at tech school in Elblang, and just uses the schools facilities after hours. Free very good machines and material, he just take from school. He does a ton of recasts of FW models or weapon parts he later sells to people localy and in other countries. They are very good quality, and the store owners around here hate him, but can't really do anything about him, as his painted FW stuff is unrecognisible from GW stuff.

That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.

I thought i would add, i do not think 3d printing is good enough yet. Its still a bit too pricey for the avg consumer. And the time involved to how much you pay, at least when buying none GW minis here. Is not enough for the time and extra work, plus the equipment is worth it yet.
But its certainly finding use in the hobby, terrain i think is a big place for it. and the future will see what happens

Also, spiky bits seems to be why adblock exists >.< Seriously, too many adds and such its a pain to read.

God damn, it's been a while since I clicked on a Spike Bits post. Still a garbage website.

QFT again and again.
Talk about friggin hyperbolic.

Apple fox wrote:

Karol wrote:
We have a guy here who studies at tech school in Elblang, and just uses the schools facilities after hours. Free very good machines and material, he just take from school. He does a ton of recasts of FW models or weapon parts he later sells to people localy and in other countries. They are very good quality, and the store owners around here hate him, but can't really do anything about him, as his painted FW stuff is unrecognisible from GW stuff.

That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.

It's difficult to enforce or prosecute this kind of thing internationally.

I wouldn't be surprised if laws around this sort of thing get toughened up as the technology progresses. But typically the law lags way behind tech, so it could take some time.

Ultimately I'm very much of the position that selling 3D prints of other people's IP without permission is theft. Of course it's cheaper, they don't have the design overheads, amongst many other costs.

All that said, I think we're still some way off this being a serious problem for GW. Most of the people who buy recasts/prints weren't going to drop serious dollar on GW anyway.

Apple fox 776704 10475991 wrote:

That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.

Well they would have to catch him first, plus everyone does stuff like that, at work so if they would send a commission to check stuff at his school everyone would be in trouble. I mean, I have a ton of stuff at home to train, I don't leave school gym backs at school, I use them everyday. Everyone does it anyway. Trying to stop people from doing it, would mean they would have to help most students to get stuff. And we already have to pay the teachers to get better grades at exams, because school doesn't teach well enough, and the difference between someone from a small town, like me, and someone in the same school that came from a big city can be huge.
My dad says it is a left over from communist times, where pay was bad and taking stuff from work was considered part of the salary. Plus from what I know some of the Polish companies that make parts for GW models were created by people who first did recasts, so in the end it aint that bad. People have to learn how to use stuff, to be good at making good cheaper GW stand ins to begin with, someone is going to have to replace GW at some point, no companies exist for ever.

 Stux wrote:

Apple fox wrote:

Karol wrote:
We have a guy here who studies at tech school in Elblang, and just uses the schools facilities after hours. Free very good machines and material, he just take from school. He does a ton of recasts of FW models or weapon parts he later sells to people localy and in other countries. They are very good quality, and the store owners around here hate him, but can't really do anything about him, as his painted FW stuff is unrecognisible from GW stuff.

That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.

It's difficult to enforce or prosecute this kind of thing internationally.

I wouldn't be surprised if laws around this sort of thing get toughened up as the technology progresses. But typically the law lags way behind tech, so it could take some time.

Ultimately I'm very much of the position that selling 3D prints of other people's IP without permission is theft. Of course it's cheaper, they don't have the design overheads, amongst many other costs.

All that said, I think we're still some way off this being a serious problem for GW. Most of the people who buy recasts/prints weren't going to drop serious dollar on GW anyway.

Using school equipment to make things to sell would be enough here like that, And if they know its going on then they would be taking responsibility. So i find it very interesting Even the idea that he was putting the school in a legal position would be enough to cut him off from that. Unless its for school work, would not be worth the risk.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

Apple fox 776704 10475991 wrote:

That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.

Well they would have to catch him first, plus everyone does stuff like that, at work so if they would send a commission to check stuff at his school everyone would be in trouble. I mean, I have a ton of stuff at home to train, I don't leave school gym backs at school, I use them everyday. Everyone does it anyway. Trying to stop people from doing it, would mean they would have to help most students to get stuff. And we already have to pay the teachers to get better grades at exams, because school doesn't teach well enough, and the difference between someone from a small town, like me, and someone in the same school that came from a big city can be huge.
My dad says it is a left over from communist times, where pay was bad and taking stuff from work was considered part of the salary. Plus from what I know some of the Polish companies that make parts for GW models were created by people who first did recasts, so in the end it aint that bad. People have to learn how to use stuff, to be good at making good cheaper GW stand ins to begin with, someone is going to have to replace GW at some point, no companies exist for ever.

Catching him would not be a issue if they cared. If he is making even a small amount of the volume needed to make all the stores hate him.

My dad works for a company that does adds for TV and Radio. He also does freelance, I haven't seen or heard him buy any programs, but I don't live with him either. My mom and her husband work at local school, they also do work after class, my mom uses her laptop from work for it. Stuff like printing stuff, including entire books is normal here. That is also why the store owners are so stingy, I think, about people needing a real physical copy of a book to play at stores, otherwise no one would buy a single one, and they have to order them from GW.

Stuff like printer papers, pens, sheets for school, everyone takes them. Heck some extrem people take toilet paper from work to have it at home.

But I guess the example comes from the top. When the head of a party "writes" a book which an institute buys from him every year, and the institute is funded by the party, which is funded by the state, and then for "security reasons" the party buys out houses around the party leader work place, with party money, but then turns the work place in to a mension where he lives, with state paid security protecting him, doing something like printing a few models at school becomes kind of a irrelevant. Not saying that 100% of people do it, in every situation, but because of stuff like that we have some strange rules sometimes. For example when my mom made her post degree diploma she always got angry every year, because some professors made it so that to pass an exame, you had to buy their book, they would sign it. And if you brought a book for exam that was signed already, as in you bought it from second hand, they would fail you. It was a known thing, and considered normal , if annoying.

Catching him would not be a issue if they cared. If he is making even a small amount of the volume needed to make all the stores hate him.

See the thing is, the dude who owns a store in my town makes recasts himself. He snitchs on someone, they snitch back. And they will just get a slap on the wrist, while he has a store that can get closed. Police ain't going to care what some student is doing, they slam him a 50$ fine to pay, at best. Someone with a store could get his license pulled. You know it is like everyone who sells food, also sells unlicensed alcohol and cigaretts from Belarus without tax.


All in all it is probably not the time to worry about people casting their whole armies right now. But in 5-10 years, who knows. There are ton of examples of companies that thought they had total monopoly and a choke hold on an industry, and now they are gone. Like that nordic cell phone company for example.

A friend of mine has some Deathcorps of Krieg models that he printed himself on a home printer. You don't see the difference once its painted between it and a real FW version.

3d printed models are already here and you won't know it when you see them.

The convenience factor will probably mean that there are simply more recasters, and you might have “community printers” where one guy or gal is smart on the system and prints for everyone in the club. Assuming there is in fact a major cost savings (because after machine+materials there might not be) the time/effort savings will have to be worth it for the individual printing models...the existence of painting services shows that people are willing to pay to avoid certain hobby tasks. Put another way, if people can print a unit for $30 but it takes 2 days of their time and effort they might still just buy the unit for $60.

An anycubic photon 3D is affordable and makes good quality 3d prints. But the downsides are smell, print duration, and the toxic resin. Once these issues are sorted out GW will have a hard time. I prefer to print out a complete mini, instead of assembling it the way its now. There is only one weapon in the box, but i want five of them ? Screw you GW, i will build one mini, have it 3D scanned, and print the entire mini myself. Or just check the internet if someone already did that.
3D printing will make GWs job hard in the future (it will take a couple of years, though), and thats a good thing. Now they can do whatever they want, charge whatever prices they want, and thats never a good thing, when a company has no competition.

 p5freak wrote:
An anycubic photon 3D is affordable and makes good quality 3d prints. But the downsides are smell, print duration, and the toxic resin. Once these issues are sorted out GW will have a hard time. I prefer to print out a complete mini, instead of assembling it the way its now. There is only one weapon in the box, but i want five of them ? Screw you GW, i will build one mini, have it 3D scanned, and print the entire mini myself. Or just check the internet if someone already did that.
3D printing will make GWs job hard in the future (it will take a couple of years, though), and thats a good thing. Now they can do whatever they want, charge whatever prices they want, and thats never a good thing, when a company has no competition.

They do have competition. Other games. This isnt a monopoly, this is a luxury product which people don't have to buy, and which legal alternatives exist for.

Many if not most people still choose to pay for GW over its competition though. That's not because they are 'forced' to, it's because people want to.

It's certainly not a good thing anyway, because if it stops being profitable then you stop having the investment in the design in the first place.

Karol wrote:
My dad works for a company that does adds for TV and Radio. He also does freelance, I haven't seen or heard him buy any programs, but I don't live with him either. My mom and her husband work at local school, they also do work after class, my mom uses her laptop from work for it. Stuff like printing stuff, including entire books is normal here. That is also why the store owners are so stingy, I think, about people needing a real physical copy of a book to play at stores, otherwise no one would buy a single one, and they have to order them from GW.

Stuff like printer papers, pens, sheets for school, everyone takes them. Heck some extrem people take toilet paper from work to have it at home.

But I guess the example comes from the top. When the head of a party "writes" a book which an institute buys from him every year, and the institute is funded by the party, which is funded by the state, and then for "security reasons" the party buys out houses around the party leader work place, with party money, but then turns the work place in to a mension where he lives, with state paid security protecting him, doing something like printing a few models at school becomes kind of a irrelevant. Not saying that 100% of people do it, in every situation, but because of stuff like that we have some strange rules sometimes. For example when my mom made her post degree diploma she always got angry every year, because some professors made it so that to pass an exame, you had to buy their book, they would sign it. And if you brought a book for exam that was signed already, as in you bought it from second hand, they would fail you. It was a known thing, and considered normal , if annoying.

Catching him would not be a issue if they cared. If he is making even a small amount of the volume needed to make all the stores hate him.

See the thing is, the dude who owns a store in my town makes recasts himself. He snitchs on someone, they snitch back. And they will just get a slap on the wrist, while he has a store that can get closed. Police ain't going to care what some student is doing, they slam him a 50$ fine to pay, at best. Someone with a store could get his license pulled. You know it is like everyone who sells food, also sells unlicensed alcohol and cigaretts from Belarus without tax.


All in all it is probably not the time to worry about people casting their whole armies right now. But in 5-10 years, who knows. There are ton of examples of companies that thought they had total monopoly and a choke hold on an industry, and now they are gone. Like that nordic cell phone company for example.

I mean this is the perfect spiderman meme insert right there.

Somehow sad and funny at the same time.


As for gw/fw, their "upgrade sprues certainly will get either alot cheaper or they will provide an evergrwoing market of recasters.
In fact a lot of their issues with recasting in my opinion has to do with the unreasonable pricing policy, making it in the first place possible and more accepted overall due to it beeing that way.

 Stux wrote:

They do have competition. Other games. This isnt a monopoly, this is a luxury product which people don't have to buy, and which legal alternatives exist for.

Many if not most people still choose to pay for GW over its competition though. That's not because they are 'forced' to, it's because people want to.

It's certainly not a good thing anyway, because if it stops being profitable then you stop having the investment in the design in the first place.

They dont really have competition. Nothing is as iconic as 40k. No table top wargame gets played as much as 40k. I dont mind buying GW stuff, i want to support them. But introducing a new weapon, giving it good rules, and only include one of these in a new box is fething stupid. Do they really expect anyone will buy 5 boxes to get that weapon 5 times ? They would have sold hundreds of upgrade sprues with 4 or 5 of them, but they didnt make them. Thats idiotic. Hopefully 3d printing will make them reconsider their position when it comes to this.

It’s funny, I was talking with my gaming buddies about this last night.

We have garages, so the smell and such from the resin of a resin printer wouldn’t be a real issue. We figured that split even 3 ways, our costs for a shared printer would be less than 2 boxes of minis each, or less than one Knight.

I don’t know for certain, one friend had just started looking into it, but... I’d consider it. I feel pretty priced out anymore, and 95% of my games are in a garage. I seldom buy new product. I guess I’m one of the “customers” GW isn’t worried about losing.

We've had viable pre-painted models for years and yet that hasn't harmed GW sales of unpainted models; heck GW launched a new range of paints (costing people even more hobby budget) and they are selling really well.

I think 3D printing will be much the same, it will have an impact but it will be limited to a niche of the market. I think the greater impact is that it will cheapen masters and proofs to make it easier for smaller companies to get a foothold; but otherwise I think plastic injection is going to remain at the top for a long while yet.


Don't forget operating a 3D printer is not without skill nor technical aspects. Indeed its much the same as people having home printers for paper. The vast majority who do own them own a low grade printer not a top of the line one; they don't really know how to debug it if there's a problem and even changing the ink can be a challenge for some - esp when it comes to setting the ink heads etc..

So basically just like the home printer hasn't shut down printing firms; the home 3D printer won't shut down injection mould casting and product sales.



Heck most gamers hate dealing with 1 mould line so lots of layer lines is a near nightmare. Fine for masters where you only have to clean 1 model and then cast from it; but for a whole army of marines? Cleaning loads of casting lines off dozens of them would sound like a nightmare.

That was some serious click bait article.

I’m still a long way off spending thousands on a decent printer, then waiting 19 hours for my skitarii model to print. Until you can do this with printers costing low hundreds and they can be done in under an hour, I think enough people will still buy models out of convenience, not to mention avoiding piracy.

There will be a time when you click "print" and 30 minutes later a pro painted mini, ready to play, will come out of a 3d printer. We will probably have to wait for another 20 years, but it will happen. I dont think mould injection will be widely used in 20 years. 3d printing quality will improve, print time will come down, printing process will get easier, 3d printers will get cheaper.

 p5freak wrote:
There will be a time when you click "print" and 30 minutes later a pro painted mini, ready to play, will come out of a 3d printer. We will probably have to wait for another 20 years, but it will happen. I dont think mould injection will be widely used in 20 years. 3d printing quality will improve, print time will come down, printing process will get easier, 3d printers will get cheaper.

Eventually it'll probably be like Netflix! Where for most people it's less hassle to pay GW a monthly subscription to access data files for printing that it is to pirate them!

 p5freak wrote:
There will be a time when you click "print" and 30 minutes later a pro painted mini, ready to play, will come out of a 3d printer. We will probably have to wait for another 20 years, but it will happen. I dont think mould injection will be widely used in 20 years. 3d printing quality will improve, print time will come down, printing process will get easier, 3d printers will get cheaper.

Question is will it replace GW at all.

Consider that Starwars is prepainted and yet if Battlefleet Gothic came out in all its classic style it would still sell really well. Even though the Starwars is all prepainted pre assembled.


Creative hobbies I can see sticking around because the building and painting is part of the hobby experience. Much in the same way that kit cars and model planes have stuck around for the same reason. The main issue would be GW advertising enough to keep it popular to keep the culture built up around it going. That's the main weakness and even without a "superior" product (or just an easier product) those creative hobbies can still die off. Hornby, Mechanno etc... have all dwindled even though no "superior" toy has replaced them like for like.

The issue is will GW abandon all its production staff, all its factories and distribution and move to a printing licence model. Heck the question is if that model can even work for wargames. Would customers stomach purchasing "5 marines for £4" to be printed at home or would they expect to pay once for a "no limits" file. If so then how could GW or indeed any business stay in business. Thus far the "print at home" models seem to be mostly focused on very small one-man-band companies where the small sale profits and limited resale per customer don't really affect them because its a side project and not their main income and their overheads are tiny. GW, Privateer Press, Reaper - all those companies really could not rescale to that kind of approach. The brand name and manager might, but the whole rest of the company wouldn't unless it had too by force.

 Stux wrote:

Eventually it'll probably be like Netflix! Where for most people it's less hassle to pay GW a monthly subscription to access data files for printing that it is to pirate them!

I wouldnt mind paying GW for a data file which i can print at home, multiple times, even if i have to pay more for it. But i dont think it will happen, those files would get hacked and get printed illegaly. GW will probably 3d print themselves and ship printed minis.

 p5freak wrote:
There will be a time when you click "print" and 30 minutes later a pro painted mini, ready to play, will come out of a 3d printer. We will probably have to wait for another 20 years, but it will happen. I dont think mould injection will be widely used in 20 years. 3d printing quality will improve, print time will come down, printing process will get easier, 3d printers will get cheaper.

As someone who primarily paints, rather than games, this is rather unappealing. I also enjoy building the kit. A lot of people in the hobby like the build/paint aspect, so 3D printing offers them nothing aside from maybe cheap bits. Then there's the personalization of each model prior to painting - poses, extra gubbins, putty work - much of which is way harder to implement on a finished model, so unless you're good at 3D rendering you're stuck with whatever the person who rendered it created. To be fair, GW is going in the direction of monopose anyways, but we're not quite there yet for the kits that aren't big box/ETB.

My kids got some 3D printed Santas from their teachers awhile back, and while I certainly noticed the ridges, I was actually surprised that they were articulated. I don't think it'd be out of the question to be able to print out full models, but leave the joints and other places loose enough to pose the models before putting a touch of glue onto the seam to hold it in place.

That said, there ARE a lot of folks who enjoy building and painting. So, it's kind of a mixed thing for me. If GW had reasonable prices for their models, 3D printing probably wouldn't even be an issue. These are relatively small pieces of plastic, that you build and paint yourself. They shouldn't cost you (in some cases) a quarter of a paycheck for a single model.