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 HisDivineShadow wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
The facebook account got deleted because of trolls ruining it., similarly the GW forum. The reason they don't ask for customer feedback is because the customers just scream rage and hatred at them.

I was very active on the gw forums, its wasn't as trolly as you seem to imply. There are Nobz on every site, but the GW forums weren't as bad as some. I remember quite a few interesting discussions.

The loss of them was frankly, a shock. And it came out of nowhere.

I agree, I used to spend a decent amount of time on the GW forums back in the day, I was quite surprised when they were taken down and it removed a lot of the reason for visiting the GW website. It was definitely one of the contributing factors to why I stopped collecting GW games back then, as at the time I wasn't involved in any other active GW communities so the closing of the forum meant I was thinking about GW less and as such had less desire to buy GW stuff.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 HisDivineShadow wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
The facebook account got deleted because of trolls ruining it., similarly the GW forum. The reason they don't ask for customer feedback is because the customers just scream rage and hatred at them.

I was very active on the gw forums, its wasn't as trolly as you seem to imply. There are Nobz on every site, but the GW forums weren't as bad as some. I remember quite a few interesting discussions.

The loss of them was frankly, a shock. And it came out of nowhere.

I agree, I used to spend a decent amount of time on the GW forums back in the day, I was quite surprised when they were taken down and it removed a lot of the reason for visiting the GW website. It was definitely one of the contributing factors to why I stopped collecting GW games back then, as at the time I wasn't involved in any other active GW communities so the closing of the forum meant I was thinking about GW less and as such had less desire to buy GW stuff.

None of this is remotely related to the topic, not even by the most lenient of standards.

You really need to think about all the costs that this technology is going to incur. Is it really going to be viable?
1) Intial outlay for the machine. So your out of pocket at this point and you've not done any printing!
2) The actual cost of the material (is it plastic or one of those combinations?). Now you are not going to get very much of this stuff for your money(see how much even a small tin of resin costs), this stuff will be expensive. So casting those large tanks is out of the question.
3) Scenery? Well you could make buildings but I suspect it will work out cheaper to buy them from manufacturers rather than make them yourself.
4) You've still made nowhere near the money back that you paid for the printer!
5)How long does it take to print a miniature? Surely you are not going to try and print a whole army? You are? Do you realise how much it will probably cost you?
6) You spent even more money doing your army. And you're even further away from recouping the original cost of the printer!
7) Piracy. Hmm. I can't see this being cost effective. You may make a copy of a model but A) The bigger the model the more you'll have to charge to make even your money back, are you sure there will be a market?. Also see points 4 and 6; they are very relevant.
8) Also add in all the learning to print practices you will have to do; I wonder if I can print that pencil? Through sheer novelty you will spend a small fortune printing anything to see how it works and to show your friends!Seriously refer to points 4 and 6. Again.
The overall point I'm making here is that I can only see this 3d print thing being useful to manufacturers for making master models and that's it.

Aside from the points in the preceding post, the quality and characteristics of the resin/plastic that your figure is made out of are an important consideration. Some plastics do not take paint well even when you use a real primer. There will also be issues of brittleness or the miniature being too soft.

It may be that the cheapest materials work great for miniatures, or there may be some other result.

 Ouze wrote:
They've probably got about 10 or so years to adapt before they get eaten alive by this, presuming they make it that long without something else doing them in.

Eventually I see Games Workshop and other manufacturers becoming a virtual storefront only, selling dxf files for download to some DRM'd, proprietary printing application.
.

I'd buy into that

(Assuming the templates are unlimited use, and don't cost more than about £30 for a tactical unit)

You're not taking into account that the printer may be used for many other household applications than printing up a toy soldier. Once the price of a sufficiently powerful printer gets down to around $800, I guarantee that I will buy one.

Not sure what your point about resin costs is, 3d materials costs are dirt cheap. http://www.3ders.org/pricecompare/

Keep in mind that these are per kilogram 2+ kilo packages; increased demand and production will lower costs as would not printing in color.

*shrug* it's doable in the long-term, maybe 5-10 years from now when everything's cheaper and a GW Rhino costs more than $100.

As a student who has a 3-D printer in his CAD class, and knows how one functions. 3-D printers won't be able to kill GW, ever.

The surfaces of 3-D printed pieces aren't smooth, and any wargamer will turn away after seeing that i'ts not exactly a surface that you would want to paint on.

Sometimes, when you print something out, it doesn't come out as it should, and needs to be tweaked on the computer, especially smaller pieces.

Also, 3-D printers make a kind of grid or honeycomb pattern on the inside rather than making a solid hunk of plastic. Making it hard to keep smaller magnets in place, and drillling holes in gun barrels will reveal the interior, defeating the idea.

The 3-D printer is perfect for engineers that want to make new or unavailable parts for whatever they need to build, but not so much for modellers.

Like I said in the first line, 3-D printers aren't going to kill GW, or any other miniature company for that matter.

Would the 3d printers be able to make nice terrain?

I think that printed example around the Internet, from wargame companies too, counter how "rough" you imply the printing is.

I think that 3D printing has a nice future in the industry and companies will embrace it.

Print on Demand is one idea I feel it will be used, like mantics dreadzone, but also featured in other kickstarters, custom made miniatures or small pieces that are impractical to cast, likewise boutique miniature companies can establish themselves by selling print files like they do now with PDFs.

It is not an if, but a when and the companies that embrace it will have an extra edge.

Now briefly on my comment for GW, they took 10 years to materialize the technology they had acquired back then and I still doubt they use its full capacity, they could have released the kits they release today 10 years ago, and the technology from the actual masters of the large plastic kits, like Bandai and other plastic model companies is way ahead add in that their inability to grasp "the internet" advertisement, ectr, you have a company that is antiquated and unable or unwilling to move forward.

GW is not an industry leader at the moment it leads only in areas it is still uncontested,

 Thesneakycyberman wrote:
As a student who has a 3-D printer in his CAD class, and knows how one functions. 3-D printers won't be able to kill GW, ever.

The surfaces of 3-D printed pieces aren't smooth, and any wargamer will turn away after seeing that i'ts not exactly a surface that you would want to paint on.

Sometimes, when you print something out, it doesn't come out as it should, and needs to be tweaked on the computer, especially smaller pieces.

Also, 3-D printers make a kind of grid or honeycomb pattern on the inside rather than making a solid hunk of plastic. Making it hard to keep smaller magnets in place, and drillling holes in gun barrels will reveal the interior, defeating the idea.

The 3-D printer is perfect for engineers that want to make new or unavailable parts for whatever they need to build, but not so much for modellers.

Like I said in the first line, 3-D printers aren't going to kill GW, or any other miniature company for that matter.

You have access to an older generation printer. Check shapeways for examples of much smoother. The printer in this thread is next-gen and will produce at a level of detail near to sculpted.

 HisDivineShadow wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
The facebook account got deleted because of trolls ruining it., similarly the GW forum. The reason they don't ask for customer feedback is because the customers just scream rage and hatred at them.

I was very active on the gw forums, its wasn't as trolly as you seem to imply. There are Nobz on every site, but the GW forums weren't as bad as some. I remember quite a few interesting discussions.

The loss of them was frankly, a shock. And it came out of nowhere.

no it didn't. Those threads about prices just never stopped coming so gw shut it down

 agnosto wrote:
You're not taking into account that the printer may be used for many other household applications than printing up a toy soldier.

Like what? With the best will in the world, I can't think of many times I need small plastic objects, and need them so urgently I can't simply nip down the shops, you know?

I can see 3DP being used by small-scale model / terrain manufacturers, or by some shops in a print on demand service. But I really can't see why I'd need one at home.

Likewise people could not see a reason for having printers at home and not going to the local photocopier shop to make their copies.

Once technology has sufficiently matured people will find obvious and obscure reasons to utilize it.

We may see the obvious to us obscure to everybody else application in miniature wargaming as models and terrain, others may print toys for their kids, parts for machinery or tools, maybe covers for items like USB sticks, who knows we will find out when the technology is mature enough.

 Elemental wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
You're not taking into account that the printer may be used for many other household applications than printing up a toy soldier.

Like what? With the best will in the world, I can't think of many times I need small plastic objects, and need them so urgently I can't simply nip down the shops, you know?

I can see 3DP being used by small-scale model / terrain manufacturers, or by some shops in a print on demand service. But I really can't see why I'd need one at home.

It's a convenience item much like many others. Most people don't need a jigsaw or band saw; you might not need/want one, I on the other hand to use one to make gifts for friends/family, design my own art pieces.....the world is full of possibilities and only limited by your imagination.

Hi everyone!, I just signed up here the other day and noticed this topic, with myself looking into using 3D printing i thought i would post a quick reply on this thread. First off great find their!, 25mm printing quality for that price is pretty good really!, though there are now more than a few companies that will print 3D sculpted miniatures for you, some charge insane prices other ones charge very reasonable pricing, you just have to spend some time googling around as they say .

However in long term investing into a 3D printer is a fairly good idea for companies as i have seen so far, I feel the printers wont truly put any company out of business as long as those companies adapt to some degree to this new method. Even if the costs go down for these printers enough for the average joe to purchase one, you still have to pay for material, printing times are very long for high detailed miniatures as well!.

This means it is time consuming and even then the average best material for detailed printed miniatures is quite fragile making them good for masters but too fragile to game with. There is plastics and resins you can print miniatures in but the market still seems to be far off from being able to print that material at a high level of quality and again time issues come into play as well, it would take several days to probally just get a squad or two of guys done depending on the 3D printer size and such overall it still seems to be much cheaper to get a master print and make casts out of it in resin or pweter.

That is my personal two cents worth on this topic, i think it is great however 3D sculpted miniatures allows you to do and bring so many things into this hobby that before would take much longer too do. It also allows ranges to be much more easly expanded for much less of the cost than traditional sculpting method's would allow.

I think we will just have to wait and see what happens with this tech, as we all know the imagination is the only limit !.

Of all the manufacturers, GW is uniquely equipped to adapt to 3D printing due to having storefronts. There will be a period of time where the professional prints suitable for painting will be done via higher-end machines. GW can do 'build-a-bear' printing for people where other manufacturers and 3rd parties simply won't be able to.

If people are going to go drastically out of business, expect the ones who currently make minis to be hurt far before GW... and until minis go 100% digital printing opposed to casting, companies with storefronts who can print for their customers will be best situated to tackle this.

Doesn't mean GW will... but somehow I don't see how home 3D printers or even retail 3D printing in stores is somehow a bullet to the brain to GW but somehow everyone else is fine.

I don't own a DVD burner or a home printer. I simply don't do the throughput to justify one. If I need something printed, I can just print it at work. I agree that I cannot think of a valid need for a 3D printer in my home, especially since many parts must be machined specific ways in order to have structure behind them to make the sturdy enough for machine parts. And it is so amazingly easy to order a part and have it to my house in a day, I can't see any reason to even mess around with a 3D printer.

And people think Rampant piracy of other people's IPs will be a golden age for gaming? Sounds like Tower of Babel to me as many of the large rule-making companies will be hurt, and games will fail and no one will be playing the same game due to lack of unified rule support maintained by model purchases. Right now there are almost universal games most places you go and that is a good thing for the casual gamer who wants to play but can't organize the play. We take for granted that PP games and GW games are easily accessible because selling the minis keeps stores in business so we can always get games in. Enjoy your hundreds of counterfeit printed minis for no cost with no where to play and maintaining play out of your house with a limited number of opponents. I would rather continue seeing organized play supported by retailers and indy events and those will do better with a maintained rule system by a successful company.

You made some good points about the 3D aspect Nkelsh. I think in my case if the programs are dumb downed enough for myself to use, I would use it to repair or replace broken models that I have on hand instead of the standard mold making process. An example would be the Diaz Daemonettes and seekers. It's a royal pain to mold and then to sculpt the tail and make it into one flawless piece.

It is a tool to be used and not a reason to put other companies out of business.

I would not disagree GW is in the prime position to use such technology, after all they are in prime position to be the biggest wargames distributor too and I mean other peoples wargames, not just their own, the point is the following, GW has shown time and again the inability to grasp new technologies and utilize them, on the other hand smaller companies do grasp and utilize successfully new technologies.

For GW its not an "If they can" its a "they will not do".

Now I cannot see this technology getting GW or anybody else out of business, it will give an edge to those that adapt to it, it will help smaller companies break into the scene and probably some security on files and some hacking and file saving will also be involved, but as everything else has not
threaten any viable businesses before it will not hurt them now.

Tea, Earl Grey, Hot!

Marine, Blood Angel, Pro Painted.

Hard tooling (which costs a few tens of thousands for the tool) can make many, many parts quickly and inexpensively. This type of "tool" is a metal mold. They last a long time.

Soft tooling (cost thousands) can make a few thousand parts and make them inexpensively. This tool is usually a hard rubber mold.

Both of these make parts quickly and inexpensively. The main different is the cost of the tool, which drives the number of parts you'll get for you non-recurring tool cost.

3D printing is slow and expensive. It is used if you need one or tens of parts and you want to skip the tool making. Your G file can go straight from ProE or SolidWorks directly to printer 9sort of) and a few hours or days later you get a part.

Most likely, what will happen is 3D printers will kill off the soft tool market. That is you use 3D printers to make soft tools that are the negative of the part you want and crank out the parts.

I suggest you all touch a part made by a 3D printer before you claim the death of anything. They are material that you are most likely thinking of.

Im somewhat skeptical about how good a quality this printed "pro paintjob" would be.

25 microns? Really? I work with an industrial 25-micron printer and it still doesn't even have the resolution to print a tapped #4-40 screw hole.

25 microns is not high enough to print a 28mm model.

 Xeriapt wrote:
Im somewhat skeptical about how good a quality this printed "pro paintjob" would be.

It can't be that good. You'd still have to paint the parts at some point in time, probably on the computer. If that's the case, you might as well go into 3D animation since that will be where your skillset lies after. As someone who's tried to get into that industry before as a potential art student, I'd much rather paint. A lot of effects that come naturally from a brush, such as paint texture, are not easily replicated on the computer, even with a tablet.


The worst part about 3D printing a model is the grittiness of the material. It's not smooth.

Oh and to the people claiming 3D printing will be cheap in X years...Yeah, and this year is the year of the Linux desktop...

evancich wrote:
Oh and to the people claiming 3D printing will be cheap in X years...Yeah, and this year is the year of the Linux desktop...

Well. That's debatable. Last year the cheapest 3D printer was at least $2,200. This year we've just seen a Kickstarter for a $250 3D printer.

A better comparison than Linux would be laser printers. Not so many years ago, hideously expensive, and confined largely to businesses as a result. These days, you can buy a laser printer for not much more than an inkjet.

But despite desktop printers being widely available for some time now, they didn't kill of the printing industry, as was so widely predicted back in the 90s.

I'm going to go out on a limb here but surely some people actually like painting?? Isn't that a major part of the hobby which is skipped if they're printed to order already painted.

The Real Cute Hydra

It will not put GW out of business for quite some time. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's the future for what they are doing. But for now it costs heaps of money for some really really slow productions time. It'll take quite some years to perfect it for production sizes for companies as GW.

Also, the main reason why it won't put GW out of business:

3D printers can't create new rules, new novels, new game systems, or new fluff for you. It might hurt their revenue stream if 3D printers become common household items and were of high enough print quality, but not put them out of business.

JWhex wrote:
None of this is remotely related to the topic, not even by the most lenient of standards.

And your post is? There's a "report" button in the top right corner of every post if you think a post is breaking a rule, use it instead of just coming up with even more felgercarb.

nkelsch wrote:
I agree that I cannot think of a valid need for a 3D printer in my home, especially since many parts must be machined specific ways in order to have structure behind them to make the sturdy enough for machine parts. And it is so amazingly easy to order a part and have it to my house in a day, I can't see any reason to even mess around with a 3D printer.

I've been told that I lack "vision", but I agree with this. I struggle to think of a reason why your average joe would want a 3D printer in their home. Printing miniatures is one of the FEW reasons someone would want one in the home, not one of many reasons, and even then only if it's actually economical (if it's more expensive to buy a printer and all the plastic you need to print an army than it is just to buy the army, only enthusiasts who own several armies will want one, and even then probably not all of them will).

For most household items that are easily 3D printed, they can be bought ready-made cheaper than I, as a consumer, could buy the raw materials. Then I'm looking around my house right now thinking there's actually barely anything that I COULD 3D print at home, either due to complexity, due to material or due to size. Even if they get good 3D printing with metals and composite materials, you aren't going to be able to buy a machine that can print a circuit board for you at home.

3D printing is best used for "rapid prototyping", which is how we used to refer to it. That is, you don't use it to mass produce a product because it's not cost and time effective, you use it to create the initial prototypes that prior to 3D printing (and other similar techniques) might have been hand made from clay and such.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

JWhex wrote:
None of this is remotely related to the topic, not even by the most lenient of standards.

And your post is? There's a "report" button in the top right corner of every post if you think a post is breaking a rule, use it instead of just coming up with even more felgercarb.

nkelsch wrote:
I agree that I cannot think of a valid need for a 3D printer in my home, especially since many parts must be machined specific ways in order to have structure behind them to make the sturdy enough for machine parts. And it is so amazingly easy to order a part and have it to my house in a day, I can't see any reason to even mess around with a 3D printer.

I've been told that I lack "vision", but I agree with this. I struggle to think of a reason why your average joe would want a 3D printer in their home. Printing miniatures is one of the FEW reasons someone would want one in the home, not one of many reasons, and even then only if it's actually economical (if it's more expensive to buy a printer and all the plastic you need to print an army than it is just to buy the army, only enthusiasts who own several armies will want one, and even then probably not all of them will).

For most household items that are easily 3D printed, they can be bought ready-made cheaper than I, as a consumer, could buy the raw materials. Then I'm looking around my house right now thinking there's actually barely anything that I COULD 3D print at home, either due to complexity, due to material or due to size. Even if they get good 3D printing with metals and composite materials, you aren't going to be able to buy a machine that can print a circuit board for you at home.

3D printing is best used for "rapid prototyping", which is how we used to refer to it. That is, you don't use it to mass produce a product because it's not cost and time effective, you use it to create the initial prototypes that prior to 3D printing (and other similar techniques) might have been hand made from clay and such.

Some of us here are old enough to remember people saying the EXACT same thing about home computers by the way. I think it is impossible to predict the uses people might find once they become widespread.