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Soon you might be able to 3d print stuff right at a local store. You already can if you live in San Diego.


http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/1/4578244/ups-launches-3d-printing-san-diego-other-us-cities-soon

I recently got access to a 3d printer at work so I took the opportunity to make a computer model and 3d print of an aegis defense line. The computer model turned out pretty good.



Today I ran the 3d print run. I printed out one long section (seen in the background of the photo) and one shorter segment. It looks a bit strange in the photo because clear plastic was loaded n the printer and there is some weird colored LED lights in the printer. I think it came out decent. I will try painting it up this weekend and post up some pics of it painted.



With an Orc behind for scale

Oh look, more unpaid for advertisement in the guise of (look what i found!) just what the Internet doctor ordered

Strayan wrote:
Oh look, more unpaid for advertisement in the guise of (look what i found!) just what the Internet doctor ordered

I actually find both the news story about UPS offering 3d printing in their franchise stores and the examples of the terrain piece to be very interesting and topical to the thread. I saw no links to a commercial site where I could buy something. What's being advertised? If there's anything, you should report it by using the appropriate button on the post and let a moderator know the thread is being spammed.

Loborocket wrote:
I recently got access to a 3d printer at work so I took the opportunity to make a computer model and 3d print of an aegis defense line. The computer model turned out pretty good.

I'm actually surprised at how such a simple design turned out to work pretty well.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I'm actually surprised at how such a simple design turned out to work pretty well.

The simple designs usually turn out fine. It's the complex/detailed ones that aren't quite doable yet. Once that hurdle has been... hurdled? we can grab the torches and pitchforks and storm the bastille. Well, as soon as someone begins designing figures for free, that is.

Strayan wrote:
Oh look, more unpaid for advertisement in the guise of (look what i found!) just what the Internet doctor ordered

I am not advertising anything. I am sorry if I offended you. I happen to work for a software company and am exposed/have access to this stuff and thought people were interested, so I have posted some information and the results of my experiments in a thread that is about the topic of 3d printing.

Mods, please feel free to remove my posts if they are in violation of any board policies.

If you were violating board policies, I imagine some action would have been taking in the previous 10 weeks this thread has been going. I think you should maybe just ignore that guy.

I saw a dreadnought at the store I sometimes go to and though- hey, those are weird arm attachments- where did I see them before- BAMM SHAPEWAYS FLASHBACK. The detail on them was very good, but there were a small amount of rough areas- nothing sandpaper couldn't fix.

Looks pretty good.

On anoter note, I got an email form Makerbot saying their 3D scanner is going on sale next week.

For someone like me who scratch builds instead of designs with 3D software, a 3D scanner and printer combo would be awesome. I could scratch build something once, scan it, and make as many as I need.

I have seen some stuff on the scanner. Looks like it could be something to investigate. I like doing te 3d computer models. That is just as fun to me as doing the "real life" models. I am investigating building some dynamic content which could follow some basic rules and change geometry each time it is printed. Imagine an " orky" structure that changes the basic arrangement (rotation, cut pattern, etc) of the panels each time. Or a wall of a ruined building that colapses in a unique way each time. Basically a "custom" model that is built once, but is never exactly the same twice.

I'd like to do 3D computer models, but I don't have the drive to teach myself with online tutorials. It's something I would have to take a class with an actual instructor for.

Any chance you could do that Aegis line in a solid coloured material, and give us some closeups?

It looks okay, but I'm seeing what look like stepping lines through the angled areas - which has been the big problem with doing this sort of stuff. It requires a lot of post printing work to get them looking comparable to regularly cast models.

Clear material and photos taken from that distance hide these well enough. Printed in a solid colour plus some actual closeups would be nice to see the actual detail level.

Yeah I actually am an instructor for 3d modeling applications, and author the official help files.

This model was done in clear because that was what was in the machine at the time. I can do other colors. I am in the process of painting this clear one right now and will post pics when I am done. I would not say the detail level is high, but it is passable for something like this.

Or (only if you're ready) hit the 3d print with some white or grey primer. That'd give people a good idea of how it turned out.

Gamers will love 3D printing. Modellers, painters and collectors won't get on board with it and GW have always said they target collectors.

They've seen off video games, I'm sure a lot of people thought CoD et al. would destroy them.

3d printing could open the hobby up to new factions and more personalized versions of existing ones. GW could even sell a template or even run its own 3d printing service which would be using top of the line printers rather than what the average user would have at home.
The user uses proprietory software to design some minis then pays GW to print them off for them. The software would include standarized parts like weapons so that the minis blend in with the regular game pieces.
Who knows, they could even run competitions for designing new models with the winner being chosen as a production model - of course they could do that now...at least they could if they restricted it to 3d designs rather than physical models.
There are a lot of options for a company like GW to take assuming they want to stay in the tabletop gaming business in the future.

cadbren wrote:
3d printing could open the hobby up to new factions and more personalized versions of existing ones. GW could even sell a template or even run its own 3d printing service which would be using top of the line printers rather than what the average user would have at home.
The user uses proprietory software to design some minis then pays GW to print them off for them. The software would include standarized parts like weapons so that the minis blend in with the regular game pieces.
Who knows, they could even run competitions for designing new models with the winner being chosen as a production model - of course they could do that now...at least they could if they restricted it to 3d designs rather than physical models.
There are a lot of options for a company like GW to take assuming they want to stay in the tabletop gaming business in the future.

I think this is a pretty god take on what the possibilities could be. I am just about done painting up the ADL models I pictured above so I do have some additional thoughts as I have just about taken a sample model through the process of design, fabrication, painting, & play. Once I am done with it I will post pics of the painted model and my additional thoughts.

Stay tuned.

Eager to see that defense wall painted. It looks good right now 3 ft away and with clear resin. Want to see how it looks painted because that is the real test.

Reading some of the "Enter the Citadel" event reports from a few months ago. 3D Printers were brought up at the design panel. Jes Goodwin stated GW sees the technology not reaching an acceptable level for lower end units for another ~5 years. He personally saw at that point, GW would set up units in their stores and people could order prints and pick them up. He still believed it would be another 10 years before they reached a printer in every home.

Here are a few images of the 3d prints all painted up. I included some of my other completed model for reference of my painting skills etc...







I think they came out reasonable. They are a bit long because I was working from bad dimensions. I have a better set of dimensions for my revised attempts (yes I will continue making these).

Here are some details about the process.

I designed these with Autodesk 3d software. I work for Autodesk so have access to basically every piece of software we make. Specifically I used Revit and 3ds Max to design the model. It took about 2.5 hours to model everything up.

The 3d models were printed on the Makerbot Replicator 2 basically the first "consumer" grade 3d printer. The printer costs around $1800. I used clear PLA plastic and printed at "standard" resolution. Total printing time was about 2.5 hours but there was some other stuff on the printer bed at the same time I ran this. Cost of the material used in this print is a total of $1.25.

I painted the models with rustolum spray primer and then used Americana craft paint to paint the model finishing with a. Layer of quick shade varnish.

Overall I think the 3d printing has promise when making something with relatively low detail. Higher level detail is possible but because of the material and process it is difficult to paint the details because the edge tends to be a bit "fuzzy" and there is not much you can do to solve that. Stuff without a huge amount of detail will look fine on the table at 3'away but drops off when you get closer.

I think this process would be great for making terrain type pieces like the ADL, sky shield, or bastions. One nice thing about this is you can very easily customize the models. For example I am working on an ADL for orks rut now and it is basically a bunch of panels leaning on a structure of poles. The panels could fairly easily be created in the 3 d model in such a way that the shapes and
Pattern of the could be "randomized" along the wall making each ork ADL a "custom" design. This same idea could be applied to something like a ruined walls so a phisic engine is applied breaking a wall(s) up differently each time making custom ruins. This concept is exciting to me.

I could easily see a gaming club buying something like this as a club resource and using it to make things like this for games building up a terrain library or printing custom terrain for specific scenarios. I bought in to this particular 3d printer in a club started at work. So I have acces to the printer a $100 share. $100 would only buy a couple pieces of terrain so I think I will get back my investment pretty easy.

I think the 3d printer can also be used to print some bits for particular uses where a lower resolution part is ok and looks fine mixed with other models. I think for my next experiment I a going to print out a mount for a razorback turret weapon. I have a rhino model and a razorback model but without an extra weapon mount I can use the lascanon gun that comes with the razorback sprue. That is a part that is really unnoticeable on the model and will work fine to give me a 2nd razorback. I am also thinking of using defcoptas from AoBR to make some ork war bikers and will probably print some parts for that project.

So to answer the question posed on this thread, "Will this thing put GW out of business?" I don't think so, at least not in the immediate future. In a few years, possibly. I think GW would be fools to not begin experiments with this technology now so they will be ready before the competition. This is one of those things you probably want to get to market sooner with some drawbacks rather than attempting or waiting for everything to be perfect with the technology. If you wait that long it is possible your competition will have already passed you.

I know when other companies get 3d printed masters, they sand and polish them to remove the horizontal printing lines before they make molds of them.

Those prints turned out great!

I have to smile at the earlier poster who suggested that everyone could create 3d designs as it was easy. I recently played around with sculptris and that's supposedly an entry level program.

The average person doesn't have the time to become cognizant in every new technology that exists now, let alone what will come.

There will always be a need for specialists, at least until there isn't. An STC that can produce pretty much anything may not be that far off.

They look decent from a distance, which is fair enough for terrain. As soon as you zoom in, you can see stepping lines across the edges and striations through the surface of the material.

Really not up to par for doing actual models, though for bashing out some quick terrain it certainly did the job.

Deleted due to duplicate entry elsewhere.