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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-and-sc

I won't lie. I almost thought this was some sort of joke, but it's legit and it works.

Bassicly a light sensitive resin floats ontop of a layer of Salt water. By slowly dripping water into the container it raises the floating resin and builds up the shape as the resin is hardened by the lasers in the unit.



That is a 4-5mm cube they made with their prototype and hope to improve the quality further. Their is a ton more of info to read on their page so I sujested checking it out.

Saw this the other day and backed it.

The quality isn't that great for doing minis atm, but holy crap is that cheap.

 Cyporiean wrote:
Saw this the other day and backed it.

The quality isn't that great for doing minis atm, but holy crap is that cheap.

Cheap and small!

Seeing stuff like this always leaves me a little in awe of the sort of mind that can iterate in such bizarre and revolutionary directions.

Dripping water ffs. Incredible.

What's particularly attractive about this system is that since the initial design is so filthy cheap but still gets results equivalent to or better than commonly available "cheap" ABS extruders, just imagine the kind of fidelity you could get out of it with a couple of years of maturity in the software and $500 in parts instead of $100. I mean even as it stands, from a wargaming perspective it will make fantastic terrain, if you spend a few minutes finishing the surfaces with sandpaper.

I might actually back this one myself, if I can squeeze it into my budget next month.

EDIT: Hah, I just saw the video with the different resin types. Imagine if you could get the fidelity up to the point you could print models - with the wobbly resin you might be able to forget about master models altogether and just use your 3D miniature design straight up to print out a flexible mould.

At this resolution I'm really not sure what it's supposed to be used for. You can't do miniatures, you can't do machine parts, you can't do most art. Maybe you can make okay lawn gnomes, if they're not scrutinized from less than 10 feet away.

Is alright, as long as you don't receive a Skype call while printing ...

Could it do terrain since terrain doesn't need to be very detailed.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
At this resolution I'm really not sure what it's supposed to be used for. You can't do miniatures, you can't do machine parts, you can't do most art. Maybe you can make okay lawn gnomes, if they're not scrutinized from less than 10 feet away.

Glad I'm not the only one that thinks this. It is a great proof of concept but in it's current form it is next to useless. Maybe I'll check back in 5 years to see how far the technology has advanced. I still think this technology isn't suitable for the home user who wants professional results. Right now if you want something professional printed on paper or photo paper, you are better off going to Staples or similar place and paying them to do it rather than buying the printer that can produce the same quality results at home.

Those saying it could print terrain - wouldn't it be quicker and cheaper to hack a chunk of insulation foam with a craft knife for 3 minutes? It would be significantly cheaper and the quality would be on par with this.

willb2064 wrote:

Glad I'm not the only one that thinks this. It is a great proof of concept but in it's current form it is next to useless. Maybe I'll check back in 5 years to see how far the technology has advanced. I still think this technology isn't suitable for the home user who wants professional results. Right now if you want something professional printed on paper or photo paper, you are better off going to Staples or similar place and paying them to do it rather than buying the printer that can produce the same quality results at home.

Actually, that's a fairly good example of the opposite. Most consumer and prosumer level printing equipment is better than any non-industrial service offered. Especially from most "photo kiosks" where the prints are just dye-sublimation. My 6 year old $300 color laser printer is better quality than dye-sub, and those dye-sub printers cost $1500 each. Even most professional printing and photographic places use "giclee" printing now - which is a fancy term for... "inkjet". There's only a few labs in the US that produce photographic prints through a traditional RA-4 chemical process (after the prints are exposed with lasers). Quite literally the only difference between a consumer and most "professional" printing processes is speed and color calibration.

I could maybe see using it to create tokens for games. Also, there might be some aplications for terrain. You might be able to print some nice panels if you wanted to make a Death Star themed board for X-Wing.

If I had the spare cash I'd look into it, but in a few years I'm sure this will easily be outclassed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually, I could see DMs pick this up if they wanted unique story elements in a game.

I like that he has made the earlier pledge levels limited, and the later ones have a later delivery. That way, he won't have to slip so far on the delivery date (hopefully).

Looks extremely novel and nifty! Having sprung for a more expensive one, I won't be pledging, but I would love it if this could help bring 3D printing to the masses

You guys do recognise that this isn't trying to compete against $5000+ professional-grade printers, right? The point is that this guy has developed a method for constructing a functional laser-based 3D resin printer for $100CAD, $150CAD if you want all the bells and whistles, which as a prototype performs at least as well as any of the RepRap-based extruder printers which cost anywhere from $590US to $2,500US.

The other thing to note is that the mechanism already has substantial X-Y axis fidelity, and the Z axis fidelity is only limited by how much you can fine-tune the drip supply and the software, unlike extruders which are always going to be limited by parts and material.

Seriously, someone could invent a process for turning lead into silver, and people on the internet could be replied upon to rubbish them and complain they didn't manage to turn it into gold

Doesn't matter that it's cheap and novel if it doesn't do anything useful. Go buy it if you like it, I can sculpt better by hand and that's saying something.

Very interesting. You can always expect a bit of clean up with any 3D prints so far. This has a good looking future. $100. Insane!

Yes 3D printing has limitations, but don't be quick to write it off guys.

Personaly I agree that 3D printers don't have much use in relation to the actual miniatures. But I think were they do shine is making terrain pieces.

This is a example of a 28mm scale bed someone printed with a Makerbot Replicator 2. Yah sure once it 1st comes out it looks like pants.


But after he primed and sanded it, it looked like this:


The one on the left is the original after sanding, the one on the right was cast from a mould that used the original as the master.

*Photo's were taken from this article and belong to itar@the Hirst Arts Fourm.
http://hirstarts.yuku.com/topic/7232/Makerbot-Replicator-2-3D-printer#.UknNBj8lJTM

 Lockark wrote:
Yes 3D printing has limitations, but don't be quick to write it off guys.

Personaly I agree that 3D printers don't have much use in relation to the actual miniatures. But I think were they do shine is making terrain pieces.

Let me ask a question. What would you say to a GW store or FLGS having a higher end 3d printer. Would you be into bits and minis on demand like that?

travelnjones wrote:

 Lockark wrote:
Yes 3D printing has limitations, but don't be quick to write it off guys.

Personaly I agree that 3D printers don't have much use in relation to the actual miniatures. But I think were they do shine is making terrain pieces.

Let me ask a question. What would you say to a GW store or FLGS having a higher end 3d printer. Would you be into bits and minis on demand like that?

Thing is a 3D printer isn't a xerox machine. You don't just push a button and have a pile of copies fly out of it. From what I understand all 3D printers take a few hours for it to actually make a single item. A store could find it self back logged very quickly.

Also even high end 3D printing isn't like getting a perfect mini fall into your lap. You would still need to sand it smooth to remove the grain the forms. It's just less sanding and a more fine grain you end up with.

It would be hard to get the economy of scale to work correctly for something like that.

Yeah probably would need to be call ahead or order online. I am sure standard stock would need to be produced as normal. But I can also see on demand printing of their full back catalog. I am not sure of the print times of commercial machines.

travelnjones wrote:
Yeah probably would need to be call ahead or order online. I am sure standard stock would need to be produced as normal. But I can also see on demand printing of their full back catalog. I am not sure of the print times of commercial machines.

Even then the Economy of scale just doesn't work out. It would be more cost effective to cast in resin.

You might use the 3D printer to make a prototype master that you would then clean up/touch up. But from that you would then just re-cast it in more traditional ways such as resin or metal.

I'm sure their are people on dakka who are more knowledgeable then me who could chime in on this one, but I got a feeling their answer would be very close to what I said. If I'm wrong then I'm happy to be corrected.

Like I said I feel the strength of home 3D printing for our hobby will be in making small terrain pieces, Bases, and other gameing accessories. At least for the foreseeable future. I would love to print off some nice heroic-scale tree trucks that I could then glue foliage to. Or be able to print off the parts to make fantasy watch towers and stuff.

Many sculpts have to be made on top of skeletons and non-detailed blanks. If I could make a 'blank' general body in the shape of what I wanted to make and then sand/sculpt the details then cast it, I see value.

That bed is a perfect example. If I wanted to make something, getting a general shape is fine, even if I have to resculpt detail.