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3D printing will have a huge impact on gaming...but not in the way I think most people anticipate.

3D printing at a 28/32mm scale for figures is really far off from being a home-based printer's domain. Maybe 5 years or more. Even then, they'd have to be quite good to justify the 4-5 hours or whatever to print a decent figure. Thus it'd have to be extremely good to warrant me not just saving the time and throwing $20 at buying a squad of figures.

I think it'll be huge for terrain (go nuts), and more popular on vehicles (when possible). Now in 5-10 years time I do think it will be a massive consideration on companies like GW. They'll have to adapt or drop prices to compete.

What I don't like right now...and I'm seeing a lot of locally, is garbage 3D printed 28/32mm figures being used on the table (unpainted...of course), etc. When you start deteriorating the look of the game we're cooperatively playing, I'm no longer interested. Same thing for people showing up with dollar-store tanks, or my little pony armies. I play 40K for a certain aesthetic. As long as you put in effort and try to remain 40K-appropriate, I'm down. Let's game.

Thees were done on a $250 FDM Machine.

The pics above are a nice example, but it looks like those took considerable post-processing (sanding) to remove the print lines and they're still visible in spots. They look great overall, but claiming that was just printed off a 50 dollar printer and it looked great without hours and hours of extra work is deceptive.

I've worked for a miniatures company and we 3d printed 3d designed models a 10 micron layer depth printer and the lines were still visible and needed post-processing.

I think it's a great tech, but don't hold your breath over them improving by leaps and bounds in the next few years. 3d printing isn't a new technology - it's been around since the 80s. It's just become more accessible with home-printers coming to market. Part of the recent 'boom' in 3d printing was because some patents on it recently expired - which meant there was suddenly a free-for-all on the tech.

No. I sprayed them with acrylic as a base coat then painted them normally. No sanding whatsoever. The paint itself goes a long way toward filling the .o4mm gaps.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
If you don't open your trap about it being 3D printed in the first place, and the quality is high enough, it's fine for whatever you want to do. If someone balks, why is it any different than using papercraft, scratch-built or proxied models from other companies? It's simply the method of manufacture that's different in the end.

It's different because the quality is inevitably garbage. The kind of 3d printer that people are thinking of when they talk about cheap substitutes for the real model can't come anywhere near the quality of the real thing, and nobody is going to spend more (likely much more) than the cost of the GW kit to get it done on a high-end printer. Same thing applies with most papercraft, scratchbuilds, etc. If it looks like I don't want it on my table. But at least with scratchbuilds you can get the rare few that match (and sometimes exceed) the quality of the GW kit, 3d prints are almost inevitably trash.

I mean, you're objectively wrong, as MattKing's images clearly demonstrate. With the right slicer profile and zero post-processing, the Ender 3 and equivalent machines can print stuff approaching the level of modern "boardgame plastic" models, and with a little time, dirt cheap addons(like, pennies if you order them from China), and effort to process the model afterwards they can produce stuff that's indistinguishable from the "real" model, providing the 3D model they're printing is accurate. The Ender 3 costs less than $200, filament around $20 for a 1kg spool.

Even then, "high end" these days means a <$400 Anycubic Photon, which UV cures resin and gets damn close to the level of quality put out by the far more expensive machines used by companies to make casting masters from 3D files, and equivalent to Shapeways' "Smoothest Fine Detail" material. The resin is more expensive than FDM filament, but 40K-scale infantry can still be printed on it for literally pennies.

3D printing is here, now, for people willing to put in only a very modest amount of effort, and the only thing holding it back is how many folk just refuse to let go of their conception of 3D printing in the context of crappy stuff from a few years ago and who go about telling anyone who'll listen how rubbish it still is.

I would say "modest" effort is being a bit disingenuous. I know a couple local guys who have cheap printers and achieve excellent results...but it's not the norm. They're also 3D printing geeks who do nothing but tinker constantly. 3D printing is almost a hobby to them. I'd say for the vast majority of normal consumers, there is not a "buy it and plug it in" solution to approach high quality levels.

I'm sure you're familiar with the term "soldier proof"...and that's what 3D printers need to be before they're a market crushing consideration. I've no doubt I could get quality results with parts and tinkering on a similar printer - but that's not what we're discussing.

 Elbows wrote:
I would say "modest" effort is being a bit disingenuous. I know a couple local guys who have cheap printers and achieve excellent results...but it's not the norm. They're also 3D printing geeks who do nothing but tinker constantly. 3D printing is almost a hobby to them. I'd say for the vast majority of normal consumers, there is not a "buy it and plug it in" solution to approach high quality levels.

I'm sure you're familiar with the term "soldier proof"...and that's what 3D printers need to be before they're a market crushing consideration. I've no doubt I could get quality results with parts and tinkering on a similar printer - but that's not what we're discussing.

I mean, again, look above.

Nobody's arguing 3D printers are equivalent to a paper printer, they are not plug & play. They're also not "geek-only" products any more. People comparing them to dot-matrix printers and talking about how it's impossible to get decent results without spending a fortune or giving over every shred of spare time to tinkering are just wrong.

I got my Ender 3 last week. I'm waiting for a USBasp so I can flash a bootloader and install better firmware on it, that's a couple of quid and a ten minute "follow along" youtube tutorial. Once that's done, I'll be replacing the bed springs with solid Nylon risers, at which point I can run a sequence to manually calibrate a feature called Mesh Bed Levelling and likely never have to adjust the bed again, that's another couple of quid and ten minute YT tutorial. I can download a ready-made Cura profile specially made for slicing tabletop miniatures, do a couple of test prints to dial in the specific little niggles of the filament I bought, which is pennies and an hour or so of printing time, and that's it, I should be able to run off pretty damn nice models for anything Centurion size or above. Swapping out the nozzle for a 0.2mm one instead of the default 0.4 and doing a bit more tweaking(another couple of hours and a few pennies) and I should be able to match MattKing's Terminators there. Even now, I can already produce reasonable parts that could look great with some post processing work using the absolutely stock-standard model and with zero prior experience.

And again, that's assuming you're using the most basic budget end FDM printer. Grab something like the Photon and you don't have to do any of that - put resin in the vat, run the slicer, print the model, stick it under a UV nail lamp for a few minutes, done.

You have to be willing to put in some effort in the event a part breaks or wears out and needs replacing, but there's no great level of expertise required, no huge time investment - most of the "tinkering" you see people doing to their printers at the "3D printing hobbyist" end of things aren't necessary, being either mods to enable features and functions that you don't need to print models, or "Pimp My Ride" style frivolities & "nice to have" QoL improvements.

You have to be realistic about 3d printing.
3d printing to the quality you expect of current figurines is cost prohibitive.
3d printing at is cost is very low quality* and shouldn't be used for full models.
This leaves a lot of room for good idea of 3 d printing.
1. Getting small parts printed the expensive way on expensive models to customize them. Armigers custom heads, tanks special weapons...
2. Printing parts that are barely visible on models whose bits can be gotten cheap. Cough onager, kills cans, deff dreads...
3. Some rare figs actually looks fantastic 3d printed, like the termite from fw. Even with a sub 600 buck printer.
4. Terrains, because honestly no one cares about print
Iines in terrains.

Printing a marine or a full dread? Forget about it, will look like carp or be more expensive than fw.

Printing a marine or a full dread? Forget about it, will look like carp or be more expensive than fw.

Well the leviathan cost around $1.40 in materials (Ender 3, $250 printer). if I had done it in resin on the $500 photon it would have been around $7.

As for how it looks like carp I've brought it to quite a few Heresy events in the last few months and nobody's said anything looks "fishy".

Marines are a bit small for FDM but resin can do them quite well at about 40 cents a pop. The terminators are passable in a normal game and run about 10 to 15 cents worth of plastic.

 Yodhrin wrote:
I got my Ender 3 last week. I'm waiting for a USBasp so I can flash a bootloader and install better firmware on it, that's a couple of quid and a ten minute "follow along" youtube tutorial. Once that's done, I'll be replacing the bed springs with solid Nylon risers, at which point I can run a sequence to manually calibrate a feature called Mesh Bed Levelling and likely never have to adjust the bed again, that's another couple of quid and ten minute YT tutorial. I can download a ready-made Cura profile specially made for slicing tabletop miniatures, do a couple of test prints to dial in the specific little niggles of the filament I bought, which is pennies and an hour or so of printing time, and that's it, I should be able to run off pretty damn nice models for anything Centurion size or above. Swapping out the nozzle for a 0.2mm one instead of the default 0.4 and doing a bit more tweaking(another couple of hours and a few pennies) and I should be able to match MattKing's Terminators there. Even now, I can already produce reasonable parts that could look great with some post processing work using the absolutely stock-standard model and with zero prior experience.

This is kind of proving the point. It's just "out of the box", except for needing to install different firmware, replace mechanical components, calibrate everything, and still doing processing work on the finished print. And this just gets you a print that is decent, but still has print lines and poor quality in places. And how good is the durability going to be? Previous high-detail prints I've seen were also very fragile and not really suited to game use. In short: yeah, it's better than it used to be, but it's still not perfect.

Now contrast this with the work to get the real kit: go to gamesworkshop.com, click "buy", and wait for USPS to deliver it.

Grab something like the Photon and you don't have to do any of that - put resin in the vat, run the slicer, print the model, stick it under a UV nail lamp for a few minutes, done.

IOW "work with toxic chemicals that require a lot of cleanup and storage care". It's like saying recasting your own miniatures is easy, just pour some resin in a mold and let it sit a while to cure. There's a reason why people keep buying multiple copies of GW kits despite recasting your own models being a lot cheaper.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I've been thinking of making some dragons teeth.

Seems like a waste of tech & time. Get yourself an ice cube tray & some dental plaster.

terrain, easily yes, I encourage it.

models, yes, so long as it looks good. Which probably limits it to Rhinos lol

ccs wrote:
Seems like a waste of tech & time. Get yourself an ice cube tray & some dental plaster.

Yes but what about making some terrain?

The "problem" with 3d printers is that they require a high degree of attention to mechanical details to get really good quality

Most people just expect them to work like magic, they don't, if they did I couldn't run a 3d printing business :p

Here's what $200 buys you with proper tuning



Here's what $400 buys you with proper tuning


Requiring post processing is for amateurs

Just bought 2 dreadnought missile arms off ebay that are 3D printed. Couldn't get the pieces separately anywhere and didn't want to buy another 2 dreads just for MLs for my vens.

Rule #1. WYSIWYG. Always. Tokens? Paper tents? GTFO please.

Printing bits and terrain should be fine. Even stuff that is no longer in production? Go for it if you can find an stl file. No harm done. Try to throw down a squad of units that looks like ass and I can't tell what they are or what the wargear is? I'll pass on playing with that person. If I can tell it's printed, but it still looks half decent? I'll be open to trying a game with you, but generally speaking if you are not willing to buy a box of tac marines or a dreadnaught I will wonder if you are TFG.

I started into the 3d printing hobby early this year with the goal of building a collection of terrain for my local gaming group. It is very easy to build stuff that is going to look like crap, and that is just part of learning how to tinker with print settings in your slicing software. It is the same as painting our armies. By the time you are on your 3rd army you are going to be a lot better than when you painted your very first squad, right? It took me a full spool of filament to really understand how I needed to adjust/tweak things to come out with what I feel are good quality prints. 3d printing is generally not going to give you GW quality kits, however its very possible - as Grundz shows.

There are a ton of nice projects on Kickstarter that I jumped into that will be great to add to the table for my 40k games, and frankly it supports our hobby overall. It also forces companies like GW to stay on top of their game. If I can crank out stuff to fill a table that looks just as good as theirs? Terrain is going to be a lot easier to get high quality prints, but I'll pay the $20 for the filament required to build it instead of spending $80 on one of their boxes.

Sorry for rambling on.

 MattKing wrote:

Printing a marine or a full dread? Forget about it, will look like carp or be more expensive than fw.

Well the leviathan cost around $1.40 in materials (Ender 3, $250 printer). if I had done it in resin on the $500 photon it would have been around $7.

As for how it looks like carp I've brought it to quite a few Heresy events in the last few months and nobody's said anything looks "fishy".

Marines are a bit small for FDM but resin can do them quite well at about 40 cents a pop. The terminators are passable in a normal game and run about 10 to 15 cents worth of plastic.

Would you mind sharing your fdm settings, that's really nice for fdm without post processing.

As demonstrated by MattKing and Grundz, the quality is there. There's no denying it. It does take a little bit of work to get the quality you want, but its a hobby skill like any other. If you're not good at it you ask a friend or pay a professional, like with painting, assembling, or green stuff.

The real question is should you print models that you could buy from GW? The answer goes deep down a rabbit hole. Should you proxy one GW model for another? Should you build necrons out of sprues? Should you buy models you like the look of more from alternative companies? Should you use battlescribe, which has all your rules in it, in addition or instead of buying your codex?

The answer is not clear and brings up huge debates on intellectual property. Here's my middleground take. I buy GW models because I like to build models, and the models look good. They're also expensive. I have a 3D printer, which I use for models and other things, and I print models for things I can't easily buy. I also never buy directly from games workshop since their local store is tiny and I can get 15% off at shops I play at to support the store.

Now lets look at a cost analysis. To print a deredeo dreadnought on my printer, it would take roughly 100 grams, and about 24 hours of printing. My printer costs $750, but a newer, comparable printer (which would admittedly take more tuning) could cost $200, and a resin printer which uses more expensive material would cost $410 (I know because I ordered one last weekend), but lets look at my printer. 1kg of filament costs me $15, so I can print a deredeo for $1.50. One from forgeworld costs $109 (58+30+21). Even assuming power usage and general wear-and tear on my printer amounts to over $20, there's at least $80 in savings in exchange for 10 minutes of work before a 24-hour print job. During this time, I can go to work or school, sleep, and assemble/paint other models. For a slight decrease in quality from forgeworld, I deem this acceptable. It also means that my printer "pays for itself" in less than 10 prints, or 3 prints for a $200 printer. Its not a set formula though, as there's a personal factor as to how much you value the exact quality and the extra work printing takes.

These are just my thoughts.

Sidenote: Acceptance of prints in the community: My gaming community doesn't care as long as it looks vaugely like what its supposed to look like. They think its cool and ask me to print bits, bases, and terrain for them.

Doctor-boom wrote:

 MattKing wrote:

Printing a marine or a full dread? Forget about it, will look like carp or be more expensive than fw.

Well the leviathan cost around $1.40 in materials (Ender 3, $250 printer). if I had done it in resin on the $500 photon it would have been around $7.

As for how it looks like carp I've brought it to quite a few Heresy events in the last few months and nobody's said anything looks "fishy".

Marines are a bit small for FDM but resin can do them quite well at about 40 cents a pop. The terminators are passable in a normal game and run about 10 to 15 cents worth of plastic.

Would you mind sharing your fdm settings, that's really nice for fdm without post processing.

Sure. I'm using the profile linked in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqEWl51s9Rw
However for the vehicles I used a 0.08mm layer height and a 0.04mm height for the terminators.
For the terminators I'm using a 0.2mm nozzle, for vehicles a 0.4mm.

There are also some regular bits on the models (like the weapons on the tank, and the un helmeted heads) because it's still easier to use stuff you have lying around in a bits box. But printing the core of certain models has alot of advantages. Like turning a box of 5 termines into 10 with all the extra arms and weapons.

i think the technology is there for home printing miniatures. i printed this primaris marine recently on the very affordable anycubic photon. only issue you'll run into is the amount of good files freely available. while i love printing i still support GW in buying some models, paint and books.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
I got my Ender 3 last week. I'm waiting for a USBasp so I can flash a bootloader and install better firmware on it, that's a couple of quid and a ten minute "follow along" youtube tutorial. Once that's done, I'll be replacing the bed springs with solid Nylon risers, at which point I can run a sequence to manually calibrate a feature called Mesh Bed Levelling and likely never have to adjust the bed again, that's another couple of quid and ten minute YT tutorial. I can download a ready-made Cura profile specially made for slicing tabletop miniatures, do a couple of test prints to dial in the specific little niggles of the filament I bought, which is pennies and an hour or so of printing time, and that's it, I should be able to run off pretty damn nice models for anything Centurion size or above. Swapping out the nozzle for a 0.2mm one instead of the default 0.4 and doing a bit more tweaking(another couple of hours and a few pennies) and I should be able to match MattKing's Terminators there. Even now, I can already produce reasonable parts that could look great with some post processing work using the absolutely stock-standard model and with zero prior experience.

This is kind of proving the point. It's just "out of the box", except for needing to install different firmware, replace mechanical components, calibrate everything, and still doing processing work on the finished print. And this just gets you a print that is decent, but still has print lines and poor quality in places. And how good is the durability going to be? Previous high-detail prints I've seen were also very fragile and not really suited to game use. In short: yeah, it's better than it used to be, but it's still not perfect.

I can never tell any more whether you're being dishonest or just willfully obtuse when you do this "lump together everything to make it seem worse even when the OP clearly makes them distinct". You can do the tweaking to the printer, OR you can do the post processing work(which amounts to "spray with acrylic, lightly sand where necessary" - I've spent more time fixing some FW models). None of the things I'm planning to do are *required*, but I prefer to make a small effort now to avoid having to do to lots of small amounts of effort after each print. And you keep trying to make out like "install different firmware, replace mechanical components, calibrate everything" is some herculean task despite the fact I specifically pointed out it simply isn't, it's a couple of piss-easy "follow along" YT tutorials and five minutes of effort. All of the "big issues" I've run into getting my printer going have been me tripping myself up because I listened to folk like yourself for ages so I kept went looking for complicated mechanical issues when the problem was something dead simple like the filament not coming off the spool smoothly because it wasn't wound quite right, which took ten seconds to fix.

I've had basic "square thing with shelves in it" flatpacks from IKEA that took more time and effort to get put together than it takes to get a 3D printer going. I've seen sound systems in people's living rooms with more wires and connectors.

As for what you've seen - perhaps you should put aside your own limited and out of date experience and actually listen to the several people right here in this thread who actually own 3D printers now and are posting images demonstrating all this stuff about low quality/high effort is nonsense? An FDM print done with four walls and 10-15% infill(ie, the norm) in PLA(ie, the basic material that requires no special mods or effort to use) will stand up to anything a HIPS kit will all the way up until you get to the "purposefully trying to destroy it with hammers" level of damage, the sole exception being heat, but if you're in the kind of hellhole that regularly gets above 50c or you like leaving your models under enclosed glass on a high-summer day, you just just dial the print temperature up a bit and print the models in PETG instead, for a few pennies extra.

Now contrast this with the work to get the real kit: go to gamesworkshop.com, click "buy", and wait for USPS to deliver it.

WHOOOOOOOSH! Look at those goalposts fly. So now it's not "3D prints are obvious rubbish that require Herculean effort to achieve even that little", it's "they're a bit less convenient than clicking Buy on a website"

Grab something like the Photon and you don't have to do any of that - put resin in the vat, run the slicer, print the model, stick it under a UV nail lamp for a few minutes, done.

IOW "work with toxic chemicals that require a lot of cleanup and storage care". It's like saying recasting your own miniatures is easy, just pour some resin in a mold and let it sit a while to cure. There's a reason why people keep buying multiple copies of GW kits despite recasting your own models being a lot cheaper.

Well here's a funny thing, I also have experience with molding and casting, and you making this comparison just proves you don't grasp how little effort 3D printing is these days at all. Moldmaking is labour intensive and expensive. Oh sure, once you have a mold it costs only pennies of resin to get a cast out of it, but actually making a mold takes hours, a lot of careful forethought about positioning of parts and material flow, and costs enough that it's only really worth doing for an everyday hobbyist in two scenarios; you're going to cast a LOT of a thing, or you're going to replicate something uncommon enough that the cost & effort is worth it. And if you want really decent results, you'll be forking over for a vacuum chamber and maybe even a pressure pot too. That's a process you have to repeat again and again every time you want to mold and cast something new. That is the reason why people buy multiples rather than recasting.

As to "toxic chemicals", I always giggle at this. Because of course, you always carefully dispose of cleaning fluids and other such chemicals in a careful and responsible manner, and you only ever file or sand your models while wearing an FFP3-rated HEPA respirator and immediately afterwards carefully vacuum your workspace, and nobody who does modelling ever works with enamels or lacquers etc etc. "Wear gloves, don't drink it, don't pour it down the sink, maybe crack a window" is hardly as exceptional and "toxic" as you're making out, I mean what's next, are you going to suggest people should never buy and use house paint?

The_Real_Chris wrote:

ccs wrote:
Seems like a waste of tech & time. Get yourself an ice cube tray & some dental plaster.

Yes but what about making some terrain?

I was specifically only referring to making dragons teeth. That's why I quoted that particular bit.

Other terrain? Sure, go for it.

They're getting better all the time. Sure, the general 3d printer is probably only good enough for scenery items at the moment but that will change over the next few years.

It will already be part of GW's 10 year forecast for sure.

I have to agree with posters saying 3D printing is most likely not going to be an issue for another 10-20 years. Not because you can't make awesome detailed 3D miniatures now but because of the lack of plug and play. I really want to get a 3D printer to make some of the awesome terrain I've seen people print. But I don't have the time to research a printer, get it assembled/ set up properly, research/ look up the correct drivers, learn how to use the various formats to make/ splice the things I want to print. The point is I don't see 3D printing really threatening GW until someone can order a printer online, plug it into there wall and be actively printing stuff they googled in 15-20min

That's a thing. Buy the Photon assembled, install the software and you can print the above models. Unwillingness to acknowledge something exists does not make it stop existing.

For normal printing:
Buy Printer + ink/ Put ink in printer/ Plug in printer/ Open document in word/ press print/ enjoy document

For 3d printing:
Buy Printer + resin/ Put resin in printer/ Plug in printer/ Open model in cura/ press print/ Dip model in IPA/ Enjoy model

Not right now, but probably soon, it's going to start cutting into those profits. Especially forge world

 MattKing wrote:
That's a thing. Buy the Photon assembled, install the software and you can print the above models. Unwillingness to acknowledge something exists does not make it stop existing.

I've looked into 3D printing a fair amount on youtube and forums out of curiosity and I haven't come across anything that seems plug and play. Even in this thread, the people claiming its easy are listing a "few quick steps" for setup to someone who hasn't done it before seems quite challenging and most likely has a large learning curve/ failure rate. Now I could be wrong and ill look into this "photon" tonight as I've said I'm interested in 3D printing just not the time investment that it looks like it would take. But I highly doubt someone like me with no experience could plug this in and be printing 40k minis off yeggi an hour after opening the box. I look at is similarly too recasting. I can drive to hobby lobby and but a casting case and theoretically make an infinite amount of Guardsmen for like $50. But the knowledge/ time it would take me to get good results it just ends up not being worth it to someone who already struggles to have enough time for the hobby.

Posted before you added the second part of your post. For someone who hasn't 3D printed
Printing on paper: open box that contains everything you need plus a support manual/support number that will literally walk you through the process if need be. But this isn't really necessary since paper printers are integrated into use sense your a kid in school

3D printing: Open box.... half the threads say the first thing i should do is print new parts for the machine. Go to forum read 10 page discussion on what type of plastic to use. Each machine has different nozel temperatures that work well... go read thread about what temperature I should use, learn I also need to level the bed... go to read about that just after I finish a 30 page dakka style thread about arguing about the amount of filler/ supports required. Guess I'll just hope this thing prints. Even if it does i know how to read about how to properly clean/ to maintain this printer.

 p5freak wrote:
I love 3d printing. Build a model, scan it, print it. Download model files from the web, print it. Awesome. But the quality for price hasnt reached a level which is acceptable for me. There is one 3D printer which fulfills my requirements, but it works with toxic, smelly, liquid resin, thats a no go for me. Its the anycubic photon DLP.

It's a different type of resin than the two part curing types.

The resin used for 3d printing are cured via process known as photopolymerization. It MAY cause some skin irritation if handled improperly, but its nowhere as near as toxic as breathing in China. They say 1 hour of being outdoors in China is equal to having smoked 40+ cigarettes.

Resin itself is not toxic - its the fumes that arise when it's curing that CAN BE POTENTIALLY toxic. And by potentially toxic, I mean if you have the resin in your face as its curing for hours. Basic ventilation (window opened) is perfectly suitable for small projects.

Casting for +10 years semi professionally.

 Peregrine wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
I've seen exceptional 3D prints of minis where it was very hard to tell the difference from an authentic model. You had to look really closely for surface-level imperfections that couldn't be explained by cutting it off a sprue.

Sure, but how much did that print cost, whether buying from a service or as a share of the cost of buying and using a high-end printer? What about once you add in the labor cost of working with a high-end printer of your own? I bet it doesn't compare very favorably to the GW plastic kit. Those high-end printers are great for prototypes (anyone remember when 3d printed was called "rapid prototyping"?) or masters for conventional casting but they're useless if your goal is to get the costs of the hobby down.

it may not satisfy you refined pallet, but estimated print costs for a 28mm mini is 3-6 cents per mini for FDM (lower quality generally) or $0.15-$1.80 for resin (generally high quality) per mini. even if he's off by a factor of 5, making it $0.15- $9.00 per mini, as long as you print a fair number of models, or stuff like terminators ($12/each per gw website) it won't take you that long to pay it off. And for people getting started on an army, its not likely they'd build up an army faster than they could print it anyway

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v04wjiUT5Qg

 pumaman1 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
I've seen exceptional 3D prints of minis where it was very hard to tell the difference from an authentic model. You had to look really closely for surface-level imperfections that couldn't be explained by cutting it off a sprue.

Sure, but how much did that print cost, whether buying from a service or as a share of the cost of buying and using a high-end printer? What about once you add in the labor cost of working with a high-end printer of your own? I bet it doesn't compare very favorably to the GW plastic kit. Those high-end printers are great for prototypes (anyone remember when 3d printed was called "rapid prototyping"?) or masters for conventional casting but they're useless if your goal is to get the costs of the hobby down.

it may not satisfy you refined pallet, but estimated print costs for a 28mm mini is 3-6 cents per mini for FDM (lower quality generally) or $0.15-$1.80 for resin (generally high quality) per mini. even if he's off by a factor of 5, making it $0.15- $9.00 per mini, as long as you print a fair number of models, or stuff like terminators ($12/each per gw website) it won't take you that long to pay it off. And for people getting started on an army, its not likely they'd build up an army faster than they could print it anyway

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v04wjiUT5Qg

He's not talking about just the cost of materials he's talking about
materials+printer+opertunity cost
opportunity cost here is the time it would take to master 3D printing. From the research, I've done online (the idea of printing seems really fun so I've looked into it) it looks fairly time-consuming. let's say it takes 500 hours to really master it and for quick math lets say I make $20 an hour. That 500 hours it takes to really start printing whatever I wanted is actually $10000+cost of all the materials used while learning+cost of the printer. Now that "cheap army" is actually costing an astronomical amount. Now as the technology advances and the learning curve gets smaller the opportunity cost will drop. This is when GW will really have to worry about 3D printing