Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

3D printing still has 2 huge issues in terms of being practical commercially.

1) It absolutely cannot mass produce anything. It simply takes too long for a 3D printer to make the object in question compared to traditional methods of casting. With a regular mold you can produce dozens of miniatures in a few minutes. A 3D printer will take hours to make 1 single miniature, and its going to be lower quality than a cast miniature too in terms of detail.

2) The equipment is pretty expensive still. Sure, its within the affordable grasp of a hobbyist. But you're definitely not saving money in any way by printing out your own models rather than buying from GW. GW is expensive, but it ain't that expensive. Combine that with problem 1 and its not even a contest.

3D printing is good if you need to make a specialty item that has a relatively simple shape and you do not have the space to have specialized production equipment and time is not really a constraint. IE: Its good if you are in an isolated environment and need to make some doodads and need a machine that can make a bunch of different doodads. 3D printers are very generalist equipment. Gaming miniatures are a very specialized hobby. The two are somewhat at odds in terms of how useful one is to the other.

re. point 1). I wonder what the threshold is; how many Space marines would I need to print before it's quicker for me to order, wait for delivery and then assemble the kits?

 Osbad wrote:
I can't see home 3d printing ever being so popular as to eliminate mass manufacturers altogether. After all, home 2d printing hasn't killed book publishing and bookstores.

The question is will it take enough business to make some types pf rane unviable?

It all depends on how cheap the process gets, honestly. Before digital formats made disc media almost obsolete you had a very high increase in the number of people simply burning their own DVDs or CDs at home. 3D printers will, in my mind, take on that same momentum once the cost is even enough to gain saturation. Doubly so if game companies' prices continue to increase.

Another thought is if the customer is printing, cleaning and providing all the raw materials for the product at home; what incentive do they have to pay GW for the printing licence.

Right now GW already competes with 3rd parties, however if a future comes where home 3D printing of models is common I can see big companies just not adopting it. The potential to simply undercut the competition is far too great. This is before we even mention someone 3D scanning and providing illegal copied 3D prints etc.... Before we even get there there's the simple fact that once the customer is doing all the production there's nothing to tie them to the company. No quality, no customer support, its purely running on loyalty.


The only way they'd have left to at least enforce sales of their own models would be if they run every major event and every major club over each target country.



I just see it as far too much risk for a major established company with significant overheads looking for long term profit from their product line. Smaller companies and start up ones would likely be ok because they'd be scaled for it - likely one designer perhaps with another employee helping out, so a VAST overhead reduction and likely working it as a side job.

GW has something of a walled garden when it comes to the game, but I'd be worried about an alternative when there aren't 'official' miniatures and rules. Those do a good job of bringing people together.

 Grey Templar wrote:
3D printing still has 2 huge issues in terms of being practical commercially.

1) It absolutely cannot mass produce anything. It simply takes too long for a 3D printer to make the object in question compared to traditional methods of casting. With a regular mold you can produce dozens of miniatures in a few minutes. A 3D printer will take hours to make 1 single miniature, and its going to be lower quality than a cast miniature too in terms of detail.

With the advent of DLP resin printers though you aren't printing 1.mini at a time, but maybe a squad at a time. Not.sure how.many 25mm base models you can fit on a Photon print bed, but surely at least 10. At that point you can surely print models faster than you could ever paint them.

This bit from Antenocities Workshop caught my eye.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/766208.page

So, after 15 years in the Industry and with a view to how the wargaming market has changed and is changing, we do not feel that continuing to produce hand-cast resin models is viable in the long-term. Our long-term goal is to wrap-up resin-casting and change to selling 3D print files alongside our MDF laser-cut kits. We will eventually close our resin-casting capabilities entirely, but in the immediate future, we will be closing half of our resin-casting workshop alongside closing-down two of the four small units we have here in Wem.

They really see 3D printing as both the end of their casting business and their future (though I wonder how well that will go between the number of free hobby sculpts and piracy).

That was, in part, due to their main caster/mould maker moving on and them not being able to replace them with somebody already skilled ( training somebody from scratch would have been prohibitively expensive)

 Stormatious wrote:
As long as GW can top the quality that 3d printers make, i dont see 3d printers taking over completely and destroying GW. I think 3d printers if they arnt able to efficiently copy the quality of GW or some thing, then they are just a helpful thing as a side thing, like printing things that you cant get, or just to print random stuff on the side for fun.


Have a good day.

(not my images)

You can print most of an army of those guys with one litre of resin.

People talk about how difficult it is to get a print to come out, but I'll tell you, 99% of the problems I encountered were textbook cases of PEBKAC. I spent ages fannying about with trying to get stuff to stick to my build plate and "experimenting", until I stopped acting like a sitcom character trying to assemble furniture and just "read the instructions", ie, I looked up exposure times for the resin I was using, I watched some vids on how to properly level the bed, and I started using the Photon File Validator to make sure the models were adequately supported for the Photon, and I properly levelled the bed and calibrated the extrusion on my Ender 3. Any problem a user is having has been had before, dozens of times, and the solution is already figured out and waiting to be looked up. It's also, almost invariably, actually a pretty simple fix.

People talk about post processing resin as if it's some Herculean task, and while it's certainly not nothing it's hardly that. Take the build plate out, scrape the model off into a bath of isopropyl alcohol, shoogle it about a bit, for thoroughness take it out and put it into a second bath of the same, shoogle it about a bit, then put it under a UV lamp(I use a nail art thing I got off Amazon for about a tenner) for a couple of minutes. Depending on your layer height, "post processing" an FDM print amounts to "undercoat it".

People talk about how horrible and toxic the resin is, but so long as you don't huff it or drink it and you wash your hands after use(or, better yet, use nitrile gloves) it's no more dangerous than using any household chemical, or collecting classic miniatures made out of lead, or filing away at styrene and polyurethane miniatures without a respirator, and most of the people acting like UV resin is radioactive waste will do some or all of those things.

I don't think printers will replace store-bought stuff entirely any time soon, it'll take a machine that fully automates the process and requires the end user to simply click "print" and receive finished models for that to happen, but it's also true, I believe, that a lot of people are intent on very much overstating the problems and difficulties of the process in terms of hobbyists.

Modern 3D printers are like an airbrush - they take a bit of effort to use, and they aren't for everybody. That doesn't mean they're as useless or impractical as some insinuate they are.

They will quickly become useless or impractical for anyone who also couldn't or wouldn't clear a paper jam in a printer. If a given person would freeze like a dear in headlights at that task then they'll have no chance with 3d printing.

I don't think people are as technically inclined as I am. For those who are, get a 3d printer, it's cool.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Osbad wrote:
I can't see home 3d printing ever being so popular as to eliminate mass manufacturers altogether. After all, home 2d printing hasn't killed book publishing and bookstores.

The question is will it take enough business to make some types pf rane unviable?

It all depends on how cheap the process gets, honestly. Before digital formats made disc media almost obsolete you had a very high increase in the number of people simply burning their own DVDs or CDs at home. 3D printers will, in my mind, take on that same momentum once the cost is even enough to gain saturation. Doubly so if game companies' prices continue to increase.

If prices became that cheap and fast, what's stopping GW switching production with traditional casting methods and printing their minis instead? Cost and effort to the consumer would be lower since there's no need to buy a printer or mess about actually printing anything, so you'd be right back to mass production being cheaper and more convenient for the consumer - only with 3D printed mass production instead of molded plastic.

Do cheap power tools impact the furniture market? For a few hundred dollars someone could obtain the tools to create their own furniture that can usually be built better, cheaper than store-bought furniture.

There is still plenty of room in the market for both things to exist.

The tools being available for inexpensive still needs someone to come up with the designs, offer them to people (yes some are free but you get what you pay for), and there is a learning curve to learn with. It is much easier to do with terrain and possibly vehicles but harder for miniatures. Not all designs are equal some aren't cut, requires someone to cut the models, others could benefit from hollowing, etc. I don't believe we'll ever be in a place that makes 3d printing make a huge impact on the market.

Now where companies can benefit is embracing this, similar to what some car manufacturers have started to do (they have been releasing STLs to customize car accessories/parts). This allows them to focus their money on making specific generic kits, with a few options, while selling STLs to create more 'add-ons', expansions or enhancements to existing kits (think of how game apps use this model to sell skins, etc).

 Grey Templar wrote:
It absolutely cannot mass produce anything. It simply takes too long for a 3D printer to make the object in question compared to traditional methods of casting. With a regular mold you can produce dozens of miniatures in a few minutes. A 3D printer will take hours to make 1 single miniature, and its going to be lower quality than a cast miniature too in terms of detail.

 Flinty wrote:
Not.sure how.many 25mm base models you can fit on a Photon print bed, but surely at least 10. At that point you can surely print models faster than you could ever paint them.

As Flinty said, you can fit more than one miniature on the plate, though. I have a Photon, and I printed some of those gatling gun CSM guys for a friend, and while you are right that it took hours (about 6 if I recall), there were 5 marines on each print (I needed to accomodate the gun, the marine, and the backpack each as a seperate part). I think you could probably do 10x guardsman in a pass, depending on how they are posed.


As the photos in this thread show, the finished minis would be difficult to distinguish between a plastic space marine without a magnifying glass; and almost impossible once primed, I think.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yodhrin wrote:
People talk about how difficult it is to get a print to come out, but I'll tell you, 99% of the problems I encountered were textbook cases of PEBKAC. I spent ages fannying about with trying to get stuff to stick to my build plate and "experimenting", until I stopped acting like a sitcom character trying to assemble furniture and just "read the instructions", ie, I looked up exposure times for the resin I was using, I watched some vids on how to properly level the bed, and I started using the Photon File Validator to make sure the models were adequately supported for the Photon, and I properly levelled the bed

I think the biggest problem people have with models not sticking to the bed with the Photon is that when Anycubic poorly sandblasts the bed prior to anodizing, it's not flat anymore. I never really had problems with models not sticking to mine but I am 90% sure the bed is not totally flat - the base layers are not an even thickness throughout the print which would be impossible with a truly flat bed.

I'm not inclined to mess with a fruitful status quo, though - it's printing fine so I'm not sanding the plate.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It absolutely cannot mass produce anything. It simply takes too long for a 3D printer to make the object in question compared to traditional methods of casting. With a regular mold you can produce dozens of miniatures in a few minutes. A 3D printer will take hours to make 1 single miniature, and its going to be lower quality than a cast miniature too in terms of detail.

Are we talking traditional methods of resin casting or traditional methods of injection plastic? These are two very different beasts in terms of production. I can't speak for injection plastic but I can talk about resin casting as we replaced most of our resin casting with 3d printing, except for larger pieces (1/8th and 1/10th scale figures).

In terms of resin casting, it takes a bit more than a few minutes to make dozens of miniatures. It does take a bit longer for a 3d printer to make them, longer for FDM/FFF, faster for SLA and even faster for DLP (since they do one layer at a time). With just one printer I can only do 80 miniatures a day, but the skill level to do the prints is much less than having to hire a skilled resin caster. Not to mention once I have set up and printed a part successfully, 99% of the time it will print correctly vs quality and control for resin casting. Having even looked at the time to create new moulds and lifespan of a mould yet but labor wise it is much cheaper. Not to mention labor wise, I'm only spending a couple of hours a day on production meaning I can have that person doing more things than strictly mixing resin, pouring, demoulding.

Just for comparison on a large scale (which is a larger investment but if we're comparing professional grade) then an EnvisionTEC P4 will do 99 miniatures in less than 4 hours. That would be at master 3d printed detail level, the very quality they use to print the masters to create resin moulds with.

It does change the ability and method for smaller companies to deliver products. The tooling (including labor and skill) costs for creating moulds is a process, even for resin casting, can be expensive so the minimum order quantity has to justify that time. They can't simply do 500 here and there, which means a sizeable investment for a production run of 2000+ (the smallest MOQ I've seen).

Now there are those that can do smaller runs, providing less risk or less amount of 'lost investment' for items sitting on a shelf. You can also simply do orders on demand, the amount of orders in a day is fairly easy to keep up with minimal investment so a far greater return on investment for a smaller shelf storage space and labor.

That doesn't mean larger companies will cease or will create a huge impact on them, but it does require them to at least pay attention and possibly adapt a bit.

 Ouze wrote:
I think the biggest problem people have with models not sticking to the bed with the Photon is that when Anycubic poorly sandblasts the bed prior to anodizing, it's not flat anymore. I never really had problems with models not sticking to mine but I am 90% sure the bed is not totally flat - the base layers are not an even thickness throughout the print which would be impossible with a truly flat bed.

That is definitely an issue with lower priced hobby grade printers. There is a learning curve, it is smaller than if one was trying to learn how to do resin casting but there is a curve. It also subjective to multiple things, not just the printing plate.

Temperature, environment, resin maintenance (includes mixing, cleaning vat after misprints, etc), leveling, the actual STL and how it is sliced (supports and orientation) will vary and have a variance. I recently found out just how much temperature alone impacts printing consistency when I moved printers from the inside office to the garage, moving from a 72-74F temperature to 60F. Had to insulate and run a heater to keep the temperature at 69F despite being in the resin temperature suggestions).

Even leveling is subjective to user skill and perception. Using a paper for calibration (not all papers are the same thickness, not tightening the plate properly) even though they think they did it correctly leads to misprints. Some printers do have a autolevel or leveling assist which helps but even then, there is still a small variance subjective to the user.

Ease of use is the decisively biggest hurdle for 3D printing. As several people have already said, the average person can hardly handle a paper printer.

A 3D printer demands a serious investment in time even for the more technically inclined part of the population. We just got a fancy 3D printer at work, set up a special group of people that got a course from an expert and are allowed to play around with it as they want. So far, the coolest thing I´ve seen printed was a miniature container with the company logo on it, and that was hardly a perfect print, with big print lines and other flaws. There have also been tons of misprints and failures.

Until someone fix those issues, 3D print is as far away from threatening manufacturing as crypto is to threatening fiat. (for similar reasons even - too hard to use)

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
re. point 1). I wonder what the threshold is; how many Space marines would I need to print before it's quicker for me to order, wait for delivery and then assemble the kits?

What'll happen is that you will print out that one, single, not-GW commander, and take the $75 you didn't spend on the GW figure and buy a box of Space Marines with it!

@ced1106: How much do you think that not-GW commander is going to cost you, supposing you already have a nice resin printer and the skill to use it?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
.

Now with 3D printers reaching the point they're cheap-ish and easy-ish are miniatures in for the same disruption?

It's on the horizon maybe 5-10 years away but not yet IMO. When you can print out 3d models at current DLP/SLA quality levels in multiple colors then I'll say stick a fork in the industry for any future growth unless they adapt (see below). There are FDM printers right now that either natively or have attachments that allow you to print in up to five colors but the quality isn't there compared with what the average gamer can do as well as the average plastic kit. Once an easy multicolor capability comes to a $500 or less resin printer with easy to use 3d painting software, I hope we'll see a big uptick in the number of potential players and a downturn in model sales. I'm not sure if one will counteract the other though.

Similar to how you can buy ebooks/pdfs cheaply on affordable to use portable devices now, there will always be a market for traditional kits but GW will finally have to step up their game and reinvest in their infrastructure to compete instead of paying out dividends. IMO we'll finally see GW start to use multicolor plastic injection moulding when those 3d printers arrive if they want to survive. Multicolor push fit 40k models similar to various anime kits out there will lower the barrier further. Of course, if we see a change in leadership at GW back to a Commissar Kirby style again the tactic could instead be to quash 3d printing as much as possible starting with a purge of free "infringing" models out there on sites like thingiverse. I hope they opt for the former business plan instead.

Nurglitch wrote:
@ced1106: How much do you think that not-GW commander is going to cost you, supposing you already have a nice resin printer and the skill to use it?

Based on the current price of resin, maybe £2-£3?

Nurglitch wrote:
@ced1106: How much do you think that not-GW commander is going to cost you, supposing you already have a nice resin printer and the skill to use it?

Are you also talking about having the skill to do the sculpting or just to run the printer? Where did you get the 3d file? Did you already belong to a Patreon or group that created it for you or are you commissioning a sculptor to create one for you?

Kickstarter/Patron/3D Files can be anywhere from $10-50 from someone else who created where you purchase the file to be used for personal use, usually not for commercial use.

If you are hiring a digital artist to sculpt it, it can range from $100-500 for it to be sculpted and cut (if needed to be cut) in which case you can use it for commercial as well as personal use.

Once you have the digital file, then depending on the resin which is $50-500/L it can cost as little as $0.10-$2 for a 2-4g 28-32mm miniature (give or take a few cents). That is the resin cost for the material, doesn't include electricity cost (which varies but still only cents). That also doesn't cover labor, which is setting up the file (slicing) it to print, deplating, cleaning, post curing (if needed).

what's the feeling on light source/laser life? for the resin printers

I know for laser cutters they are something that commercial shops have to figure replacement costs into their pricing structures as they fail 'frequently' (well after X hours, but with X being small enough to need to be considered)

if the resin printers are running for significant numbers of hours whenever stuff gets printed is it something a home user needs to worry about?

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
what's the feeling on light source/laser life? for the resin printers

I know for laser cutters they are something that commercial shops have to figure replacement costs into their pricing structures as they fail 'frequently' (well after X hours, but with X being small enough to need to be considered)

if the resin printers are running for significant numbers of hours whenever stuff gets printed is it something a home user needs to worry about?

A little over 1 1/2 years of use have yet to replace SLA laser.

Most of my consumables other than resin, gloves, paper towels, and IPA are the VATs. Your FEP/non-FEP Vats are a consumable usually and can last for as low as 20 prints to as many 500 prints just depends on how well it is designed and you take care of it. The cost of replacement can be as low as $10 to as much as $500, it just depends on the printer.

Now with DLP/MSLA it is a slightly different story, running time will vary depending on the machine can be as expensive as $300 (DLP projector) to as cheap as $39 (LCD display). Usually, with the DLP projector, you just need to replace the bulb which is cheaper and not the whole unit, which puts it on par with LCD at least for hobby printers. For more commercial resin printers like EnvisionTEC, we do have to recalibrate the projector but that gives us a longer last life. Some devices can last as low 800 hours of printing (like the VAT it depends on how well you use the printer), not damaging the display/glass accidentally, while others can go up to 8000 hours of use.

These are definitely questions to ask on a per printer basis to the manufacturer/supplier. Always find out your replacement cost in parts, although for some lower cost MSLA it can almost cheaper to buy a new unit. Then keep the other for parts to cannibalize later, just depends on your region, replacement parts, etc. For example it easier to get replacement parts for EPAX for those in the US vs Anycubic Photon, even though the guts are the same (some parts are interchangeable).

thanks for the info

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
thanks for the info

I can only speak for the Photon, which uses an LCD, but the LCD is considered a consumable and does need to be replaced after a certain time - heat seems to kill it faster. However, "that certain time" seems to be quite a while - my LCD is still good about a year in and at some points it was printing pretty much daily. A new LCD is about $30 and, much like most things with 3D printing in 2019, too difficult for Jimmy Casual. It's not HARD per se, but there is a delicate ribbon cable that is very easy to tear along with a bunch of double sided tape doing its level best to tear it. Having a background in repairing laptops helped. I imagine more expensive printers make this process simpler and more expensive, but the Photon tends to do things very inexpensively, but somewhat difficult.

So far as the above replacing vats, My printer has a FEP (film) that does need to replaced after an unknown number of uses. You could accidentally poke a hole in it after the first print, or it could hold steady for 6 months at time until it eventually wears out - it depends on what you print, how you orient it (always putting parts in the exact same place will cause the FEP to wear out fast in that spot, go figure), and at least a little bit of luck. Replacement FEP is pretty cheap, the ones I use are about $6 apiece and you can buy a giant roll of it and cut your own for much cheaper, maybe $1 per fep. The real issue is that it's a fairly large PIA to replace the FEP, it involves about 30 screws. Again, the Anycubic way is inexpensive, but tedious.

OTOH I get prints nearly as good as a $3500 Form 2 for $400, so I'm not complaining. It's kind of a crazy time for a hobbyist, more so if you also know a bit about 3D modelling.

Speaking of, I dropped an expensive resin print today and it broke with this really weird glassy break. Not really contributing anything and previous breaks were easily repaired with super-glue.

Yup, some resins are really brittle. I found Nova3D's resin to be as you describe: even snipping off supports tends to result in pockets shattering out glasslike as you describe. Not all of them are like that of course; most are more forgiving, and you can add Monocure Flex to most of them to give them a little more flex if needed. But generally speaking, if you drop a general purpose resin part on the floor, it will almost certainly break in a way that a plastic one (probably) wouldn't.

I think in some ways you get what you pay for, the Nova 3D was very cheap and it was the worst one I've used. Right now I am mostly using the E-Sun bio-resin which looks hideous but is quite nice to use, strong but with some give, and the outer surface is almost a little rubbery - very easy to slice leftover support nubs off of or cut away small bits. I also like Anycubic Grey, which isn't as quite as nice in physical properties as the E-sun, but it's a lot easier to photograph - the E-sun is very shiny, yellow resin.

I'm not sure of what exactly they were (sounds like E-sun from the description of shiny and yellow), but I think the guy I got them from trimmed the supports before it was fully cured for that reason. He advised me to put the models in the sun to fully cure them. Of course once they were fully cured, primed, and painted the nubs just stuck out...

Wow - those plate armor guys look great. For me though, 3-D printed stuff isn't all that attractive because it is harder to convert and work with. It will be a while before I'd rather 3-D print something than get a nice sprue of plastic to fiddle around with.

Nurglitch wrote:
I'm not sure of what exactly they were (sounds like E-sun from the description of shiny and yellow), but I think the guy I got them from trimmed the supports before it was fully cured for that reason. He advised me to put the models in the sun to fully cure them. Of course once they were fully cured, primed, and painted the nubs just stuck out...

Yeah, pretty much why I both love and hate the E-sun. It's physically great but difficult to clean up perfectly pre-priming because the details are hard to see. The Anycubic Grey isn't near as strong or pliant, but it comes out a matte light grey that is pretty much perfect for post print cleanup..

The best way to address brittle resin at the moment is to grab something like Monocure FLEX Rapid and mix it into your standard resin at about 10-20% by weight or volume(exact amount depends on what resin you're using and whether you're aiming for FW-style polyurethane or GW-style styrene in terms of material qualities). It's transparent, so shouldn't affect layer times very much, and if at all it will be a slight reduction.

Unless you're in Oz it's not cheap - in the EU a 500ml bottle is about the same cost as 1ltr of the regular UV resins - but it's only adding a few extra quid to the cost of each litre and the results are much better for actual gaming pieces.

I expect that it won't be very long before companies start offering fast cure UV resins that are formulated to achieve something similar without charging so much of a premium.

Also, are you guys removing your supports before or after you post-cure? I take them off between the two alcohol baths, prior to post-curing, and I've never had issues with "shattering"(with Anycubic Green, anyway, which is all I use).