Can we talk about 3d printing?

We used to talk about it all the time when it wasn't really a possibility, now we never mention it- I've spent more on my miniatures than I did on my $200 printer, and it's putting out terrain and miniatures that may not be 100% the detail as mold-injected stuff, but it's damn close.

There's a 3dpg on /diy/, but that very rarely sees anything miniature related,
instead just posting about the printers themselves (though I know there is one of you, and I'm half-sure you're here).

So... post your prints? Or just cool stuff on thingiverse you'd print if you could. Shit, or ask questions, I guess, though I'm hardly qualified as anything more than a casual user (a few prints a day on a cheap junk printer).

Other urls found in this thread:

reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3pw6ym/3d_printing_the_monster_manual_letter_t_with_an/cw9xb4i/
reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/6d2y5i/art_3d_printed_ancient_gold_printed_on_my_nobel/di0peud/
youtube.com/watch?v=ujQ-nMc0WGE
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Full disclosure, this bitch got no face- that's not the printer per se, the file doesn't really have a face itself.

Pictured: couch, heresy

I think this one took like 3 hours, I took a nap while it worked.

Looks cool OP.

Got any other figures you've printed?

A few, but I'm at work for the next half hour before I can take a pic of one, the others aren't particularly Veeky Forums, but I can post my friend's mage knight and some in-game currency in a bit

Have you ever tried printing game assets? That's the thing that has me pretty excited about 3d printing, turning highly detailed 3d game models into usable miniatures.

I have some models from chivalry I posed and converted but haven't printed yet. I spent the better part of a week starting to level the bed and then getting frustrated.

My buddy just got a Wanhao Duplicator 7, and the thing is the absolute tits. It's one of those liquid resin printers that prints the pieces upside down coming out of a tank of resin juice. The quality is perfect, he's printed a bunch of 28mm scale minis, and I can only see print lines/ridges if I use my 30x jewelers loupe. With the naked eye (and especially in play on the tabletop) the pieces are completely indistinguishable from traditional molded pieces. And the printer's only like $400, which is crazy.

Money money money.

Also it's arkham horror night apparently

...

I'm really jealous of liquid resin printers, but my $200 fdm actually cost me way less than $200 so I had to move on it, and I'd die before I spend 400 on something I that doesn't go inside me or let me go inside it

>Pictured: couch, heresy

But is the couch heretical?

>but it's damn close.

Not really. When it actually is maybe people will be interested. Ever think the reason people aren't clamoring aboard the current 3D printing train is because the quality ISN'T that high and you're just fucking blind or ignorant?

Dice+2d6

The issue is that we've realized that FDM printers will never reach a reasonable level of detail and precision -- and non FDM printers are far too expensive to own or operate for the foreseeable future. And so the hype died down. Outside of tokens and low res RPG characters, where detail doesn't matter much, FDM just isn't good enough for what painters and gamers want.

>Can we talk about 3d printing
Depends who's listening. GW doesn't allow any form of 3D printing discussion and you get a lifetime ban if you ever bring a printed model in

>tons of FW and GW models have CAD masters
>yfw everyone has brought in printed miniatures

What's with this faggy attitude? Don't berate him over nothing, dinnermasher.

t. pissed something's threatening to devalue his horrible investment

t. someone who's already made a horrible investment, like 3d printer that can't even print good miniatures

Not only have you wasted money on early generation printers that suck, you're going to have to wait years and years for the good ones to come out, all the while going without actual good miniatures.

If you want to call miniature buyers idiots for having a sunk cost on actual good miniatures, what the fuck do you call your shitty printer that can't even make comparable miniatures?

See That's why, faggot. You're all this stupid and clueless and deserve antagonizing. "Hurr durr why can't I be wrong and stupid on the internet without people bothering me"

At least only be one of the two, dipshit.

>games workshop victim berating other people for wasting money

I don't think you even know what you're mad about. Stop posting.

Honestly? If I had the money to make 3d prints I'd try to market a Corruption o' Champs skirmish game

Or reprint 40k units in the disney infinity style.

Anyone used heroforge?

>city stocks libraries with 3D printers
>literally nobody uses them
>drop in and spend four hours printing a half dozen muhrines
>watch some movies
>that'll be $13 plus tip

You guys need to get on my level

CoC skirmish game

>tipping your librarian
What? I mean, tipping isn't normal in my country, but even if it were I would have thought public employees were exempt from tipping? Or by 'tip' did you mean bribe.

Current technology is pretty decent as is for large pieces, but if you want shit to look good, you have to give it some post processing with body filler, sand-paper and paint.

Also being smarter about printing your shit by cutting it up and gluing it together when printed can do wonders when compared to straight up trying to print an off the shelf 3D model.

In general, learning about your printer pays dividends when it comes to quality, and upgrading a cheap printer up to high quality printer standards can be cheaper than buying a high quality printer, as long as you know what you're doing.

That's why I encourage everyone who uses 3D printers to actually put in some effort in learning about them and to tinker with them.

He means the tip of his penis for the librarian to enjoy. This is customary in most countries.

Also I'm jealous that dude has 3d printing in the library. Probably a place that has good internet speeds too

So, what's a decent printer to be putting out stuff the same quality as the examples posted in this thread?

There was a donation box at the front counter. I put the change that I got back in there.

>Canada
>good internet speeds

Only if you pay for it.
>9.63USD plus tip

I ended up building my own from parts from China, going with threaded rods rather than belts on all the axis improves the quality noticeably.

Doing it that way, you learn how to service it whenever the printer craps out.

Shit I'm in rural Canada and everything is gay here except the demographics and air quality.

I'm looking at buying a $1200 flash forge printer but wondering if they ever go on sale. Full price isn't my style with luxury items

Not too familiar with Call of Cthulhu, user

Either way I'm a fan of the simplistic disney infinity figures so I'd emulate that

I'd want one of those fancy ones that print metal. Mostly because I like metal minis. Just something about that extra weight. Though I wouldn't mind plastic/resin minis with metal bases. So I'd probably print a metric fuck ton of metal bases if I could. Would probably print some plastic/resin tokens for various things. Like the various tokens for WMH.

I'd probably print stuff for RPG's too, but that would most likely require me to learn how to program that shit. Though the thought of having minis that perfectly represent my PC's is pretty freaking awesome.

Well, if you have to ask.....

You can do amazing things with paint and green stuff. Especially if you're talented enough to free hand a face. OP's "shitty" mini could easily be brought up to table top standards for any war game or RPG. Just needs to be cleaned up a bit and have a decent paint job. Which is admittedly harder due to the fucking retarded blue color.

I love this idea. Fund it.
Trials in Tainted Space as the sci-fi equivalent/sequel would be awesome too.

Yeah, you probably got hosed.

If it helps any, you'll probably be the only person for miles with a printer. Put up a sign and charge whatever you want.

I pray that you're not in the ON.

There's a guy in the local 40k group that's gotten a 3d printer and what it puts out is nowhere near 40k models. You either have to sand it down a ton or use a large amount of GS to cover parts up. That being said, it might have potential for neat terrain. Would be cool for custom stuff for board games though

It's not much, but these were the minis we used for a short F-Zero campaign a friend of mine ran a few months back.
The machines from left to right
>The Arctan
>The Weeb Wagon
>Storm Crow
>The Hover Gondola
>America's Dick

I would want to do big stuff like make a bunch of Titans and Dreadnaughts. Then you can use brass etched or other bits to add details

You're not likely to get crisp models out of a 3D printer, at least not for a while. But for a guy who wants to print out some models in order to skirmish with friends, it's great. Especially if you're not willing to papercraft stuff.

That said, you can use the 3D printer to make for you a template for an injection mold, which in turn can be used to make clean, cheap models should you have the means to do that.

But it wouldn't be tournament kosher, no.

Yeah a few times.

>Premium plastic is great,
>Transparent plastic is alright,
>Metal is gritty as fuck and not good,
>Bronze is amazing quality, but so overpriced that it's just not worth it unless you simply can't live any longer unless you can hold your Mary Sue figure in your sweaty little hand.
Of course the detail is limited by what you see in the browser, so you'll never get anything on par with Raging Heroes or anything like that.

bla bla bla reddit.
A guy created free WotC aproved 3D models of all D&D monster for printing.

reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3pw6ym/3d_printing_the_monster_manual_letter_t_with_an/cw9xb4i/

sorry an updated link.

reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/6d2y5i/art_3d_printed_ancient_gold_printed_on_my_nobel/di0peud/

I'd love to print the footsoldiers from Wizards just for some good, generic, loveable mooks.

youtube.com/watch?v=ujQ-nMc0WGE

>started using it
>awkward as there is no male/female button and all figures start as white wimminz
>$30 for a miniature, are you joking
>customising
>Derriere slider is labelled 'booty'
>well if you're going to be niggers and use nigger language, you can just go on to fucking foodstamps like a nigger

Fuck heroforge.

3D printing only seems great for terrain or low detail models.

It can't really compete economically yet. -

The overall cost of a 3D printed part compared to an injection molded part is tied to the quantity being produced, assuming the aforementioned quality issues do not preclude 3D printing as an option out of the gate. In the study at Lowell, the cost of 3D printing 300 of a certain size part was $20 each. The piece price of injection molding a million such units with a steel mold was just $1.13 each.

This comparison is entirely pointless. The two methods have entirely different purposes.

Both make things

One makes a lot of things cheaply at a high startup cost

One makes very few things expensively at a low startup cost.

They're worth comparing when talking models.

>going with threaded rods rather than belts on all the axis improves the quality noticeably.

Really that's interesting. Everyone is always like Belt, Belts, tension your Belts.

It must be slow and suffer from backlash though, right?

>They're worth comparing when talking models.
No. They're not. Not a single person, anywhere, is advocating using 3D printing to replace injection molding for mass manufacturing.

3D printing is for prototyping and printing one-off custom models. Injection molding is for mass manufacturing in the millions.

3D printing can be compared to sculpting your own model out of modeling putty, if you want to compare it with something.

go away

Leadscrews are slower and more expensive than belts and they can provide more force to the toolhead. This is good for CNC milling, but pretty pointless for 3D printing.

3D printing features no heavy loads and can operate at a much higher speed. The only place leadscrews have in a 3D printer is for the Z axis.

On a properly built and configured belt 3D printer, you'll run into other problems before the belts start affecting your accuracy and you'll be able to achieve much greater speeds than you could with leadscrews for an equivalent price.

>GW Zone Mortalis set costs 600 pounds for a table's worth of terrain
>3D printers cost $400
>their terrain looks like

Hmm. I think I know which one I'd go for.

Whenever the subject of 3D printing miniatures comes up, I always wonder: if people are expecting the quality and price to improve to make it feasible for small-scale hobbyists, then why hasn't that already happened with existing technologies?

>if people are expecting the quality and price to improve to make it feasible for small-scale hobbyists, then why hasn't that already happened with existing technologies?
It kind of couldn't. Think about it this way: the original printing press was in no way feasible for personal use. The exchange of press blocks, the production of page plates, all require professional modification and tuning. It wasn't until the digital printer that hobby printing became a thing.

3d Printing is the "digital printer" of plastics manufacture. Soon, it will also be the same for metal manufacture and more. This won't put these companies out of business... books still exist despite print 'n' play... but it will create a new sub-hobby of enthusiasts crafting their own shit rather than relying on professional work.

Who knows, maybe we'll see homebrew minis games here on Veeky Forums someday soon.

It's alright. But the minis are so expensive that I found myself making MORE generic looking guys so I could reuse them. So it's kind of self defeating if you're cheap.

You can also not use miniatures.

Patents inhibit many of the more cost effective technologies.

Although, I think some of them expired/are about to expire shortly.

>It kind of couldn't.
Why not? Injection moulding works for mass production, so why hasn't someone scaled it down for single custom miniatures? There would be obstacles to overcome, sure (like being able to cheaply/effectively produce the moulds too).

But I don't get why people think those obstacles are insurmountable, whereas the obstacles to scaling down 3D printing for miniatures will inevitably be solved.

This is just chilling advertising, dont react to it.

>Why not? Injection moulding works for mass production, so why hasn't someone scaled it down for single custom miniatures?
Movable-type printing works for mass production too. Still not feasible for personal use.

>But I don't get why people think those obstacles are insurmountable, whereas the obstacles to scaling down 3D printing for miniatures will inevitably be solved.
The obstacles you are referencing aren't insurmountable, but require skill. This acts as a hurdle for the same reason that most people don't know CPR. Printers don't require skill and time to produce printed page. You just print.

The convenience is what makes it feasible for home use. Even the computer didn't hit households when it required punch cards.

Anyone have a good collection of 28mm terrain pieces for printing?

Once again, if you're making dozens of models for a wargame, or tokens for a board game you want to bling out, you would *not* 3D print them. You would use a CNC mill to create a single mold, and then use that mold to cast the models/tokens yourself. It will still be as slow as 3D printing the lot, but it will cost a fraction of the price.

It is nice to hear that they got so cheap. And I thought that the best you could ever get was using FDM printers with acetone smoothing of some sort.

This. There are tons of great options for terrain. Actual models need a SLA printer like the Wanhao Duplicator mentioned earlier in this thread, but terrain and vehicles just work.

>if you're making dozens of models for a wargame
More like thousands. For personal use printing miniatures is certainly cheaper than machining out a mold and getting the equipment to do injection plastic.

When you're talking about making a mold, how intricate are you talking about and how do you suppose it would be made "yourself".

>How intricate are you talking about
Depends on how expensive a CNC mill you're willing to buy or rent
>How do you suppose it would be made "yourself"
No, you would make *casts* yourself using the mold. The mold would have been made with a CNC mill.