3D printing

>plastic injection molding is far cheaper on the macro scale
Until that point changes, probably nothing.

Well thats the issue. If you're going to drop say 1000$ on minis, you can print some on a printer for that cost, and then your marginal cost on printing the next one is way lower than just buying one, where as a manufacturer will produce $50k worth of minis at $2 a pop, but then has to sell them all. It makes the garage aspect of the hobby much simpler as opposed to all the rubber pouring and resin/metal casting one has to do now.

I've seen some excellent printed miniatures, and the shitty ones are from years ago.

I'm still not convinced that affordable 3d printers can give great miniatures. I think even if it is possible, you need to do a lot of careful experiments with resolution and speed. Even if you get it to work, the poses you can work with are limited. Action poses aren't really possible unless you print lots of tiny pieces.

Terrain though, does print up really nicely. 3D printed terrain has arrived, and you don't need to print to a crazy resolution to make it look nice.

>printing perfect, fully painted miniatures
I really couldn't see that kind of technology existing within the next three decades.

Let's just focus on how to get half-decent 3D prints of miniatures. It's possible, but fiddly as fuck. Imagining what 3d printing will look like in 50 years is just meaningless hype.

A company called Obsidian are releasing a printer next March that costs $99. It can print in resolutions down to 50 microns.

It'll happen.

I've seen other hobbyists print some pretty cool looking miniatures on home 3d printers, just not sure how because I've seen some shitty ones.

It seems to take days to print decent looking human-like miniatures and I'm not convinced all home printers can manage it. Terrain has a clear future on 3d printers though. There's loads of companies that produce 3d printer files for terrain, and they're confident enough to show you what it looks like printed on a cheap low end printer. It looks good even on a low resolution print.

People are starting to 3d print 6mm scale Epic 40k armies, and those look OK too.

I'm kind of surprised I don't see more 3d printing enthusiasts showing off large swathes of printed armies. It's always some one off model or other rather than anyone making a strong sales pitch. Some company is going to make boatloads of money selling this idea of printing miniatures, if they could just get a marketing department worth a damn.

>>b-b-b-but 3d printed things have lines and look like shit
Haven't you been told enough last thread when someone showed a Predator made with a state-of-the-art 2000$ 3D printer and it still looked like a 90s-era cast despite being the only good one in a long serie of failed attempts ?

>I'm kind of surprised I don't see more 3d printing enthusiasts showing off large swathes of printed armies
Because it doesn't really work ?

I have a printer and a desire to build modular terrain with it

Am I in for disappointment?

That particular printer was also a 3d scanner, which tells me it's a bells and whistles unit as opposed to something being developed for a low price.

Also, it was FDM. Keep reading.

link to the last thread? I'm always curious to see how the prints turn out. I was looking into that last SLA printer kickstarter and browsed a lot of the sample prints on thingiverse for ww2 tanks and quite a few of those look to come out really nicely. But those were all in smaller scale than 40k. Also some good looking epic scale prints but again, much smaller than 40k.

>That particular printer was also a 3d scanner
Wrong tho. The Ultimaker 2+ isn't a scanner

It does, because you can find videos of guys printing some one off mini, but never doing anything like printing 2+ dudes at a time or focusing on flat prints or just printing the the same thing several times.

Neither is the Form 2

here's an example of one of the tank prints. This was an sla print in two parts, the body and the turret. 1:100 scale.
It would still require clean up of the supports but from the look of it that's no more difficult than clipping parts off a sprue

My bad. Google pops up an ad for a scanner bundle. I was wrong.

It was one of the Death Guard bitching threads. The one with 3 models in the OP pic. It wasn't specifically about 3d printing so you'll have to dig through it.

It is very expensive to print minis, and printing up and army might as well cost as much as buying more printing equipment. Not to mention the work in designing the print itself is a whole lot of work unless everything is printed off someone else's designs.

Honestly, at this point, the quality is there, but the expense is still prohibitive for anything but individual minis unless it's done large-scale.

Of course, I'm looking into getting a 3D scanner. Is there anything that can scan in tiny stuff like warhammer minis in good detail out there?

That's a nice model. Does anyone know if if is possible to purchase one from the maker? Because I certainly would.

too many of those recently to sift through. let it be lost to the sands of time.

>Honestly, at this point, the quality is there, but the expense is still prohibitive for anything but individual minis unless it's done large-scale.
The problem is that 3D printing doesn't really scale up well.

Of course you have the 3D model already but you aren't cutting costs nor time if you are printing 30 or 1 mini.

That's why the industry works ith one 3D printer for the design, then classical injection/cast.

You have a point but, there have been dozens of these super cheap kickstarter scamms before and none of them deliver.

youtube.com/watch?v=oVWLpvekby0

It'll probably be about the best 3d sculptors selling their designs directly to the consumer.

You have some of that already, but you also have Shapeways which does all the printing where the sculptors just need access to the software (and the hardware to run it) to send their designs off to the printing service.

Still expensive, and you're looking at 10-15 USD for a single miniature currently, and probably 20-30 for a larger single piece, which is actually somewhat competitive with GW's prices for single hero kits.

We'll you're cutting time if you print 10 or so at once, but you're also looking at if your print fails halfway through, that's 10x more wasted material.

As far as cost, it should eventually even out if you print enough. Assuming something like $500 for the printer and $.50 in material, if you print 1000 figures your cost per figure is $1. The thing is what game are you playing if you need 1000 figures?

alternatively, if you can sell some of those, you can make your money back, at which point your primary concern is not getting a copyright troll on your ass.

More smutty models.

Elf tits. Elf tits everywhere.

The future looks promising

There a guy who goes around selling these huge 3d printed landscape models to golf courses. He uses a paper 3d printer. Could be interesting if the price on those ever comes down, because those suckers can print in color.

>So with 3D printing actually reaching the point of putting out decent figures,

No. Stop that.

No. You.

>but 3d printed things have lines and look like shit

To be fair, so do GW miniatures.