So how do you think it would take for 3D printing to become a norm for making your own figure/model for your tabletop...

So how do you think it would take for 3D printing to become a norm for making your own figure/model for your tabletop game session?

Time. That's basically it.

It'll never replace miniature companies entirely, scale of production will let them mass produce figures cheaper, but as the technology for home 3D printing gets cheaper, more advanced and more ubiquitous we'll eventually reach a point where printing decent miniatures isn't too hard. It's difficult to say how long it'll take to get to that point, at the very least a good couple of decades I'd think.

It will only happen if 3d printers become something that most people have, like what regular printers became in the 90s.

Spending a couple thousand dollars on a printer precise enough to produce warhammer models doesn't really make financial sense for the majority of gamers.

If I had one I would use it for minis that wouldn't be used often enough, and ones that don't have fine enough detail where the loss in accuracy wouldn't matter.

I think they'd be good for terrain and buildings and such. The big start-up cost is prohibitive for most people though.

What I am really exited about personally is the prospect of either home 3d printing or light industrial 3d printing reaching a point where it is cheap enough to get custom parts and accessories for models. Storefronts like shapeways are still quite expensive and can't reach the same quality of detail of really high precision injection molding. For production at scale, injection molding is unlikely to be surpassed in the near future, but what we are likely to see is smaller manufacturers switch from white metal or resin to 3d printing.

>The big start-up cost is prohibitive for most people though.

The printer resins that can hold good detail aren't exactly free either. People keep forgetting that these things cost a bit to run.

No, no. If they just wait long enough they'll be able to buy $100 machine, press a button and a free army will fall out of it.

I played Warhammer with 3x5 card Chimeras and Nickle guardsmen. (Quarters were Space Marines.)

There will always be a market for pirated models, but the cost is prohibitive. I don't think plastic / resin will ever be cheap enough to really warrant it.

When something happens to make normies want a 3d printer. Right now they are just for nerds.

As mentioned there's waiting for printers to become cheap and reliable enough (a lot of the cheap home kits avialbke now actually need a bit of constant tweaking and tuning to keep them precise) people to get one just as part of an office setup.

Printing custom minis will also meanjng having to digitally scult them first. Much like conventional scutlpting most gamers aren't going to spendnthe time to learn it properly so like now most gamers won't be sculpting (and printing) custom minis.

I see them becoming common with RPG players before wargamers, you can already get one that prints acceptable quality for rpg scenery, minis and props for under $1k (under 500 if your willing to assmble and tweak it yourself). Spending that much to print generic themed terrain and such for all your ongoing campaigns is probably an attractive "investment" for fairly active DMs.

I'm more excited about cheap Laser Cutters.

You can cut out Vehicle templates and build terrain from a lot of different materials.

Anyone own one of those cheap Chinese ones? They any good?

> 3D printing to become a norm for making

Not in a long time. I cast models at the moment, but very few people do that - I guess they deem it too much effort.

So for 3d printing to be the norm you'd basically have to be able to just hit the return key with your dick and identical mini falls out.

FDM printers have hit a brick wall in development and aren't ever likely to be good enough for miniatures.

I think SLA will be were these future home printers are, they can be made cheaply and Resin can be sold for a high price.

But you still have to fuck around with resin, and models produced aren't going to be as good as the High Impact Polystyrene plastic GW ones. Because Resin is nearly always shitter than Thermoplastics .

Plus overall I agree with this guyNormal people don't really have much need for 3d printers, if the caster wheel breaks on their swivel chair they aren't going to 3d print a new one out of shitty materials not really engineered for that purpose, they're going to go down to Wilko and buy a new set of injection moulded ones for £2.

Also, unless things have changed, a lot of machines have a tendency to fuck up their prints.

They take forever to finish, too.

>I played Warhammer with 3x5 card Chimeras and Nickle guardsmen. (Quarters were Space Marines.)

Glorious.

Wasn't the Reprap thing to build Printers and use those Printers to Print more Printers then distribute those Printers to inner city youths to Print more Printers.

Shame it never worked out that way. Too much effort calibrating and re calibrating.

I got a Printrbot Simple Metal about a year ago for ~$600. At the time it's what I would consider on the lower side of a mid range printer in terms of price and detail.

I've printed a LOT of terrain and vehicles for people, but the quality of my machine is just outside the range of being able to do good quality minis. I give it another five years at most before this really starts to have a big impact on the hobby.

This.

3D printers have to have a function that most, if not all, people will want or need before they become widespread enough

I let LEGO "print" all of the pieces of my models for me.

They have been doing this for a very, very long time and have become exceedingly efficient at it.

I'm building a shitty Repstrap out of recycled printer parts and long heavy duty draw slides at the moment.

I wish I'd have known the price of printers would fall so low - I'd have just brought a cheap kit and strengthened it.

Lego is even more expensive than GW though

>a free army will fall out of it.
this meme has got to stop. Right now the cost of buying a printer and plastics are actually much more expensive than buying the models normally, the quality is much worse, but even then the models don't just come out of the machine ready to go. You still need to put in time to clean them up, sand down the ridges, seperate them from the base plate, etc, not to mention the very slow speed 3d printers operate at. Yes within our lifetimes 3d printers will improve, but you are only fooling yourself if you think it will happen soon.

Lost a game once because the norse team made three dodges with their Yeti and then picked up the ball in the inzone

that's kinda the end goal of reprap, though not youths specifically.

its still an ongoing project though so its a little early to call it a failure.

I'm personally not sure it ever will.
I mean, there ARE people out there with 3D printers, but they tend to be engineers and 3D artists/graphic designers.

Still, the price on these machines has come down significantly. I have a feeling that when a machine falls into the less-than-$500 range with decent resolution, average people may start buying them on impulse. At which point the price might come down again on the printers.

...but like how people generally don't print entire books off at home because the cost of ink/toner is so high, I imagine that as the price of 3D printers starts coming down, the price of printer plastics will go up, with rfid chipped spools so that only their own plastics can be used.

In GW's case, they'll have to do two things to survive, one is pointing out how ugly 3D printed minis look in comparison to their impossibly high quality minis, and the second is to drop the price point to low enough that it's slightly cheaper to buy the minis than it is to buy the equivalent amount of printer plastic.

More or less how print books have survived..

>with rfid chipped spools so that only their own plastics can be used.
something like wouldn't be a rrally thing. there'd be nothing stopping me from just rewinding the spool with new plastic for example.

Like with ink printers, they have an atrempt only let you use proprietry cartridges. but its easy enough to get around if you can be botherd.

most people can't be bothered. Honestly, for years now there have even been instant coffee makers with proprietary packets of coffee. Despite coffee being available so many different ways, the proprietary coffee makers are still widely popular, and profitable.

What you idiots fail to realize is that you dont need to buy a 3d printer yourself to make it viable.
When it comes down to even 4-5 k range for a fast and reliable 3d printer that can copy the 28mm details recasters will have a field day with those.
More and mroe people will start recasting and due to competition prices of them will go waay down .

Easy workaround though, you just cut the top off a used brand name cup and slap it on top when you brew an off-brand cup

It's always gonna be cheaper to mass produce things.
So never for the "making your own figure/model" part
A few years, probably, for the " 3D printing to become a norm" part

an even easier workaround would be to buy a different coffee maker in that case, as there is a competing, and cheaper, design that intentionally uses generic paper filter pouches that any company can manufacture... and yet people still choose to buy the name brand device and the expensive proprietary plastic cups

I don't care about making dudesmen. Lemme tell you what I want from a 3d printer: fukken terrain. I've been playing Necromunda since it was first released under that name. Cities are expensive. And I'd love to be able to change up my Underhive from time to time. And even with the startup cost, it's a lot cheaper to build a 6x4 city out of plastic spool than to try and buy the pieces. Requires a lot less expertise and finesse too, unless I miss my mark.

most home 3d printers can only print small things, so you would have to print your terrain in several pieces and then assemble it. If you want cheap terrain, make it yourself out of cardboard, foam, and other materials. The final result is as good looking as you want it to be - if you spend time to add lots of detail it will really shine.

>if you spend time to add lots of detail it will really shine.
really this is where 3d printers are most useful, making some foam walls are easy to make. 3d printing is good for all those small intricate details like hatches, vents, techno gunbinz and so on. stuff thats really tedious or time consuming to make from scratch but you need 20 of for your table.

you can also buy cheap-ish airplane / train / gundum kits and chop them up for greebles, something people have been doing for decades, but a 3d printer would be far better for producing parts that fit to your design

When people's standards for acceptable quality drop significantly.

Everyone always underestimates the growth of tech, frankly. They used to think computers would never be small enough for personal use, let alone to fit in your pocket. I think it won't be 20 years before you see this shit everywhere.

This thread was being posted eight years ago.

See you in eight years