"This technology will DISRUPT miniature companies." says Maker's Muse

[limburger 21534xp 0]

@blinky465 I think a ready-to-print fileformat for 3D prints would definitely lower the barrier.
You’d still need a ‘raw’ format (or something similar) for people who want to change the model themselves.
Maybe a few basic parameters could be built into the file too ?
Example would a a miniature with a variety of poses and weapon options that could be set at the printer thereby reducing the need for programs like Cura by ‘normal’ users.

That still leaves a lot of prep and post-print cleanup though, but I suspect that there’s ways to fix that too.
The EPAX X1 is said to be calibrated at the factory already, which definitely will help a lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if auto-levelling became a feature for next-gen 3D resin printers of this type.

[ced1106Participant 6207xp 0]

Architects of Destruction ran an injection-mold dungeon terrain KS based on designs originally for 3d printers. They still own several 3d printers printing full time, so I’ll believe the a technology is disruptive when a manufacturer says so.

That being said, local evolution tends to be overseas revolution. This isn’t the first technology I’ve seen that has a marginal value where it was invented, but may have much more at a different location. Shipping prices are constantly increasing, and this includes the cost to ship individual miniatures. AFAIK, Most individual miniatures are made in the UK and USA, and, especially after Brexit, costs to ship them to EU and AU are quite high.

OTOH, Look how the inkjet printer has “disrupted” book publishing. It hasn’t. It’s instead allowed us to “publish” individual web pages, PDF’s, our own documents, etc. Book readers haven’t exactly “disrupted” book publishing, either. Instead, these technologies have increased the population of readers, though each participating technology may have a smaller slice of the consumer pie.

With miniatures, then, custom individual miniatures, more suited for RPGs, may be more commonplace with 3d printers. Meanwhile, entire sprues of armies may be more cheaper to create and distribute through conventional molding. This assumes, of course, that your 3d printer isn’t occupied to make some other, more important, thing. Replacement parts… custom storage… plenty of uses for a 3d printer!

[limburger 21534xp 0]

@ced1106 the printing press did disrupt the book publishing proces when it was invented.

dotmatrix/Inktjet/laser printers didn’t do so at the consumer level, because books moved to the digital realm.
However we did get print-on-demand services, which was impossible to imagine a few decades ago.

And although we can play games in a digital setting, the rest of our hobby still requires physical objects.
We may have less reason to actually paint as 3D printing at full colour becomes a realistic option (the tech exists at an industrial scale).
Heck … even the simple fact that manufacturers can print painted minis is kind of a gamechanger.

We’ve already seen the quality of boardgame minis move from wooden meeples (in premium boardgames) to high detail plastic (CMON Zombicide and others).

It’s already having an impact on the design phase of projects as developers can see their designs in real life without having to wait for the prototype to arrive from China.  They still need to wait for the mass-production examples, but I wouldn’t be surprised if indie developers started selling 3D printed variants instead of resin or metal simply because the tech to do so requires less specialised skillsets. I can definitely see 3D printed minis used as for mold making.

[laughingboy 20673xp 1]

@warzan given the relationship with Printable Scenery I would love to see an Interview on the weekender, see how they see the future of this space, what they are up to etc etc

[blinky465 17024xp 0]

I would love to see an Interview on the weekender, see how they see the future of this space, what they are up to etc etc

I know Big Ben at 4Ground had a room full of 3d printers. It’d be interesting to hear how 3d printing has (or hasn’t) worked out for a mid-range producer (I know 4Ground’s name is in laser-cut terrain, but they have the capabilities for batch printing minis).

I’m still convinced the disruption will be more a mass take-up by the home user, than by production companies churning out thousands of minis on 3d printing machines (if only because in larger volumes, casting is still a cheaper production method).

It’s been interesting to see @warzan get fully onboard with 3d printing resin, after a disappointing start to 3d printing with FDM. In the time I decided to get a printer – and completely independently from that – I’ve seen lots of Youtubers getting onboard just in the last few weeks (although some of them were donated “freebies” which might have helped them make the decide to give it a go). Luke at LukesAPS just fumbled his way through using an Elegoo Mars and from the off got pretty decent results. BlackMagicCraft joined the cool kids a few weeks back. NextLevelPainting took the plunge and started asking if it was the end of crafting!

It’s almost as if printer companies have moved onto the miniature hobby and decided to reach out to a few “influencers” to help them get a foothold in the market…..

A few thousand people watching Luke churning out pretty decent models with almost no experience or 3d modelling skills – all on top of the coverage we’re seeing here on OTT – that could be enough to take resin printing “mainstream” for home users (bypassing traditional manufacturing)?

[phaidknott 7012xp 0]

I think the thing that holds me back from the whole home 3D printing is it forms yet more prep work for getting a game in. It’s a hobby in itself, and although it does give you the advantages of being able to produce terrain and minis not normally available it also forms (for me) a big time sink.

When I look at the lead mountain of unpainted stuff I already have, being able to home produce more offerings to this monument to aspiration over reality would probably be a really bad idea.

Now “if” someone could produce a “home 3D PAINTER” I’d be all over it 😀

[phaidknott 7012xp 1]

@blinky465 We’ve had some updates over at the Fabled Realms Kickstarter.

They’ve had more than a few obstacles in trying to get 3D printing to a manufacturing level. Some of the issues have been the resins “curing” in the bottles before they even reached the printer, edge refraction distortion due to forest casting (whatever that means it’s a bit technical for me), and not being able to use the full bed to cast minis. All this has meant the production costs for the minis have been a lot more than they had originally planned.

So they are now going to ship the game with normal drop cast resin, and offer the 3D prints as a “collectors” mini (at a higher price). But I do think 4Ground really stepped forwards in experimenting with the technology (and probably know more about the hurdles that need to be overcome), and if they hadn’t tried to do it…then we’d never have known if it was feasible or not (the actual answer at the moment seems to be “kinda”).

So probably we’ll need to see the new larger bed printers appear to do the forest casting, AND see a reduction in the resin costs before we’ll be able to print off entire armies (ie 100s of figures) at home. If this becomes viable to commercially sell the 3D printed figures (where you need to produce 1000s) by a wargames manufacturer is probably a way off at the moment.

[Author]

Posts