3D printers for future of miniatures games

[hangred]

Not sure how many of you have seen 3D printers in action but it appears they are getting more cost effective and faster. In the near future the release of miniatures or terrain may be on downloadable files that you can print on the 3D printers. Depending upon the printer they may just be one color and you would have to paint (I think like the Warhammer figs?). Perhaps these printers would be available at places like Walmart, etc. You would still need designers of the figures and terrain of course but it could extend the life of games such as Heroscape. Check out the videos of 3D printers. They are amazing.

[krysto2002]

Wow, amazing! I though about the idea, but having to self paint figures would be difficult. Though this concept would allow easy production of any figure for a cheap price, the painting would be an issue, though could possibly be managed someday. Currently, I'd rather stick with the packaged method, but if it ever becomes easily accessible and widely available, then maybe it could work.

I would imagine this would cut down on packaging costs, but the cost to produce figures may very well be too much.

The real question is whether the figure templates would be offered through WotC or if we'd have to clone the figures ourselves, which would destroy 'scape sales, and we don't want that.

[hangred]

This is a demo of 3D printing a bearing. Really amazing as there are actually moving parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7h09...eature=related

[Agent Minivann]

Originally Posted by hangred

Not sure how many of you have seen 3D printers in action but it appears they are getting more cost effective and faster. In the near future the release of miniatures or terrain may be on downloadable files that you can print on the 3D printers. Depending upon the printer they may just be one color and you would have to paint (I think like the Warhammer figs?). Perhaps these printers would be available at places like Walmart, etc. You would still need designers of the figures and terrain of course but it could extend the life of games such as Heroscape. Check out the videos of 3D printers. They are amazing.

I'd be surprised to see them in Walmart in the next 10 years, but that is really cool. Do you know what the finished product is? I just see powder being put in, and a binder as "ink", but I didn't see any description of what the end result is (let alone how durable it is). It is still a very cool technology.

[Fencerjared]

If you want to see something really cool, you can make your own 3d printer, using plans from RepRap; this design is an open-source 3d printer. Or, you can buy almost fully assembled kits of the Mendel RepRap. The coolest thing about RepRap is that almost every piece is formed using a 3d printer in the first place, so that if anything starts to wear out it can be replaced with ease; or, you can just build a complete new one, so it's a self-replicating 3d printer.

[delphic]

I've used these in one of my past careers.

We used them to do proof of concept prototypes or making wax blanks for metal casting. We even made some clear plastic parts to see oil flow and internal part interactions during testing.

There is a desktop version available for the consumer market for around $4000 but most of them are in the $15,000 and up range.

There are basically 3 types.

The first uses a powder and sprays an adhesive much like a Deskjet printer.

The Laser type actually melts layer after layer of plastic powder/wax powder into a structure.

The last one sprays the material directly onto the part to create it.

They are also pretty slow and the part needs to be cleaned up post printing. For the money a CNC mill is still the best option for large numbers of parts. Some hobby mills can be purchased and fitted with CNC for under $5000. CNC is short for Computer Numeric Control which allows you to program the machine to make the same part over and over without an operator.

There are also several homemade ones on Instructables.com that you might be able to make yourself, if you have good fabrication skills.

You are right, in a few years as the tech improves and becomes more affordable, this will become a powerful hobby tool and I'll be the first in line to buy one. They remind me of replicators from TNG.

Added

They also have 3D part scanners which allow you to make parts without all the programming.

Cheers,

Delphic

[delphic]

Originally Posted by Agent Minivann

I'd be surprised to see them in Walmart in the next 10 years, but that is really cool. Do you know what the finished product is? I just see powder being put in, and a binder as "ink", but I didn't see any description of what the end result is (let alone how durable it is). It is still a very cool technology.

The powder adhesive type parts are pretty brittle but are light and would make excellent game pieces. The laser parts are much more durable. And the spray layer type which is a combined adhesive and filler are similar to the powder adhesive parts but are more dense and slightly more durable.

The actual printer is only one part of the process you also need to buy the consumables. Think Ink Cartridge cost X 1000.

One genius friend of mine made one from an old inkjet printer, he put a two part resin in two different ink wells and a cleaner in a third to clean out the nozzle. Then mounted it over a platform moved with stepper motors and hooked up to his computer. Sadly, he is a far better fabricator than I. His results were pretty good as the deskjet printer is made to apply ink/resin very precisely. He basically printed AutoCad drawings over and over to build layer after layer.

I'll see if he would send me a pic or movie to post.

Cheers,

Delphic

Sorry for the multi post, but I don't get to flex the Engineering Muscle on the site to much.

[Carnival Man]

Here's another kit for a 3d printer, $750 for the basic, $950 for the deluxe kit: www.makerbot.com

It's really neat looking, the housing is made of wood...I first saw this in Popular Science a few months ago.

[Zorgophlats]

Originally Posted by Carnival Man

Here's another kit for a 3d printer, $750 for the basic, $950 for the deluxe kit: www.makerbot.com

It's really neat looking, the housing is made of wood...I first saw this in Popular Science a few months ago.

{I think this thread needs to be moved to the Custom Unit Thread.}

This may be the future of Heroscape Custom Units. I wholeheartedly agree. I know of a group of people nearby in Atlanta who have a Makerbot. If I had a file for Custom Figs, I could bring it to them and see what kind of result we would get.

[loborocket]

There are services that will make products using 3d printers. You can buy the service for one time use at a materials (plus porfit) cost.

http://www.ponoko.com/

You can have them do all kinds of materials. I think the cost of one miniture sized figure done this way would still be pretty high ($15-$20). I am not totally sure it is based off of the material you select and the total volume of the material. You can have it printed in multiple colors if you wanted to.

The older 3d printers output was pretty shabby on the durability but it is a lot better now. I have a 3d printed model sitting on my desk now that is as strong as any heroscape plastic piece.

One of the problems with making a miniture this way would be the smalest size the printer can make. It could not make something super skinny like a sword or a spear in a guys hand. there is a minimum material thickness and it is probably too big for miniture figure sculpting.

My company just released some free software you can use to create the model files these kinds of services need to print from. Give it a try and see if you can get a custom figure created.

http://www.123dapp.com/make

Here is an example of a "gorillia" figure someone on the 123d team made and is selling for $19.99. You can see a quater in the picture for scale.

http://www.123dapp.com/Prefabricated...Gorilla/593043

The services even have a setup where you can create teh computer model, post it up and anyone whop wants one can have it printed on demand and you get some of the profit for being the designer.

I have even seriously considered making my own version of Valkirie dice and selling them on this site. ( http://www.ponoko.com/ ) There are all kinds of custom dice on here for sale. I just have never taken the time to sit down and do it.

[loborocket]

Link to a BLOG I read sometimes.

http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com/2...ess-at-at.html

This guy is making a Star Wars AT-AT with his 3d Printer (and modeling it with the software I work on ).