Very impressive!

As 3d printers become cheaper and cheaper, and of higher resolution, and 3D scanners follow suit you may see the death of miniature manufacturers - you simply won't need them any more. Plus the monetary incentive to produce miniature lines will be completely erased.

As a miniature designer myself, I'm interested to see where things go with this hobby.

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ONSLAUGHT MINIATURES onslaughtmini.com

Those were done with 50µm that's 1/20 mm horizontally and vertically.

The best the machine can do is 50µm horizontal and 6.35 µm (1/157mm) vertically.
Whether you really can get down to 6.35µm depends on the resin used. From what I read 25µm is about the best you can get with the "ordinary" stuff. You can get better results by mixing different resins and/or adding pigments,

Horizontal and vertical is relative to the printer. You can rotate your model, so that the best resolution ist along the axis where your model needs it.



I will do a Drop Pod first, because it is a "geometric shape" and there is something I want to test.

Than I plan to do a Space Marine, mainly because I want to try some infantry and I expect them to be easier to design than anything with a face.

And after that I think the novelty will have worn off a bit and I will sit back for a moment and contemplate what I really want to do



I'm sorry I didn't make that clearer.
I only did the two in the middle the others are original GW or converted GW. You are right, the models are not scanned but made from the ground up, as you see by the differences in the chassis.

No, I had no formal training, but I used 3D programs for other things before.
I can't really guess hoes difficult you will find it to do something like this. The easiest thing to do would be to download Blender/free) or SketchUp (there is a free version) or any other 3D software and give it a try.

Regards
Stephan

Wow, they seriously aren't too bad at all. Painted they look great. Think of the possibilities.....

But I have to agree with Deacon here, this will pretty much kill off miniature manufacturers. I can't see what they could offer over making your own.

I can definitely see a market for the 3d models though. Having given it a go myself, although it's perfectly possible to create your own models, it is time consuming and moving from friendlier shapes like tanks to organic shapes would be a definite step up.

There's always going to be a market for creativity and talent...

yes but once the scanners become commonplace - piracy will take care of the STL file distribution. So the incentive to spend time creating the 3d models themselves will be destroyed.

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ONSLAUGHT MINIATURES onslaughtmini.com

I would not be too sure of that. Analog gaming is not exactly a gold rush and incentives may vary, but I doubt money is a primary driver as is. And if so, what makes it worthwhile even now?

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)

I think like in a lot of areas of our hobby and generally, you will always get a few people who have the talent/innovation/time/money to be creative enough to make new minis. On the other hand, there are always a lot more people who prefer just to buy the end product. I think miniature design still has some life in it.

Well sure, it will be a while - I'm talking 10+ years down the line when the resolution of printers and scanners is higher, and the units are cheaper to buy. They will be common household items.

The repercussions of this will effect far more than the miniatures market - it will have a huge impact on modern life as we know it and the economy at large. It will be like the scare of free file sharing and information but on a much larger scale - the free sharing and creation of physical goods.

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Some random thoughts, not really organized, because I want to start modeling (not designing as I will keep close to the GW design for now) the drop pod.

All the following IMHO, and I might be completely wrong.

In fact they can offer a lot.

At the moment, it's a messy and very expensive and time consuming process. We are far from a consumer scan and print scenario.
In some years (10 - 100) this might change.

Lets's assume in those 10-100 years 3D printing and scanning gets as easy and effortless and cheap as the 2D version.

Than we have the situation, that we have with books. In fact the situation is better because in the end you need a physical entity and not some virtual thing - so there will be no ebook effect - on the other hand the ebook effect does not effect the authors (miniature designer) as much as the publisher (miniature producing company).

DTP enlarged the number of "designers", and allows anybody to make his own newspapers, brochures or books, but how many people do so and especially how many do so and produce high quality ?

DTP has created a market for templates.

Writing a book needs creativity, talent and time and not everybody who reads writes his own book.

The book hasn't been impacted by scanner and printer too hard. Because it still needs a lot more of your time to scan and print a book, compared to going into a shop and buying it. E-Books are something different, but we are not talking on playing virtual games.

I think 3D printing will go in a similar direction.
There ares some creative or not so creative people, who will invest blood, sweat and tears into the design of miniatures and 3d printing will allow them to produce those miniatures - just like DTP allows for home-publishing and publishing the smalls print runs.

Most people will not do so, and just as most people will not sit down and scan/print a hundred pages, because it is easier and usually cheaper to order the book , they will not scan and print the miniatures, but order them readily printed in an "supposed" better quality and most likely also cheaper.

The miniature designer will also profit from the 3d printing, because he has no need for molds and it doesn't really matter (except for the design time invested) whether he sells 1 piece 1000 times or 1000 pieces 1 time. This allows him to sell his creations, without a dedicated "production-company". He can do his production at home, or has his products made by an contractor, but as there are no molds or other product specific investments needed, he can swap contractors and hunt for the best quality/price ratio.

Or he has a shop in shop, like it is now on shape ways, where you can have models produced from different designers,

I also expect the miniature designers to provide something comparable to templates in DTP.
That might have the form of a soldier where the customer can swap weapons or armor and possible change the pose to a certain degree.

Or something like model for poser. And the designer generate add-ons in form of weapons, mounts - whatever.

Also there might be a DRMS that allows to print a number of copies from a file, so the designer can sell a standard design, but the customer can print it at home - if he insists.

I agree that the business model for a miniature-selling-company will change , but the miniature designer will still be designing miniatures and he will be needed. And I expect there to be a shift from design only (i.e. for a company like GW) to producing miniatures directly. And there will be more designers, more likely bringing up only numbers, but not quality.

For the producer there will be different tools and technique that he uses, for a company that sells and produces stuff there will most likely be a change from selling 10000 times the same miniature to sell 100 pieces of 100 types each.
But this doesn't effect the designer negatively, in contrast it produces theoretically more work for him.

I've make a destination between designer and producer. I realize that even today often enough both are the same people. In this case he probably will change back to pure designing and will have contractors for his manufacturing.

One possible drawback for employed designers is a falling wages as potentially more designers push for jobs. On the other hand there will be a need for more designs.

I do not know whether any of this will be proved by the future - but I can't see the designer to be becoming superfluous.

Regards
Stephan

I watched a tv show recently which showed a state-of-the-art printer (about the size of a chest freezer) that's being installed on the space station. This is pre-programmed to print tools or small spare parts. I'm not sure what they were printing with but a working set of pliers and a hammer were printed in about four hours each and both were strong and durable.

I really want 3D printers to be household item cos, well, they're like Star Trek, innit?

However, I think they will need to change A LOT before that happens.

Look around your house. How many things that you bought can be made on a 3D printer? I don't know about you, but almost everything I own is a composite product, would require complex assembly, or is produced using a specialised material or equipment. IMO it is extremely unlikely that a home 3D printer will ever be able to produce true composites at an equivalent quality for less than it costs to mass produce and ship them. I hope I'm wrong though. If they can't do that, the number of things people are going to print is going to be limited, because people DO care about how things look

Besides, it's just a basic law of economics that doing things at scale is much more efficient than individually. Why don't we still grow all our own food? Next, consider that other home printer you probably DO already own. Did you ever print paperbacks on it? No? Why not?
1. You wouldn't save much (or anything) to do so, because the publisher can print per page for much less than your inkjet.
2. If you did it, it wouldn't have a nice cover.
3. You don't have the specialist equipment needed to bind it.
4. Even if you did have the equipment, it would take too much of your time.
5. The source files were not available (there was no market, for a combination of the other reasons).
Note that YOUR printer isn't used for printing paperbacks, but that's not to say books aren't printed.

I hope the technology improves enough to be able to have widespread application to justify everyone having one. In the mean time, miniatures should be ideal things to print really - small, single material, huge variety of designs.


However, what i DO think is realistic is for it to alter the way a wide variety of goods are manufactured, with less emphasis on shipping manufactured goods around the world and more on shipping raw materials, with manufacturing done locally. The printers can still be expensive and complicated.

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I think at least in the medium term, there's no danger from simple momentum. But long-term I think this might be better for you deacon. Look at how Troublemaker has been doing things. What if everything was done as a kickstarter? That is, come up with a unique design, then offer to release the model file once you've raised enough $$$ to cover the fixed costs.

Here we go again.
The Droppod is basically finished.

That's what it looks like


On the bottom you can see the pockmarks from the support structure.


The doors can be opened


to reveal the interior


You can see the stands for the marines with headrest and brackets.
They are connected to a pylon in the center.
And above them the rocket launcher can be seen.

So why isn't it final ?
The door hinges break too easily as can be seen on the photograph. The parts are not cured, so this may be solved by curing - or not, which will make a design change necessary.

And of course I have to paint one to see whether the detail survives priming or whether I have to exaggerate it.

Each door is a part and everything else is a single part. It might prove very difficult to paint the inside, so I may brake the big part up to ease or in the worst case allow painting.

Happy new year
Stephan

Wow! That certainly looks promising. Seems you found a fun new hobby.

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)