So, I heard you could print warhammer stuff. I did some google searching and found these. I wonder who did them

You probably paid for the 3d printer just by the money you saved with what you have on the table

what? no baneblades? heresy!

lol true.





how well does the model compare to the real thing?



i cant see it being nearly as detailed.



 

I've got the file. Need to increase my y-axis gantry range before I can print it though.

I played Space Marine on the xbox 360.  It was fun.

Does your potato have a macro mode to take close-up pictures? I would love to get a look at the level of fine detail you were able to print.

but...how bout a warcraft set?

This.

What sort of scanner are you building?


Link?

I'm pretty much done with my Mendel 1.5+ build.  Finally.  

That all depends on your nozzle size and what you set for your Z resolution. I've got a 0.15 mm nozzle which will replicate everything down to the most minute detail when used at a .1 mm z stepping. I print most of my stuff with a 0.4mm nozzle and 0.2 mm  z stepping. When I show those "lower res" prints to the hardcore players around here, it's basically dudes lining up to blow me to get prints. Very close. On a table you will never know. You'd have to pick it up and inspect it to tell. With the .15mm nozzle, you couldnt tell.

How hard is it to get into Table top WH40k? I've been a big book fan and video games, never table top. too niche, expensive and nerdy, however sounds fun

Pretty cheap with a 3D printer. The above might be ~40 bucks worth of plastic, tops. If I didnt print vehicles, I could probably get close to maybe 500 or so marines out of a roll? A roll costs ~30 bucks, 3 marines retail cost me ~15. I think I could get 5-6 vehicles out of a roll. Probably more. I honestly dont know, because I'm always printing other things as well. I know for sure I printed 3 tanks on a roll and had plenty of plastic left over.  A lot of my plastic cost has been failed prints while simply working out the bugs and tuning my 3d printer.  I'm finally at the stage (after about a half a year a nightly tinkering) where I can get whatever it is I want to print perfect on the 1st try.

So can you elaborate in your set up and cost?

This... Now THIS.. is cool.

In before the GW takedown notice.  Good jorb OP.  Now the Limeys will own ARFCOM.

GW got their PPs stomped last year doing that, effectively ending their trolling careers. They almost went out of business because it cost them so much.

Whats the legal precedent on posting a picture anyways? Oh yeah, GW cant do shit.

My original setup was a Printrbot Simple (299 base price). I have since increased the size of X, Z, and have printed out the parts to do Y. All with GT2 belt conversions. The new axis upgrades are all found on Thingiverse. I've got acouple of different print size nozzles, but mostly use 0.4mm. All my steppers have heatsinks and fans on them.  If I had to do it all again, I would have went with a Prusa i3 knowing what I know now. It's a much better design for not much more (~500).  I've gone through 5 rolls in ~6 months, but I print all sorts of crap.

I know, but it's way more fun to run around pretending they're bringing the sacred thunderhammer of Litigious The Elder.  As I mentioned in another thread, I don't play, but the first thing I did when a buddy got a 3D printer was demand he print a marine model as an FU to GW.

what kind of printer do you have?

nm i see where you posted

I decided I needed to make Chapter Master Smashfucker. So of course that means I needed to print out a Bike squad for him. Here's what I printed out so far today (primed already).

For the ignorant can you elaborate what this is so i can Google it?

Not quite.  I can tell they're not GW just by some of the difference in the models.  For instance, turret shape for the Predators is wrong, the drivers slit is wrong (the GW models have a shield on the fron that flips up), the treads are too thin, and the hatches for the driver's compartment are wrong.  The GW model has two equal size hatches side by side.  The marines, it's a bit more difficult to tell - I think their proportions might be a little off, but for them I probably wouldn't notice on the tabletop.  Especially not once painted.

Even knowing they're 3d prints, I wouldn't bat an eye if you were my opponent.  I'm doing my pre-Heresy Luna Wolves using chinese recasts.  Gotta do what you gotta do, considering the insanity of GW's prices these days.

GW has fucked themselves royally with the absolutely ridiculous cost of their plastic. It's fucking PLASTIC. It shouldn't cost me $30 for less than a pounds worth of the shit.

Not a 40K player, but very interested in how this could be applied to Battletech.

Are there resources for multiple types of miniatures?  Or can one scan and print from an existing object on a home printer yet?  Most of the scan & prints I see are fairly crude yet.


Just because they're cool... Mechwarrior Online 3d Minis.



Pewter and lead are still better, but it sure would be nice to be able to fill up placeholders with plastic.

Man, that is awesome.  I played WH40k a long time ago, it was crazy expensive.  I had a Blood Angels army, Dark Eldar army, and a small Imperial army as well.   I bet if 3D printing caught on in that community, they would put GW out of business.

GW won't go out of business if they're smart.

They could be producing models with all kinds of variations for their customers to print at home.

Make metal or plastic models that are incomplete but with a disc with specs for building the last parts - like limbs & weapons and such so each is further customizable - and easier to customize.

Make entire datasets for customers to buy on disc so they can print some minis at home.  Sure, some will hit pirate sites, but a lot of fans will still buy stuff.  It'll be no different than RPG companies having to deal with PDF scans of their books.

People will still want the minis, they'll still want their own data for the minis, and they'll still want books.


Plus imagine if the artists who make their minis/models right now were freed up to use autocad even further to make minis.

Or if you needed a MechaGoblin DeathSquad Kommandant or whatever and you could just order the specs online for $1 and print one out.  Probably wouldn't be as good quality as a metal one, but you'd have a placeholder and you might still buy a metal one online.  In the meantime, you're playing their game.

How much does one of those figures cost to print?

I would totally buy official STL/OBJ files or custom figs like in the scenario you described.

Too many companies (very evident of hollywood/record companies) dont understand, me printing out stuff isnt "lost" revenue for them. I NEVER would have bought their product in the first damn place. Way too expensive. However, because I am able to print stuff out they HAVE gotten money from me buying books and models for points of reference.



Cents.

The bigger vehicles might cost a dollar or two.

That's a model issue, not a printer issue.

Since printing these, I have acquired 100% accurate models of the Rhino and Predator variants. Not all of my models are 100% accurate, but with a sufficiently small nozzle; they will duplicate whatever the model portrays.

How does one make a 3d scanner? Does it feature measurements/dimensions?

Reason I ask is that I was quoted over $1k to do a 3d scan for an item and would like to save some money and do it myself.

I stopped by a GW store locally just to see what they sold. My reaction to some of their prices was literally


$30.00 per figure ETA: plastic figures, not metal

Granted some of them looked cool as hell, but that's ridiculous pricing.

Hah, you should have looked at the larger models.

There's some that come out to $110.  

And how long does it take to print one?

I need to befriend you haha.

That's awesome. Over at Dakka everyone would accuse you of stealing.

Well done, sir. Guerrilla 40k at its best.

Often times, Hollywood and record companies do have quite a point.  It is taking some of their revenue.  But at the same time, the market is changing, and with some ingenuity, it's not that difficult to adapt.

I'm reminded of how Tori Amos was selling her songs for $1/download, or asking for folks to donate on their own (I forget which), and finding out that people would voluntarily pay for something they were technically proficient enough to steal.


In GW's case, they could easily start offering their basic figures for cheap digital downloads, or even free.  Then put out new physical ones at premium prices that new players (no longer discouraged by high startup costs) will eventually pick up.  When you want your limited edition HighWitch DeathKill Priestess of KilloDoom, you go drop $40 on the mini with her accompanying DarkPopeMobileGoKart and get what you want to complete your army of NecroKillDeathBorg CyberTrooper BoneCrusher Legionnaires.

As well, GW could invest in a custom build utility program that allowed for easy modification of miniatures.  If you could say "I want a Ghost Ravager MechaOrc NinjaMurder KillBot with a DemocideNecroAssassin Blade and a MegaHealStimPak", you could just drag and drop your orc's gear and then print it.

With a custom utility or download program, you could just download digital files for new gear as they introduce it, so when they come up with tournament rules for your ZombieTroll MurderFest SmashWagon that includes the DarkMurderPlagueDeathPathogenCannon, you could just print out a new one.


There'd be an economy of scale going on pretty quick on the files to make minis.  As well, kids who decide to play because they can acquire a few miniatures cheap but can't afford a 3D printer will still buy a few handfuls of minis from the factory as well.

VERY nice, OP!

Hella good work!

That's actually the exact reason they cost 30 dollars.  The UK put a huge tax on products with lead.  It would have been economically unfeasible for GW to continue making any pewter models.  They actually, just recently, melted down and sold off their entire stock of metal minis that were remaining.

After this legislation went into effect, they had to very quickly come up with a stopgap solution.  That was 'finecast.'  Generally, resin in the old molds for metal models.  It didn't work out so well.  The molds for new finecast models that were cut and vented with resin specifically in mind were a lot better.  But they've also turned to multi-piece single-sprue plastic kits for some characters.  These are the 30 dollar single plastic figures you're talking about.  Why are they 30 dollars?  Because the heavy, metal molds for plastic injection molding are expensive.  Thousands of dollars each.  A smaller mold like that one is on the less expensive side of things, but that is also a model that a marine player will only need one of (if he needs one at all).  Whereas they may need two or three tactical boxes.  The cost is spread out over fewer models, then.  There are other kits, like the Baneblade, Wraithknight, or the brand new Imperial Knight Titan that are 100-150 dollars, but these kits are huge.  The molding machine they're made on is large, their sprues are large, their parts are large, it's all expensive.

That's not to excuse them entirely.  GW has been jacking up prices quite a bit, and has been spouting nonsense about how they're the luxury sports car of miniatures (IE, implying that they can afford to price themselves into exclusivity because they are the choice of sophisticated and discerning clientele).  But the whole single-model-for-30-dollars thing is something you can lay at the feet of the UK nanny state.  It's also hard to excuse FW lately.  They have been turning out a huge number of new kits for the Horus Heresy setting, but their quality is naff.  The designs are great and always improving (master sculptors with the aid of 3d design and printing), but it's clear that they're using molds way beyond the time they should be replaced and pulling resin before it's fully cured so they can do another pour in the same mold.  Considering that their shit costs more than GW's and they're cutting corners like that...

The motorcycles for instance take 2.5 hrs for 3 of them. Those big tanks?  10 hours each. All depends on build plate space optimization and Z height.  After I do a test run and get the settings dialed in and make whatever adjustments need to be made, I save off the gcode, get it printing, then go do something else.

Which also brings up another point. Assembly for me take longer as well. The standard space marines basically just have 2 parts that you need to glue on. The way I print them out, I've got to glue together the head, shoulder guards arms, legs and weapons. So assembly, at least for those pieces, takes longer. For others its faster. The lemon russ, pop the treads on and chose the turret I want on top; done.

yeah just like with RPGs people will buy at least one hard copy of the rulebooks.



hell they could make bank by charging 99 cents for a model file, kinda like itunes you can get every single song from a torrent but people use it because its legit and its not expensive.



 

While the price of their rulebooks and codexes has gotten ridiculous lately, GW is not in the gaming business.  They are in the model selling business.  The game is just a delivery method for their models.  It's why they push the hobby aspect so hard and why they don't have support for tournaments or really anything other than casual games amongst your friends.

Edit: And while 3D printing is getting cheaper and more available, it's no where near widespread enough to justify any kind of business shift on GW's end.  I really don't see that kind of plan being viable for at least a decade.

Excuse me, but where are teh pictures?

It's a strange business model.  If supported the tournament scene would be (and even unsupported is) a cash cow.  GW treats it like a red-headed step kid and promotes their goofy casual play style instead.  Playing a mega-thousand point battle requires space that you can't find on your kitchen table.  That means an organized space for play and those spaces thrive on tournaments and the sales that they generate.

The game started as a basement hobby game to play with your buddies while drinking and eating chips.  GW has never intended for it to be anything more substantial, and it shows.

Their business model is to sell bits of plastic and metal to people who a)enjoy building and painting, b)enjoy collecting, or c)enjoy playing some games with their mates.  Everyone else is irrelevant to them.  Hell, these are the same guys who called the Orc squad leader a "Nob", because they thought it would funny to have a bunch of teenage boys talk about playing with their nobs...

And Apple started with a couple of geeks soldering circuit boards in a garage.  You can honor your roots but grow your product to meet the market's need.

Not if you're British, apparently.  

^^^^

Yeah, what happened. Edited out? Why?

I got nothing.