Don’t forget where we’re headed!
February 16, 2012 by warzan
Sometimes it feels to me that as fans of the miniatures industry we forget to raise our heads to see what technology is just round the corner and just how powerful it actually is. Prepare to lift your head...
While this demonstration is focused on a non miniatures product, the purpose of this little distraction is to nudge you into realising that technologies and processes that have these abilities already exist.
And ooh boy do they cost (remember that the next time you grumble about the price of your piece of GW plastic), but like all technologies the price reduces and penetration into industry increases.
Whether you like it or not, the future of our hobby/industry will depend on (or dictated by) these technologies, and both the quality and complexity of whats possible will rise.
Cling to the past at your peril? Or protect it at any cost?
What do you think?
3d milling…nah. its gonna be the powder metal inkjet stuff which you finish in an oven of some sort. The reprap is cheap but resolution is a bit poor at mo.
google you tube for 3d printing also see shapeways
Chap at work has one of these. At the moment it feels a bit ‘dot matrix’, but there will be a time in the future when we are printing models from a 3d scan or google sketchup. It’s not going to be far away, especially with micron level laser etching.
Theoretically at least the rise of miniature design using CAD/CAM systems should allow the speedier production of plastic injection moulds using the 3D milling to cutout the expensive hand work – either way the day GW drop prices is the day I’ll show my arse in John Lewis’s window.
Note that this document does not in any way count as a contract 🙂
A 5 axis machine is good for when you want to make actual power armour, but its not very useful for making models (for the next 10-25 years anyway) due to the fact its actually far cheaper(but still thousands of pounds) to make the mould once in steel to fill with hot gooey grey plastic, just like using a 3d printer currently is still slightly too expensive to get by making the models from them, but rather the prototypes can be made then a rubber mould made from them to cast in resin. Both techs will get cheaper to run… Read more »
Im sure it also has its uses in making those molds 😉
Replace the drill-bit with a mechanically adjustable air-brush nozzle and this thing could conceivably do my painting for me.
One idea for army painter to sit on until it becomes affordable.
I would love to have a 5/6 axis painter…. Imagine bolting a squad of troops in your machine and heading off to work. Come back, and it’s painted perfectly (or at least to as well as it was programmed).
Its not so much that 3d printing is expensive but very slow
Very cool machine. With the cost of 3d printers coming down, one day every hobby home will have one. I see a future where you pay a license to download a 3d model from the interweb, then your license covers 10, 20 or 100 uses, then is removed from your machine, much like ACC coding on itunes songs. That way all the production costs come off the game company and then goes either to small local shops or home users. This would also encourage more 3d model purchases as the cost of the printer will get spread over the more… Read more »
Not to mention that the trend with repraps is that they’ll be able to reproduce as many of their own parts as possible, meaning you’ll be actually able to “print” majority of your printer at a friend’s.
Machines that come with the instructions to build themselves, and Landraiders… hey we make STC machines! Good job human race, now can we go back to the moon?
And also more free-to-made miniatures, because 3d modeling is not that hard and there are great free programs like Blender that can do awesome stuff. Youtube it if you don’t believe me. About license i don’t know how much that would make sense because someone would get a way to crack that but i’ll be possible if they are reasonable with their prices and the community support that way. A good example of a way to combat piracy is Steam, you always get a very great game at a very low price once a year is pass from the release.… Read more »
You wouldn’t even have to crack the licence/software, by the time we have affordable 3D printing we’ll probably have affordable 3D scanning of roughly equivalent quality, so you’ll only need one copy of a sprue/model and the licence becomes irrelevant.
Totally agree, I forgot about 3d cameras :(. Well if free is inevitable, free shall be :P. Maybe the systems has to change and try to make utopia true ( here is a true dystopia as long as I can remember )
Yep Warren, that’s what I’m talking about :). It’s not so high tech but more good engineering and programming, the good thing is that it work on many materials different materials. I’ll be great for the making miniatures matrices. But IMHO it seems very time/energy consuming than the powder 3d printing method and very residual wasteful ( expect that you use low temperature boiling metals or reusable plastics ). One day we could use those organ-tissue printers for make our own zombies made of flesh and bone!! ( hooo I’m going crazy just thinking that they could be remote controlled… Read more »
I’m not referring to this machine for making the miniatures, more the injection molds, but the basic premise is that technology is rampaging through the industry.
3D printing has its place in prototyping and low quantity production. When it reaches the home , then the need for ‘manufacturing’ goes the way of the LP and Audio Cassette, You become a software company not a manufacturer – that’s gonna be a very exciting time (at least in my opinion!)
Me too, because I’m a software developer :P.
Hey Warren check out powder metallurgy
process “pretty cool stuff”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCfUd7ZEOjg&feature=related
Very Very Nice!
Am I at the symphony or a machine shop?
Already here chaps. http://www.makerbot.com/
Still kind of pricey, but quite capable of replicating items, or making your own custom items like heads, shoulderpads, armor plates, etc.
Much like some of the other 3rd party companies are already moving to.
Makerbot is currently too low in resolution, but a definite step in the right direction.
i tohught you were oging to show the resin laser machine the one that fires a laser at a pool of resin and by moving aorund and turning down the power so the laser goes not so far then the resin is drain away and leaves the model sitting on a chunk of metal
Old hat! 😉
3D Printing in stainless steel is the new kid on the block 🙂
I see a future where we gamers will all have 3D ptinters. That GW will sell the printers and 3D kits that have all you need to print X amount of models. The file, powder, ink/bonder cartridges. Grant it GW will make sure that the files only work with official GW 3D printers and only of a set number of uses. It’s sort of like the early days of my field of work. I make signs. When the signs industry got vinyle cutters, the machines had pegs on them. What where they used for? To make sure that the vinyle… Read more »
never gonna happen peoplw ould hack them for unlimited use then post it online and evryone would get it and peopple would repost it when it went down and GW would be ruined
i said it was never gonna happen not that i wouldnt want to watch it happen
3d cameras and scanning would ruin any restriction system that you try to put on it. The only way to solve the problem is Kickstarter and very good prices that would make it inexpensive ( and printing restrictions wouldn’t make any sense really ). Fund raising is the way to go for me because you get pay for sure for what you did ( just see the Double Fine example and there are a hell lot more ) We need more community/fan type of economy, where even the early investors get a little bite of the revenues for fundraising the… Read more »
You’re right, I was thinking along the same lines; if we could print minis, then who sells the materials to do so? The mini makers themselves most probably. Unless we’re extremely lucky and the factories that make the minis right now start to sell plastic and resin to the public; but we wouldn’t get it at wholesale; they’d have to cover the cost of their losing their business to personal 3D printers. And so the cost would have to be somewhere close to the original prices for boxed or blister packs of minis that we get already (minus the packaging-but… Read more »
I meant to say “You’re right…” @manpug lol
Agh, you can print it with whatever material you want! Even chocolate (YES THERE ARE CHOCOLATE PRINTERS!! )!! And what about the cost of management , packaging, distribution, shipping, retailers and so on ?!?!.
Them how is that there a a lot of print&play companies like the guys from Terralinks that just sell pdf ?
that’s cool. imagine how fancy you could make tanks look with it.
I would like am aluminum Land Raider please.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ-aWFYT_SU THIS is the stuff that’s got me really excited. E-mailing people usable tools. Imagine what it’ll do for miniatures and models.
I don’t know. While the actual printing process is pretty darn cool, I doubt the scanning process works like they showed it, esp the part where he just selects the “screw” of the spanner. Everyone who has ever worked with industrial grade CAD programs knows you would need more than a few scanning sweeps to create movable parts inside other objects, let alone to get them highlighted by a single click
Well the thing that I started to ponder is could technology catch up in the development of mini’s. To where it totally removes the hobby aspect of war gaming. I don’t believe this question is far reaching considering My first car had a eight track player in it. At the time it was thought to be state of the art. Now say it does catch up and the industry is able to produce stunning mini’s w/ say like multi colored alloys and zero flash or need to perform tricks with super glue. Would it create more buzz for war gaming… Read more »
Multi colour high quality prints will give you the PPP dream but still allow painters to touch up the minis- the issue is one of cost.
AT43 was excellent but to expensive (plus other factors). Done right it will fufill I great need for many folks whilst still allowing the hobby side.
If you can melt down the minis and reprint them it would be perfect- today I shall play 40k, next week I will play at43 and the day after Warmahordes. All from basically the same resin/plastic/metal/space age material
I some what disagree,
Consider this if you are one of those players who just slap together your army which all still gray plastic, and mostly proxy. Sure this would be totally perfect. However from the hobby side what is the point if you are only going to melt them down and reuse them.
Why bother painting, why bother performing high end sculpting or scratch builds, why bother messing with it at all.
From the game manufacturer point of view, its a bust as well to reuse the same material for different game systems…
Thus the reasons listed, I pose the original question…
The future is not gonna please the makers..You can already 3d scan an object then print it
I agree that the future might be grim…hey maybe GW got it right after all 😉
I guess my thoughts of the technology boom resulting in an adverse effect on the gaming industry, is one that is shared with others… I noticed that alot of war gamers at the store I go to are IT guys and such. It seems plausible that this is because the last thing they want to do is gaze at a monitor on there spare time. IE- video games. If the hobby aspect consisted of looking at the monitor to recreate armies for a specific war game as opposed to painting and actually modeling. I guess the whole industry would suffer… Read more »
I think this make for a great help in making molds. There is a video floating out there on the web that shows how the mold process takes place, I believe it was for a Leviathans airship. With a mill that acurate it would take far less time/money.
http://monstersinthesky.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Leviathans_Core-Production-Mold.jpg
Shapeways is awesome if you’re down with CAD. My epic-scale Necron force thinks so, at least…