I had considered a 3D printer for some time. Then the need seemed to go away as a good friend had one and was willing to print stuff for me.

Then I saw a kickstarter including loads of building files for Normandy, and I bought in. After a couple of days I realized the amount of time needed to print these files. Far too long to expect my friend to do them.

So I purchased a 3d printer. It is now running 24 x 7. Fortunately Mrs Orcs is fascinated by it.

I have bought the license to sell the prints, but not sure if its actually viable to do this.

I am currently learning while printing lots of stuff. Steep learning curve, just wish it was faster.

I had a quick chat with Dave about 3D printing recently.

His opinion was that 3D printing was OK for producing masters but too slow to be cost effective for productions runs.

Jim

It's probably viable for producing small runs for personal use:
 * Buildings / terrain.
 * Specific figures - especially fantasy "biggies".
 * Vehicles.

Many moons ago I saw a dungeon tile offering.
Print your own floor tiles, print bits of wall to clip in.
Print features like furniture, staircases ...

The big sell was the ability to customise the surfaces: dressed stone, rough stone, cobbles, runic friezes, good symbols, bad symbols (You get the picture).
It sounded great, and the tiles worked out cheap.

On to the reviews and I learned that the tiles took around 6 hours to print (each).
And at that point I decided that 3d printing wasn't ready.

3D printing has some fantastic potential, but the time input required both for configuration and cleanup as well as actual printing can still be pretty steep. It is becoming more and more affordable and I suspect I may be tempted to pick one up in a couple of years though. Could be useful for filling a few gaps in ranges and doing one-off terrain pieces.

Until set-up is plug it in and connect it to your PC and printing is load the file, press the button, printed/ cured/ washed item drops into the tray a few minutes later I'm going to be happy to pay others to print stuff for me.

Its addictive

Quote from: Ithoriel on 13 January 2023, 11:30:43 AMUntil set-up is plug it in and connect it to your PC and printing is load the file, press the button, printed/ cured/ washed item drops into the tray a few minutes later I'm going to be happy to pay others to print stuff for me.

Yep, with you on that one.

For personal use they're a fantastic piece of kit, but as others have said above, it's a steep learning curve.  If you can get past that then it opens up all kinds of possibilities, especially for terrain.

Commercially though, I just can't see how 3D printing can be viable for all of these companies.  We've got printers here so I know that I can get about 6-8 vehicles on a print bed but that it'll take 2-3 hours to print them.  When I can get 5-6 vehicles in a metal mould and spin it 15 times per hour, there's just no comparison with traditional casting. 

The 3D printers will definitely get better, with faster print times and bigger build plates, but any increase in speed will come with a corresponding loss of quality, reliability or component life.  It'll take a real leap in the technology to be able to print things quicker than you can spin cast them.

The only way I can see these 3D printing companies being viable is if they've got dozens of printers all running 24 hours a day.  With a single printer making 8 vehicles every 3 hours you'd need to be charging over £4 per vehicle just to hit minimum wage, and that's not taking into account the cost of the machine or the materials. 

3D printers also run at a failure rate of upto 10%-20% so 1 job in every 5-10 will fail and you've got no product out of it.  So you need to charge more to account for that too.

Few points to make.

1. So far it has been virtually no cleaning up.
2. Printer runs while everyone is asleep, casting machine requires a Dwarf to operate it. the dwarf needs to be fed if not paid.
3. 3d printer can print vehicles on very limited runs, making unusual vehicles viable commercially.
4 20mm buildings work out 1/10th of the price of resin and are as good.
5 I only have to print 20 buildings and the machine has paid for itself.
6 Currently printing 20mm French 38L tractors and trailers  at 30p each a saving of £9 on a resin version. Three will print overnight. For the amount of times I would use them I could not justify the cost if not printing them myself.

Here's something to aspire to ...


I'm not just sucking up (for once) but I'm happy for Pendraken to produce my gaming pieces. I can see the attraction if you do Warhammer type games: i.e. larger scale, fewer models, more variation.

Having said that, I'd love to have a go! Love to see how the process works.

I would probably spend 12 hours printing something, then break it when taking off the supports.

It's amazing how the technology has come on in just a few years.

QuoteFew points to make.

1. So far it has been virtually no cleaning up.
2. Printer runs while everyone is asleep, casting machine requires a Dwarf to operate it. the dwarf needs to be fed if not paid.
3. 3d printer can print vehicles on very limited runs, making unusual vehicles viable commercially.
4 20mm buildings work out 1/10th of the price of resin and are as good.
5 I only have to print 20 buildings and the machine has paid for itself.
6 Currently printing 20mm French 38L tractors and trailers  at 30p each a saving of £9 on a resin version. Three will print overnight. For the amount of times I would use them I could not justify the cost if not printing them myself.

One of my friends got a 3D printer around 6 months ago - and he has had very positive experience, much like Orcs.


Setup was really quite straight forward, no great fiddling to get the first prints to work. He has been printing stuff pretty continuously from 35mm super heroes to 10mm terrain. One of the main projects he has done is two 10mm Star Wars armies - these rescaled from mainly 6mm files. This was a very quick project.

Print time can be a while - but it can run when you are asleep or at work - there is no need to watch the printing. The biggest effort is the release and clean-up when a print is finished - but this mainly seems about getting a work flow that works.

One earlier comment about long print time for dungeon tiles was surprising, as print time is largely defined by the height of the piece - so I would have though dungeon tiles would be quite quick (unless they included full height walls)

There are a couple of things stopping me getting one, you need a reasonable area to setup the printer and the curing station. This probably wants to be away from living spaces as iso-propanol is quite smelly. My other concern is that I would just end up with a giant 3d print mountain to rival the lead mountain. Acquiring new stuff isn't really the problem for me!

Quote from: jimduncanuk on 13 January 2023, 10:24:32 AMI had a quick chat with Dave about 3D printing recently.

His opinion was that 3D printing was OK for producing masters but too slow to be cost effective for productions runs.

Jim

I suspect you're right at the moment, unless you're running massive amounts of printers in parallel. Which hikes your costs up...

There's also a very crowded market for "commercial" 3D printing - there's only so many "bespoke" orders the market can offer a month, and I've seen a fair few folk start up, chug away for a while, then close sharpish.

Mind you the current UK Omnicrisis hasn't helped with that.

Quote from: Orcs on 13 January 2023, 03:30:00 PM2. Printer runs while everyone is asleep, casting machine requires a Dwarf to operate it. the dwarf needs to be fed if not paid.
3. 3d printer can print vehicles on very limited runs, making unusual vehicles viable commercially.
4 20mm buildings work out 1/10th of the price of resin and are as good.
5 I only have to print 20 buildings and the machine has paid for itself.
6 Currently printing 20mm French 38L tractors and trailers  at 30p each a saving of £9 on a resin version. Three will print overnight. For the amount of times I would use them I could not justify the cost if not printing them myself.

Definitely and I think those show the benefits of the technology for home use.  The overnight aspect is a big plus but I think folks will be surprised how many mornings you'll wake up and find something resembling a Salvador Dali painting in the printer, rather than your tanks!  We've been printing a WWII armoured train this past week and it's taken 3 attempts to get a print that we're happy with.

Quote from: toxicpixie on 14 January 2023, 10:08:33 AMThere's also a very crowded market for "commercial" 3D printing - there's only so many "bespoke" orders the market can offer a month, and I've seen a fair few folk start up, chug away for a while, then close sharpish.

That's something we've noticed as well, someone gets a 3D printer and starts selling prints but then quickly realises they're not making any money from it and they disappear again.  It's similar to some of the painting services or custom scenery companies, where someone starts up and undercuts everyone else on price, then they find out how much time/effort/costs are involved and they vanish.

Yeah, I think that's an accurate comparison - I've also got friends with 3D printers, and they'll run stuff off at cost plus a little (as I'm usually not willing to eat their lunch and always feel a beer voucher on top is worth it!), but they're not commercial, they're not looking for a living, and mostly seem happy to just help defray the cost of machine & resin.

They're doing what they'd be doing anyway AND a couple beer vouchers on the side.

Making a living out of it... that's a wee bit more awkward!

Yes, I think that making a living is difficult, unless you have several printers running at once.

I am having problems printing a roof for my first building, the roof keeps coming unstuck from the bed. This is down to my inexperience as my freind has a similar prinyer and has printed loads of 28mm roofs. Unfortunately he has just gone on a 3 month cruise, so I canot pick his brains for a while.

My printer is FDM, and there is a slight smell, but i just keep the window open a tad.