Good 3D printers and traditional games.

[Vebyast]

Just thought I'd leave this here: RepRap is a project to build a low-cost, open-source 3d fabricator.

According to wikipedia, a some-assembly-required kit for one costs $400 (compare to $1.5k for a commercial kit with comparable print quality and capacity), and it prints for about 1% as much money per unit of volume (2 cents per cc versus 2 dollars per cc). I'm not sure how reliable those numbers are, but if they're at all accurate I can see it being cheap enough for individual game stores to afford one. 400$ is only about as much as five or six sets of DND core books, after all.

[Koumei]

400$ is only about as much as five or six sets of DND core books, after all.

Or a single blister pack from GW.

[hogarth]

Actually, I do know how much it costs to warehouse things, and it is a lot. Hard example: Runner Havens was given a large print run, and cost less per book than the multiple smaller (3k books) print runs that were given to Runner's Companion. Nevertheless, because of interest and warehousing costs, Runner Havens lost money, while Runner's Companion made money overall.

You're missing the point. Runner Havens lost money because it was unpopular. Print-on-demand will not magically turn unpopular unprofitable products into popular profitable products.

[Username17]

Actually, I do know how much it costs to warehouse things, and it is a lot. Hard example: Runner Havens was given a large print run, and cost less per book than the multiple smaller (3k books) print runs that were given to Runner's Companion. Nevertheless, because of interest and warehousing costs, Runner Havens lost money, while Runner's Companion made money overall.

You're missing the point. Runner Havens lost money because it was unpopular. Print-on-demand will not magically turn unpopular unprofitable products into popular profitable products.

Runner Havens sold all the books. It simply took a long time. Had it not had to contend with warhousing issues, it would have made money.

Erratic sales, like those enjoyed by miniatures, increase the costs of storage and inventory holding. Just in time production reduces those costs substantially. Had Runner Havens been produced with some sort of efficient just in time setup, it would have made money.

-Username17

[Caliban]

I was running a GW indie store a few years ago and I looked into the 3d printer set up.

The problem is that a decent printer starts at £20,000 and the print quality isn't brilliant. At 10 layers per millimeter, which seemed at the time to be an industry standard, the texture on the models ends being comparable to sand paper. And it's especially bad on tight curved surfaces. Also the models tend to be rigid but brittle, so drop one and it breaks. So good luck making anything like skeleton with thin limbs.

Printing costs run to about £1-2 per cubic inch, but until quality improves I don't think it's viable.

And this is for a professional level machine, the open source while a great idea just doesn't have the resolution for this application.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yeah, I think that it'll be about a decade or so in before 3D printers get the resolution we need so that a plastic figurine will feel like, well, plastic.

[hogarth]

I was running a GW indie store a few years ago and I looked into the 3d printer set up.

Interesting. What kind of miniatures would you have made with it? Obviously you couldn't have used it to print "official" GW miniatures.

Runner Havens sold all the books. It simply took a long time. Had it not had to contend with warhousing issues, it would have made money.

So? I agree that it would be great to have some magical business plan that gives you free warehousing. That doesn't mean that it would have been profitable as a print-on-demand book.

[kzt]

I know of a little game company that does POD. It takes about $20-25K of capital to have the fast duplexing printer that puts out 11x17 BW or color on cover stock, the binding gear, etc.

If you order a book (typically from the web site) one guy print the contents, prints the color cover, binds it all and puts it into a shipping box and hands it to the UPS guy. And it's a nice looking book.

[Sashi]

So? I agree that it would be great to have some magical business plan that gives you free warehousing. That doesn't mean that it would have been profitable as a print-on-demand book.

No, it would have, that's literally what he said.

[Vebyast]

The problem is that a decent printer starts at £20,000 and the print quality isn't brilliant. At 10 layers per millimeter, which seemed at the time to be an industry standard, the texture on the models ends being comparable to sand paper. And it's especially bad on tight curved surfaces. Also the models tend to be rigid but brittle, so drop one and it breaks. So good luck making anything like skeleton with thin limbs.

Printing costs run to about £1-2 per cubic inch, but until quality improves I don't think it's viable.

And this is for a professional level machine, the open source while a great idea just doesn't have the resolution for this application.

You have inspired me to do some actual research.

RepRap currently prints using polylactic acid, HDPE, or ABS, all of which are pretty darn strong. As a result, printed pieces are not fragile at all; for example, check out the plans for the reprap's default extruder head, which has an impressively-ratiod pair of gears.

Unfortunately, resolution appears to be pretty much what you say it is. These specs say that the reprap can build discrete features as small as 2mm and that these features are precise to within .1mm in two axes and to .3mm in the third. Here's a nice picture for what that looks like: a printed extruder head. Zoom in and you can see every little detail. It does look like the surfaces are a bit rough, but it can do small features pretty well, and the fact that it's building gears in a thermoplastic extruder should answer your questions about the durability of small parts.

Also, the reprap is ludicrously cheap compared to whatever you were looking at. It's only $520 (£330) for the parts plus $.18 (£.11) per cubic inch of printing. As Koumei says, you could just buy one of these instead of the latest set of minis.





TLDR: The resolution appears to be roughly what you say it is, and I agree that printed one-inch minis wouldn't be usable hot off the printer. However, it would probably work for larger units with a little sanding and detailing, and the finished pieces are a hell of a lot more durable than they used to be. It's also ridiculously cheap, within range for consumers that have enough money for minis (to say nothing of the stores selling them!).

[cthulhu]

The step would need very careful management because it would effect painting as well.

[name_here]

So? I agree that it would be great to have some magical business plan that gives you free warehousing. That doesn't mean that it would have been profitable as a print-on-demand book.

Er, print-on-demand literally means no warehousing. You only print books when they get ordered.

[PhoneLobster]

Look the RepRap is nice and all and is interesting as the low end of the market to give you an idea of the minimum capabilities and cost of these things.

But no way would you use it for this, not even for home mini piracy. Maybe for the odd boxy tank or terrain piece.

A store, even an individual would pay more than that, and the more expensive printers are apparently capable of printing down to micrometers or something crazy so...

[Username17]

The z-corp Z650 makes a squad of 28 mm miniatures in an hour, has a minimum feature size of 138 microns, creates models that are already in color (if you care), and produces models at a cost of 20 cents per cubic centimeter in materials. It costs... sixty thousand dollars.

It seems you can get accurate enough, fast enough, and cheap enough, but not all three at the same time.

-Username17

[cthulhu]

The product demo for that printer is pretty cool.

[Vebyast]

As I admitted, reprap isn't suitable for much more than terrain or really rough mockups.

The problem I see with that z-corp printer is that it uses a binder and powder support. Binders are really fragile, and the requirement for powder means that this particular binder is really fragile. As Caliban noted, anything that printer makes would shatter if even put it down hard.


Also, Frank, I'd replace "fast enough" with "sturdy enough". As people have been saying, the average customer only buy miniatures once a year. It doesn't matter that it takes all week to print an order because you're only selling one order a week in the first place. However, minis need to be strong enough to survive being dropped or being dumped into a box and carried around, so "sturdy enough" is definitely a criteria.

[PhoneLobster]

Sturdy enough shouldn't be an issue, I've already read articles that imply these things are turning out components for mechanical devices being used as replacement parts for machined aluminum.

Superior replacement parts. That suggests pretty sturdy to me.

[Caliban]

There is one area where 3d print technology would probably work and that's scenery (buildings/ruins) on demand. The roughness doesn't matter too much there, you can easily design hollow items to reduce costs while adding cross bracing for strength. Only issues is speed and you can't get around that for the moment.

Ironically enough the more resolution you get, the slower the process, as you have to do more mechanical passes to build up the model.

[cthulhu]

Sturdy enough shouldn't be an issue, I've already read articles that imply these things are turning out components for mechanical devices being used as replacement parts for machined aluminum.

Superior replacement parts. That suggests pretty sturdy to me.

This heavily depends on the exact composition of whatever is being laid down. Different machines use different chemicals and produce very diffrrent mechanical properties at the end - one to remember is they are much more like ceramics than metals, which can lead to the brittleness.

Pieces are going to be very hard, but unlike metal or plastic, when they fail they will fail catastrophically. This isn't a problem in gears because you keep the stressors within designed limits but it's likely to be a problem in, say, something that's knocked off a table. (I doubt these things would be damaged in a box)

That all said and done I have no doubt that some 3D printers are more than enough to make something tough enough for hobbyist stress!

[Koumei]

We don't even need it to be "so strong that if you bump it off the table it won't break." Games Workshop products, even things that are lightweight plastic held together with superior glue, can't survive that without snapping or being demolished. The differences here are:

1. In most GW cases you can repair it if you can be fucked gluing it back together (possibly with extra pinning. And if it was a banner or staff that snapped, it will never be straight and evenly lined up again) then redoing the paint job, in this case, it will probably shatter spectacularly.

2. It costs you a few dollars to replace as opposed to a mortgage.

[hogarth]

So? I agree that it would be great to have some magical business plan that gives you free warehousing. That doesn't mean that it would have been profitable as a print-on-demand book.

Er, print-on-demand literally means no warehousing. You only print books when they get ordered.

But you don't get the same profit per book with print-on-demand (because of economies of scale).

Print-on-demand: more expensive, but no possibility of excess inventory

Ordering in bulk: cheaper, but costs money to store excess inventory

[Username17]

So? I agree that it would be great to have some magical business plan that gives you free warehousing. That doesn't mean that it would have been profitable as a print-on-demand book.

Er, print-on-demand literally means no warehousing. You only print books when they get ordered.

But you don't get the same profit per book with print-on-demand (because of economies of scale).

So? You don't get the same profit per book with large print runs because of warehousing costs. And so we come full circle.

Print on Demand generates a profit per book sold that is worse than the best case of a large print run. The large print run has the lowest cost per unit up front, but costs you real money every day that the products sit on shelves or in warehouses collecting dust and paying rent.

So in the advent of a business model where demand is high and constant, large print runs are the way to go. In the case of slow or erratic sales, print-on-demand is preferable. The example of Runner Havens was not random. It sold the entire large print run, there are no copies of it left in warehouses today. But because it took three years to sell through, it lost money. The profit per book had actually become negative because of mounting costs of sitting on the product.

Had it been a print-on-demand product, it would have sold the same number of books (and indeed could very well still be selling books), and the profit per book would have started lower, but it would have remained constant over time instead of falling to zero and below, meaning that the entire enterprise would have made money instead of losing it.

-Username17

[hogarth]

So in the advent of a business model where demand is high and constant, large print runs are the way to go. In the case of slow or erratic sales, print-on-demand is preferable.

Agreed 100%. That's why I'm saying that print-on-demand is a poor idea for a company like WotC (as Lago suggested), because they're in the business of making real money. Print-on-demand works just fine for hobbyists or others who are doing it as a sideline or a labour of love.

[Username17]

So in the advent of a business model where demand is high and constant, large print runs are the way to go. In the case of slow or erratic sales, print-on-demand is preferable.

Agreed 100%. That's why I'm saying that print-on-demand is a poor idea for a company like WotC (as Lago suggested), because they're in the business of making real money. Print-on-demand works just fine for hobbyists or others who are doing it as a sideline or a labour of love.

I'm not so sure. I mean yes, printing Magic cards is like printing money, but there are still 1st printing 4e PHBs on the shelves right now. WotC badly over estimated the number of books they were going to sell of 4th edition materials, and were left holding a pretty big bag.

But then, having an edition that didn't drive away 75% of the fan base would have been a good start there. Honestly, going in to 4th edition, there was no reason to think that a more cautious printing strategy would make any sense.

-Username17

[cthulhu]

Hey

http://au.redeyeondemand.com/Volume-The ... Parts.aspx

Appear to actually offer a print on demand service already. If anyone has a CAD file of an imperial guard tank, it would be intresting to get a quote.

Edit: There is a shitload of them, but they are quoting $3 US per cubic CM of material. Which probably isn't that much cheaper - though hunting for a cheaper quote might drive the price down.