Should GW worry about 3D printing?

After my Monolith got featured on natfka.blogspot.com (thanks!) there was an interesting discussion about how 3D printing can, or will, change wargaming in general. This is my take on that topic.

There are several steps needed to get 3D printed bits onto the tabletop. The first step is to make or find a design. The second is to get it printed, which includes getting a fine quality capable 3D printer and the materials.

First, designing bits isn't easy when you're starting out. I was watching tutorials for days, and would more than once go to bed stressed out because I just can't get something to work. I learned how to use Blender and FreeCAD, including python scripting.

You can bet emperor's firm, toned buttocks that GW will stop us from sharing designs. I feel this is where they can, and will, stop us from making our hobby better. Oh well.

Design aside, what about printing itself? As of right now, no consumer grade printer can print bits this fine and with so much detail. Shapeways exists as a way to effectivelly rent out printers that are out of reach to most people, and I'm a very happy customer. But forget about printing this stuff in your garage, certainly for a few years.

Then there's the cost. Shapeways charged just under $100 for the Monolith bits. And yes, I made them as hollow as possible. This is steep, and I don't expect many people to be happy to pay so much for bits. Having your own printer would have made this cheaper, yes, but then there's the cost of buying a printer.

But, had I made a design error and had to reprint a new version of these bits, I might have cut my losses. And even though the dimensions weren't ideal out of the box, putty and sandpaper patched everything up just fine.

Finally, there's putting them on the model. I must have spent at least 20 hours over the course of two weeks, just sanding and applying putty. A lot of that work was due to the inherit horribleness of the Monolith itself (if you look at GW studio Necrons, you'll see clear seams where panels meet), but printed bits weren't easy to work with. That plastic is much harder than GW plastic, making sanding uneven.

In summary, no, I don't think GW should be worried. The amount of work and risk is too high for most people (I believe), and that's if it were cheap and if you had designs ready, both or which are problems on their own.

Praetorian Tails 3D Printed!

The package arrived! They look great.

The sprue is very thin and bends easily. That's ok, it's only there to keep the parts in one piece. The tails themselves are firm. I can apply some flex to the tip of the tail by applying pressure to it, I have no doubt that these are going to hold the torso and other bits in place. There are no blemishes that I can see, and the surface is pretty smooth. I think I'll basecoat these a bit thicker and paint them as they are, with no prior sanding.

I think I nailed the size. Especially considering I'm going to remove those balls hanging from Praetorian backs.

You can read here about why and how I designed these.

And if you like what you see, I also made them available to buy here.

Here are the pics, and thanks for looking!

Triarch Praetorian Snake Tails in 3D

Pretty much since I started collecting Necrons, I had the idea of making Triarch Praetorians into snake men instead of people with glowy butt-balls.

Glowy Butt Balls? Really GW?

As usual, people had this idea before I did. There's another person who did this, and please take a look. It's easily one of the best Necron armies ever made.

That is definitely the direction I wanted to go in. I looked into different ways to make this work, including buying PVC pipes of different diameters to bead around a brass rod, using tape to build up a taper, nothing came close to the texture I wanted. I wanted to create snake tails that resemble the texture and feel of Wraith tails:

So I started learning how to model things in Blender, to eventually have them 3D printed!

Here's what I made. This is a fully straight tail, about 6cm long with a ~1cm blade at the tip, tapering from 5mm down to 2mm.

And here is the armature I can use to bend the model above. Blender even has an engine that will make the entire tail bend naturally based on these 4 control points you see on the side.

And here is one of the tails, put on a 32mm base for reference. I was afraid that the tails are going to be too long, but they ended up being a bit too short. Oh well, not a big deal I think.

And finally, here's all 10! I sent the order to Shapeways already. These tails will run me about $30 with shipping, printed in some high def material. Hopefully they turn out ok. It will be a few weeks before they're done and delivered.

EDIT: They are done! Here's how they turned out.