"Impact of 3D Scanning on the Hobby?" Topic

A 3D scanner is a device which can scan something and create a 3D model. Already, there are 'body scanners' where you can get yourself scanned (and then have a miniature replica 3D-printed in color!), and simple 3D scanners are possible using your cell phone and camera.

What impact do you foresee for our hobby, and in how many years?

On one hand, it may be possible for a manufacturer to use their existing masters to create digital models, to use in-house or for sale.

You want a model of a military vehicle? Visit a museum, scan the vehicle, scale the model down, print it out!

You want a fantasy figure? Get a volunteer to dress the part, take a pose, scan them, add pre-modeled accessories like weapons or shields, and print out a one-of-a-kind figure!

Or will gamers turn into swarms of pirates, scanning and printing off their favorite figures, creating hobby Armageddon?

As far too many wargamers have a tendency to be extraordinarily cheap, I'd say it's Armageddon.

Scanning a whole tank is going to be a bit difficult in most museum environments due to the fact that you generally can't get all the angles you need. A bigger concern will be pirating existing figures.

The key thing would be the ability to print in colour (paint one then scan and print the rest of the unit).

Some figure manufacturers might start selling "painted" figures if it can be done cheaply enough, all need to consider their copyright position. I can't see them stopping gamers using the technology, they might want to sell a licence for people to paint a figure, scan it and print a number for personal use in the hope that honest people would pay (as many do for downloaded pdfs of rules).

As to how many years, anyone's guess, technology seems to be developing faster and faster.

Hobby Armageddon – no, but a major problem for those who make a living out of selling models.

So far none whatsoever. But I'm sure it'll have an impact eventually…

> Or will gamers turn into swarms of pirates, scanning and printing off their favorite figures, creating hobby Armageddon?

This is what has happened to every other creative field that can be scanned and reproduced. The music industry seems to have learned to adapt to it while the movie industry is just starting to grapple with it.

To turn into Armageddon, the printer would have to be able to reproduce in volume, and quickly.
So, I can see it pirating a decent copy of one Big Nose Kate. Who needs more than one?
But how long would it take to produce 48 WAS Bavarian Horse Grenadiers in 42mm scale?
Extra Crispy pointed out to me recently the time element in laser cutting. It's basically a time consuming task with all that time devoted to producing ONE item.

Casting figures in either plastic or metal is orders of magnitude quicker than a 3D printer spitting out one figure at a time.
So I don't think that the companies we rely on for many battalions of the same troop type have anything to worry about.
The producers of Big Nose Kate or Magua might have issues. This is why we need to have assassins with license to terminate with extreme prejudice to protect these companies.

I don't know, Inrecently needed to print 60 separate figures on my printer, and each took about an hour all told. I just set up my printer to run prints when I could- before bed, in the morning before work, checking back every couple hours on weekends- even with a few misprints in the mix after a couple of weeks I was done. It really wasn't that big a deal.

A couple weeks? I'm not that patient…

Something else to consider: 3D printing is not cheap. Printers good enough to produce a miniature worth using run around $1,000. USD Sure, there are really cheap ones, but, like with 2D printing, it's all about resolution; cheap 3D printers are the equivalent of 8-pin dot matrix printers. When you think of the level of detail you're going to want in a miniature, you're no more going to do it with a cheap 3D printer than you are going to print photos with a dot matrix. And given the percentage of this price which is precision mechanicals, economies of scale aren't going to bring it down much, or soon; these components are already being produced in quantity for industrial uses. They'll get cheaper, but it's not going to be like it was with laser printers.

Consumables are also spendy. Think printer ink … then square it. Certainly the consumables would be cheaper than, say, GW prices -- but GW doesn't price based on materials; they price based on point value for their games … pay-to-win … so they're not a great example.

As for pre-"painted" figures, it's not impossible, but add at least another zero to the price of the printer. For that kind of money, buying a batch of miniatures and even if you can't paint, paying a painting service to paint them for you still works out cheaper.

Where I see these being used is by miniatures companies themselves, not for production figures but for masters. That would be worth sending the scans and/or artwork to the 3D equivalent of a service bureau to produce a super-high-quality master that could be used for more conventional miniatures production.

There's another factor in play here, too: we're cheap, sure, BUT we're also fairly smart. We know screwing over the people who make the stuff we need might be a short-term win but it's a long-term loss.

Consider that photocopiers have been around longer than RPGs, not to mention longer than most of us, but the industry still exists. Back in the days of the first DMG, the first version I saw of it was a stack of photocopies of the critical parts … but 5 editions later, it's still in print.

And think about what I sell: computer software. It's not like that's hard to copy and share widely, if you want to. Yet in 7 years of selling TableMaster, I encountered exactly one person pirating it. He turned out to be a teenage AOLamer. In short, I've had experience with what it is to sell a product which is not only easily pirated but cheaply pirated -- you needed nothing more than your computer and a blank floppy (yeah, TM/Win used to fit on a floppy!) instead of hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of dedicated hardware and supplies. And it wasn't a major issue.

I think one reason for the difference is the perception of the industry by its customers. With, say, movies, there's a great divide: there's Hollywood, and there's mortals. They're not like us, and we're not like them, so there's not really much of a personal connection. With gaming -- even more so with wargaming -- there's a two-way flow between the industry and the consumers. Gamers start companies (yours truly, for instance); people working in the industry drop out for something that actually pays the bills and go back to just playing games. We don't watch the royalty marching down the red carpets; we give them a hand lugging that stupidly large box (don't ask) into the convention center. So there isn't the same kind of disconnect between us and our pushers, er, I mean suppliers, that there is between the average movie viewer and mega-studios and movie stars. That, too, will make people less likely to do something they know is going to financially harm those other people … y'know, the guy they had a beer with in the bar across from the convention center.

There's also the social aspect. Gaming is by its very nature a social activity. Nobody paints an army and then just stares at it (um … do they?) -- the whole point is to play with other gamers. And if you think you've seen contempt directed at someone whose "painting" was carried out with Krylon (so help me, I have seen this) I don't think that will even come close to the contempt that would be directed at someone whose army was entirely composed of rip-offs … and yeah, people would find out, because the kind of person who would do this in the first place would be the kind of moron who thought he'd done something clever and wouldn't shut up about it.

Also remember that the technology to replicate miniatures is far from new. I have had, for the better part of the past 20 years, a couple of modified figures I've wanted to duplicate. (I would be happy to buy a few blister packs of them and just mod them like I did the originals, but the company went under in the early 1980s) One of these days, I'm going to make a few copies (note: I've been saying this for 20 years) … not with a 3D scanner and printer, but with some do-it-yourself mold-making compound and some casting resin. You can buy everything you need to duplicate miniatures for a few bucks at any craft store.

So … not Armageddon. If photocopiers didn't produce a game rule Armageddon, and mold rubber and resin didn't produce a miniatures Armageddon, and I'm in the software business (again!) despite having a readily pirated product, this isn't going to be any different.

…than a 3D printer spitting out one figure at a time.

A 3D printer can spit out as many figures at a time as will fit in their print space. A printer with a 6" x 6" x 6" space could print 36 28mm figures at a time, if they were in a very static pose (within 1" x 1" x 6"). (More if you could stack the models…)

a couple weeks? I'm not that patient

Ok. But lots and lots of people are. They wait months for a Kickstarter to deliver. Waiting a matter of hours to print out miniatures is not a big deal.

True, but it won't cut down the printing time all that much. The time to shift the piece vertically isn't as much of an issue as the X/Y time -- most of the printing time is spent on X-Y, not Z. It takes twice as much time to draw a line 2" long as it does to draw a line 1" long. You'll get some economy of scale, as it were, by printing a 6x6 grid of figures because of the Z-distance movement, but IMO not enough to make a significant difference in the production time.

Remember that a 3D printer is conceptually much like an old X-Y plotter with a layered Z component added. Most of your time is spent moving the printing point back and forth.

Let's say, for the sake of discussion, you were 3D printing a solid 10cm cube with really coarse vertical movement, 1mm per slice (for the sake of easy math). You would be printing 100 10x10cm slices. If we assume that we're likewise laying down a strip 1 mm wide with each pass, that's 100 X/Y runs of 100 mm each per slice. So the time it takes to print that cube involves 100 mm of vertical movement and 1 million mm -- that's a kilometer! -- of horizontal movement. The vertical movement amounts for 1% of 1% of the printing time. Admittedly it's usually slower than horizontal movement, let's call it 100x slower (which also accounts for the fact that the vertical movement would be much finer than 1mm … of course, so would the horizontal, with its 1000:1 ratio) -- that still relegates it to 1% of the total printing time.

So, really, you're not saving much time by printing 36 figures at once as opposed to 1 … and if something glitches in there, you'll have 36 sets of feet with tangled hairballs on the top!

P.S. Gonna go pass out now. I had to completely rewrite the expression evaluator for TableMaster -- I'd tried to reuse some of my old code, and regretted it -- and I've been doing too much coding and not enough sleeping in the past day or so. And thanks to y'all, I'll be dreaming about 3D printers.

Doesn't the materials used have real issues with resilience?

I've seen a couple and they seemed very prone to breakage though maybe there's other options.

I think the future assumptions are:

1. 3D printing becomes as reliable as paper printers
2. color 3D printing becomes affordable for home users
3. 3D scanning becomes easy and accurate (for mini sizes)
4. 3d printing reaches an acceptable quality

If you get those four things, then maybe you have a revolution…

Doesn't the materials used have real issues with resilience?

I've seen a couple and they seemed very prone to breakage though maybe there's other options.

Depends on the material being used: ABS, PLA, and the color 3D printers apparently use nylon; as well as the direction of printing. Some are stiff and breakable at small sizes; some are actually flexible.

With PLA, I couldn't see a 28mm spear shaft lasting long.

So yes, another need is a durable medium at the small sizes this hobby needs.

(At some intermediate stage, I imagine you could have gamers printing, say, 28mm figures with open hands, then equipping them with metal weapons and other small details…)

For all those saying that the 3D object has to be high quality. The same was said of printed material before print on demand became available, suddenly a lot of things didn't need the high quality after all. When (no longer a case of if) the equivalent of an ink-jet 3d printer becomes available at a consumer price point there will be a shift in what quality is expected in a number of items.

The first CD copier we got at work cost £5,000.00 GBP

A few years later, they were a standard bit of kit supplied free with PCs.

'3D printing' may be a bit slow and unreliable now, but give it a few years. Moores law and all that. The sintering labs located in my organisation produce amazing stuff including bits of aeroplanes, integrated object shapes it is impossible to make any other way, and bits of people. They also make them out of metal, among other things.

As noted above, they don't print a single thing, but a collection of objects within their design/scan/print space. Which could easily be 100 strips of Baccus figures instead of a replacement jawbone.

So yes, it is likely the market will change, just as it has on other areas where digital copying and publishing works.

Wintertree makes an excellent comparison to photocopiers. For all of our cheapness, and all of our bluster about "just give me the rules", we love our eye-candy. We love our glossy rulebooks and we pay a premium because of short runs. There are exceptions to every rule, but I don't see Armageddon here.

I think the more likely avenue is that the scanners will be used to scan a miniature (when they are able to scan at really high resolution rather than what I have seen lately, which is not up to scanning a good 15mm mini with exact detail), then that scan is printed, then that print is used as a master (or 10 are printed and used) to make molds for resin or metal casting. It is far faster and less expensive in the mid-to-long run to cast minis rather than print them.

Now, as for making, say 28mm vehicles… at the moment it is still less expensive to cast them up. The cost of printing through a commercial service is much the time on the machine as it is the material being used. But for at home printing, I guess you'd only be worried about the cost of the printer and material.

One thing to consider when thinking cost is that most gamers do not count their time in that factor. Thus, in my experience, especially in the area of Pirate Ships for Old Glory, people will automatically inform others that they can build a ship cheaper than purchasing it form us. The assumption is made that the material cost will be cheaper, often not by much, and that personal time to build, which will vary depending upon skill, size, and what type of detail you want to add.

Now, you come to 3D printing. You can have it in the home, and at a grand for a decent machine – most gamers will think they are getting a bargain. which means time and material become minor issues. Next, you need to consider the rising cost of figures. As figures in the historical area begin to hit that $4.00 USD mark, the use of 3D printing begins to look more affordable and pirating more of an option. Plus, I just read on Geek and Sundry that someone is offering for D&D role players free downloadable figures that can be printed off on 3D printers. Thus, no piracy, but that caters to cheap and will hurt companies that cater to that market.

Even if companies move more and more to using 3D printers for masters, then what happens to the traditional sculptors? Also, I have found when doing molds of 3D printed masters, most of those are designed for plastic injection molding, not the traditional method of spin casting due to the number of shrinks from master molds to production molds. Plus, I can see 3D sculptors selling their sculpts in the future the same way that manufacturers now sell miniatures. Purchase this 3D sculpt for $10.00 USD and print as many as you want.

If people think wargaming is so expensive that – to save money – we are prepared to print our own figures, then what people need is printed paper figures.

Why are they not prevalent? Why are they a little used niche? Why do we spend good money on nice figues?

For the same reason that it's going to be a few years yet before 3d makes a serious hole in the miniatures market.

I own a colour printer but I don't print out my holiday snaps to save few pennies: it's expensive, slow and messy and my time (and my holidays) are worth more than that. I get them to professional printers (on line or on the high street) or I look at them on a device.

Same with 'print your own rules'. As I won't print them at the special 'free' printer (ie stealing time on the machine at work) I buy printed rule books.

And – by and large – now that CD burners are so cheap, I almost never use one!

I'd rather buy nice sculpts in a finished form, in the numbers I want from a manufacturer who I respect enough to want to keep them in business.

Our hobby is cheap. Try motorcycle racing. Or even fishing.

Or drinking….

John T

Wintertree, I've not seen you post on this forum before, so welcome!
You make some excellent points which I totally agree with.
Hollywood has it's own problems, but if I pay $10 USD to watch a ton of movies on Netflix or by a used DVD for $2 USD, I really don't care. George Clooney makes what, 25 million a picture?
However people who sculpt, manufacture and sell figures do it for love and possibly a reasonable living.
This is why when I reported figures lost in the mail to a UK manufacturer, they sent me a replacement for free. I in turn, some weeks later received the original shipment, took it to my club, sold the figures for full price and sent them the money.
This hobby is filled with good people, jmho.
I would rather spend a few shackles more to someone with artistic talent in sculpting than a scanned image printed on a 3D printer.
Maybe I'm old school, but I feel this is what will keep 3D printing from becoming too popular.

John, you are at one of the miniature gaming time line, and the things that mention are at the other end, meaning they are important to the newer gamers.

Just recently one of the Minneapolis, Mn. news stations ran a story on the use of 3D printers in school as subject, much the same as I took shop classes nearly 45 years ago. They showed a girl that 3D printed her own violin. For other students, you had just opened up a whole new world.

Also, some of the largest funded kickstarter's have to deal with 3D printers.

I have also seen, with the loss of "All Quiet on the Martian Front" as company, an individual offering very similar items due to 3D printing and companies that offer the 3D prints for sale.

At the last East coast show, I had individual walk up to the booth and show me two things that his son was making. One item was done with a laser cutter and the other was done by taking photos of an item from the internet and then making a 3D copy. The first item, due to the size of the club he belongs to means I lose about 20 sales in ships, the latter item means that his son can keep producing a miniature that another company has discontinued.

The advent of the 3D printer cost for the personal gamer is usually off set by selling items cheaply to the people they game with.

Speaking as someone who is "in the business" – in that as someone whose day-job is running a wargames model shapeways store and who own a 3D printer at home as well:

3D scanning/printing is never going to be as reliable (or easy) as using a printer/scanner. It physically can't be (you have so many more moving parts and it's a moe complex operation). Nor is 3D scanning really up to the level people think it is; at least not outside the budget of major universities – and those sort of scanners are the sort of things you have to have some level of ability to use.

We are not going to be getting to Star Trek where you can scan something with a tricorder and make it in a replicator for a LOOONG time yet, especially not in the home. So it is not going to obviate the modelling market – being able to go around with a 3D scanner plugged into your phone and being able to go home and then print it out is still pretty much a pipedream, I think.

It just ain't ever going to be as easy as using a photo-copier/printer – there's always going to be some level of learning and fiddling to be done, simply because it's a lot more complex a process.

(And if it does get to that point, we'll be getting to the point we'll be 3D printing food, so I suspect the effects will be FAR more dramatic than just on wargames…)

3D printing has a lot of advantages, but also a lot of limitations, and some of those limitations (like the limitations of casting) are just not going to go away with time. It's not going to get any quicker, for example – for any more accurate.

To get any more accurate, you are starting to get to the point where you would have to have a temperature-stabilised room to use it in, because all the physical bits that move will become so sensitive that it will be throw out by the temperature fluctutations in your room.

(Now, some of the laser-refracted-through-liquid printers may get around that a bit more, but the maon problem at the moment with those is the all pretty much use, to my knowledge, proprietry resins, which means they long-term availability n#may not be great and the price is not likely to be cheap. This may change eventually, of course.)

At the moment, 3D printing is ideal for stuff like 144th scale, starships, 6mm planes etc, because of the size (though if you have a home printer, you can scale up nicely). It will do 28mm quite adequately – heck, I've gone at Shapeways all the way down to 12mm infantry. Though if you are a painting for the sake of painting/modelling (as opposed to wargames standard like me, i.e. painting to a reasonale standard but ultimately to get it onto the table); yes, the finish will be an issue, but that's one of the current realities. You can either have a high quality finish, or you can have an affordable model.

(Shapeways material (and Replicator 2's) is sufficently acceptable for wargames-quality paint jobs that no-on in the five or so years we've been doing this has ever commented on the finish when we've been showing stuff off at wargames show that I can remember. Take that anecdotal evidence how you will.)

(The note on larger sizes for hmw printer above said, it's also worthwhile noting that on the Replicator 2, at least, the size of the print surface is deceptive, size anything more than about 15cm has a tendancy to distort due to contraction cooling.)

Now, certainly, there IS possible room for improvement; UshCha (of Maneouvre Group) went round a 72nd model railway convention and found a chap selling 3D printed men. The were able to get down to print a 0.3mm hoop in the conductor's hand – something that neither regular casting – nor Shapeways nor our own Replicator 2 – can do. But it is, obvious VERY fragile and was about £2.00 GBP-4 per single figure.

@Miniatureships

The advent of the 3D printer cost for the personal gamer is usually off set by selling items cheaply to the people they game with.

In my experience, it pays for itself in both toys and household usage by itself. We got our Replicator 2 for a song, really, but we're more than paid for he cost we'd have had to pay full-price in the equivilent of models at this point – it's done several entire armies and spoacefleets, counting just the stuff I've used myself. (Just this last couple of weeks, we've printed 10 144th BTR-60s and accompanying half-amphibious swimming models.)
And it is just another tool in the toolshed. It has been used to do all manner of household items – picture-hangers, new spares for the caravan in particular…

But this of course necessitates you also being (or preparing to spend the time to learn to be) a CADs jokey. I'm basically entirely self-taught, since we've been using TurboCAD for basically twenty years by this point.

(I suspect 3D scanning is going to be no different – you will have to learn how to use it, what settings to have etc etc – it's not going to everm I fear, going to be point-and-shoot like photography.)

@ Editor in Chief Bill

A 3D printer can spit out as many figures at a time as will fit in their print space. A printer with a 6" x 6" x 6" space could print 36 28mm figures at a time, if they were in a very static pose (within 1" x 1" x 6"). grin (More if you could stack the models…)

REALLY depends on the type of printer. Commerical laser-sinter printers can do it.

Extrusion printers (like the Replicator 2) you get in the home… You can, but you just don't. If you DO, you will get excessive stringing, because even the slight change of temperature of the nozzle moving between models is enough to cool it to leave a fine string you then have to faff about to clean off. Forget banging i on and leaving over night or something (they aren't so reliable you trust the things to run without keeping half an eye on it ever so often anyway) – little and often often is much better than trying to do too much at once. You'll spend more time cleaning than you save by changing the printer over.

I don't know about the refracted-laser printers, as I have not yet had chance to fiddle with any of those, so they could potentially go towards the former – but as I say, the biggest thing about those at the moment is the essentially built-in reduncancy of the actual print medium.

As for the availabilty of models on the web to print for free… I can see that there will eventually be issues with people pirating designs and uploading for free while being commerically available (because why would this e any differnt to anyone else). But I don't think it will be the norm – because, like any other artistry, doing a good CAD model takes time.

It takes me about twenty hours, or there abouts to do a modern CAD vehicle. Unless you REALLY like CAD modelling and/or are indepedantly wealthy, you're not going to get huge ranges of stuff for people just doing it for fun and releasing it for nowt ('cos everybody's got to eat).

I basically work for pittance on commissions for moderns I take, on the basis that I offer basically a 50% discount if the models are sold on Shipyards. The customer gets a copy of the model to print for their own use, and it's otherwise only sold at the Shipyards. (So, like wrgmr1 says, there's still an element even here of having to rely on goodwill of the wargaming community and the fact you hope people won't deliberately try to rip you off).

I suspect that making a water-tight printable model from a 3D scan is not at all straight-forward. I have enough problems just making models out of boolean-added developed shapes assembled. (It's not like you can grab a thing out of a computer game and print it, either – they are not designed for that purpose.) Especially true at the moment with regard to wall-thickness issues.

Finally, a 3D scanner is only as good as the source material. If you scan an imperfect figure, you'll get an impefect copy. (And learning how to clean that up, is, I suspect, bringing you back to having to learn to CAD anyway.)

So apart from the folk who are prepared to sink the time into learning to fiddle with this sort of thing, I honestly don't think we as a wargames community need to fear that 3D scanning/printing is going to destroy all minitures companies.

It is worth noting that the home printer is coming surprisingly to a peak it may not move from for a few years.

As AOTRS C noted resolution much better than 0.1mm (4 THOU in imperial) will need very high precision (which is costly) and stabilized temperatures. We have lost a reel of material because we were not at home for a week and we left the reel to close to a window in the sun even though the curtain was closed.

3D home printers are slow. They probably will not get much faster in the next 5 to 10 years without a completely new technology. Our replicator already shakes with the loads associated with stopping and moving the printer head. This is like weaving where no advances were made for about a hundred years when it changed to entirely to blown (no metallic parts systems.

Not sure about having lots of liquid or even very fine powder in my house. Even in the UK a garage is not suitable without some form of temperature control. hence simple extrusion machines will be the limit for most folk.

This means that the current approx 2hrs for a 1/144 tank is about it for a while. This is not really and economic rate of production for business. Most trade magazines state the limit for even specialist printers is about 5000 off. If you want more than that casting or injection molding is the way to go anyway.

The sliceing software may get a bit more user friendly and if twin head printing can get past its current state then use of a medioum like PLA for the model and a soluble medium for supports would make it better.

I will post a few pics of our 1/144 models to show what it can do (with my pore painting skills).

Cost is a strange issue for Wargamers. We meet folk who spent thousands, our toy budget is such that the printer is cost effective and fun.

Beware cheap printers. I looked at the Da-Vinchi on paper the spec looks quite good but I have not seen an actual model from a home user. BUT the material has to be in a proprietary reel that the manufacturers claim is not re-fillable. There material is several times the cost we pay. Even Makerbot material is nearly 3 times as expensive when you account for postage to what we pay.

To me its scratch building for folk with different skills.

OK here are some pics from the Replicator 2 of 1/144 models from files commissioned from AOTRS Shipyards as part of his shared copyright.

Boxer.

printed as two parts so we can swap backs like the real thing. Not had time to do any yet.

link

here it is on Hexon II terrain with the back placed on

link

M109 morter carrier (M113 variant) this is a Shipyards commissioned file which was then tweaked by me to add the base plate and the tripod to the side. Note the ragged base plate looks great but in part was the printer stuggeling to get a clean disc while printing with only 1 support at the bottom of the base plate.

link

Note there is a fair bit of "flash" which is material it has to print to stop writing in fresh air, this has been cleaned off this model as much as I was prepared to do. I am a player not a modeling fanatic.

Both these are what its about models that are not available at this scale in any other way. it took a while but I have 12 or more of these.

This is one the home printer WILL NOT DO, printed at Shapeways. a Leopard with a mine roller. The tank would be possible on the Replicator but the complex girders of the mine roller are a NO NO on a "toothpaste" printer like the replicator. The supports are the same size as the bits so separation is not possible.

link

A 3D printer can spit out as many figures at a time as will fit in their print space. A printer with a 6" x 6" x 6" space could print 36 28mm figures at a time, if they were in a very static pose (within 1" x 1" x 6"). grin (More if you could stack the models…)

Actually, "many figures at a time" is relative, and depends on the specific technology used in the printer. With a common FDM printer, yes, you can have as many models being printed at once as you have room for on the bed, but aside from the start/end time and travel time between locations on the bed, it takes the same time to print 10 figures one at a time as it does to print all 10 arranged on the build plate simultaneously. SLS, binder deposition, and laser SLA all have similar limitations -- they have [I]one[/I] focus spot that moves across the build layer. The only exception is the recently-developed LED-based SLA printers, which flash an entire layer at once; with one of these printers, it takes the same time to print one layer regardless of how many models you're printing at once, so it takes the same time to print one figure as it takes to print an array of 30 figures.

This is one the home printer WILL NOT DO, printed at Shapeways. a Leopard with a mine roller. The tank would be possible on the Replicator but the complex girders of the mine roller are a NO NO on a "toothpaste" printer like the replicator. The supports are the same size as the bits so separation is not possible.

This is true for the simpler home machines, with a single extruder. More advanced machines with dual or better extrusion mechanisms will be able to do it by using different materials in the extruders, and using one material for the supports and the other for the model. For example, using PVA filament for the supports allows easy removal, because PVA is water-soluble -- you cut off the support material where you won't run the risk of damaging your print, and then soak it in a container of water to dissolve the rest of the support away.

There are a number of 'home' FDM 3D printers that can be purchased with dual extruders, although they rise well out of the $200 USD-$400 low-end system price range. For the people who build their own 3D printer from kits, there are companies making multiple-extruder upgrades, but if you're not comfortable with disassembling your printer they're not for you.