nnascati | 17 Jul 2020 3:59 p.m. PST |
Will all the companies releasing products as STL files, I am beginning to think that I am the only gamer who does not have a 3D printer! Do all of you really have $200 USD-$300 to spare? |
DungeonDelver | 17 Jul 2020 4:20 p.m. PST |
I suspect the answer is no in general, but a lot of folks here might drop a couple hundred bucks on the right set of figures. I have *several* 3d printers. I love them, but they are vexing vixens that can consume time and attention. I find that the proverbial gamer's mountain of lead now sits next to a mountain of plastic. I have had to stop printing to catch up on painting. Overall, it pretty much comes directly out of my painting time. |
Dragon Gunner | 17 Jul 2020 4:43 p.m. PST |
I have one and it was not cheap. I strongly recommend it for terrain but not for miniatures. Miniatures require a lot of "supports" and clean up. The supports are created by my software but frequently are not enough so I find myself having to create supports for the miniature. I have had so many miniatures fail when trying to print its not worth my time. |
Royal Air Force | 17 Jul 2020 5:05 p.m. PST |
It's another hobby in and of itself. I have both an FDM and a resin printer. The FDM (Prusa) was the more expensive of the two, but like any other hobby, it's a way to dispose of that disposable income. |
etotheipi | 17 Jul 2020 5:41 p.m. PST |
I have $200 USD-$300 to spare. I don't have a 3D printer. If I got one, I would probably get one in the $1 USDK range for quality purposes. DOM has one and occasionally prints some stuff for me. She ran one in a lab in college then at work. |
Cormac Mac Art | 17 Jul 2020 6:23 p.m. PST |
I've heard good things about the Phrozen, and I would purchase this to print minis if I had the extra $200 USD-$300 link |
David Manley | 17 Jul 2020 9:11 p.m. PST |
I got myself a Photon last year and kept a log of the cost of printing vs the cost of similar models if I'd bought "traditional". I broke even half way through the second bottle of resin. Quality of print is pretty good.
|
DyeHard | 17 Jul 2020 10:20 p.m. PST |
I have supported several 3D printer projects on KickStarter. This is something I would advise to avoid. The failure rate is too high. These are Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)<The kind the squirt molten plastic out a printer tip>. The cost is low, but so is the print detail. And a failed print is very frustrating. I have just got a Stereolithography (SLA)<a smart phone screen with UV light under it that cures liquid resin). This is costly but should give much better detail and fewer failures. But more importantly, where did you get an STL file for the UFO interceptor? |
etotheipi | 18 Jul 2020 4:38 a.m. PST |
I broke even half way through the second bottle of resin Do you have a ROM for how many/what types of model that is? |
Nick Bowler | 18 Jul 2020 5:41 a.m. PST |
My 3D printer is the single most useful piece of wargaming equipment I have. I have an Ender 3 -- a cheap FDM printer. I use it for terrain – Sci-fi corridors for Star Wars, Hooches for Vietnam, modern buildings for Force on Force, etc. The plastic buildings are relatively easy to print, paint up well, and are surprisingly durable. The printers do require some attention -- they break down regularly. You do have to be a bit mechanical. But not a full engineer -- in most cases you can youtube what you need to do. |
McKinstry | 18 Jul 2020 8:29 a.m. PST |
I have a Mars Elegoo and, for me. I find it to be a cost effective way to produce certain items for my gaming hobby. My challenge has been time. At least with my resin printer, the learning curve on the software and setup/cleanup really has made it a time intensive effort and almost a second (yet enjoyable) hobby. |
Andrew Walters | 18 Jul 2020 10:03 a.m. PST |
I bought a MonoPrice Mini Delta three years ago for $159. USD Last year I got an Ender 3 Pro on Black Friday for $159. USD I have spent more on filament than on the two printers combined. I am having a blast. Some people are going to be satisfied with figures from FDM printers, and some are not. But if printed correctly tanks, aircraft, trucks, etc can be excellent. Ship hulls, too, you can have as many as you like. Then you have to decide to build masts and sails or 3D print them. The 3D printer is worth the ~$200 it costs to acquire an Ender 3. You are going to have a *lot* of fun with it. In terms of dollars paid per hour of fun it's going to be a better bargain than most entertainment. You also get some practical value, I'm printing little wheels with hooks hanging from them so my daughter can replace her sliding closet doors with curtains. Most people end up making lots of handy things for the house without realizing how many they have produced. I think 3D printed are going to end up like sewing machines or tablesaws. People with certain skills are going to have them and use them for all kinds of things, enough to make them fairly common. But they won't be like paper printers or toasters where everyone has them. |
Major General Stanley | 18 Jul 2020 11:41 a.m. PST |
having one does make you more popular with other gamers |
David Manley | 18 Jul 2020 3:56 p.m. PST |
Dyehard, the interceptors can be found on Thingiverse |
UshCha | 18 Jul 2020 11:27 p.m. PST |
We must have printed close to 600 models over the 4 or so years we have had our printer. At about £2.00 GBP for 1/144 vehicles (this allows for printer replacement and material, material being about 20p per vehicle) that costs on average £4.00 GBP thats a lot of money saved. In addition some of the DIY jobs have saved lots of money. New castor wheels for my bike rack cost £25.00 GBP built for a couple of pounds at most. Andrew has it, like any DIY tool its great value if you know how to use it. For us its not an addition to buying models its a replacement. While not to everybodies taste, to us printed models are superior, key locked turrets now and sparable parts which are vital when the models are heavily used like ours are. Oh I forgot about terrain and bespoke boxes, bespoke Hexon II stuff. |
1905Adventure | 20 Jul 2020 6:18 a.m. PST |
I have a resin 3d printer and I think I actually hate it. I really dislike the post processing, the stinky/toxic resin, removing the supports. I also do no like the prep work like placing supports and slicing. Even with good automatic placement with prusaslicer supplemented by some manual tweaking, it can take a lot of time. My rate of completing painting projects dropped off drastically when I was learning how to print and printing regularly. It really is its own hobby and it's not for everyone. My plan is to switch my printer to only printing small tiles and terrain details that can be printed flat on the build plate. No more support placement or removal will really help me enjoy printing more. To answer the question about money: There is no TV in my house. No cable bill or charges for streaming services, means that I do indeed have a few hundred dollars to spare every now and again. |
Sgt Slag | 20 Jul 2020 11:25 a.m. PST |
The cost is not what deters me, it is the learning curve, and the lower quality of the FDM printers. The cost of the resin, for that type of 3D printer, is also a show stopper, for me. I am sorely tempted to buy a 40W Laser Cutter/Engraver… My nephew has a 50W unit, which I would love to make use of, but he would charge me his full, business rate -- which I understand. At full prices, I could justify the investment within a year! Again, though, I could cut accurate MDF bases using a Miter Saw, at $100 USD, rather than $400 USD+… Having a hard time justifying the $100 USD cost, as I would rarely use it after I made a few hundred bases. Money is not the issue, but using them enough to make them worth the investment, is the stopper, for me. YMMV. Cheers! |
Puster | 22 Jul 2020 4:15 a.m. PST |
I currently have four printers and not one of them is working properly. This part of the hobby is a pain in the ass. |
UshCha | 22 Jul 2020 7:57 a.m. PST |
We did have an issue with our 4 year old heavily used Repicator 2 but as sods law would have it it was actually 2 problems. The Extruder cable had become faulty and had to be replaced, easy to find, sparking was evident in the plug. However the majority of the problem was filament. Due to Covid 19 issues our normal filament was not available. Two other brands just would not work, both seemed to "inflate" as they left the nozzle. In desperation we rang our normal supplier (probably should have done this before) and his recommended replacement worked. However he did note that while the same filament may not work in one machine it may do so in another. Interestingly the two offending reels that won't work in the Replicator 2 do work in the I3 mini satisfactorily. None of these issue took long in terms of man hours to fix, the cable being replaced in maybe half an hour. Certaily to us printing is not a hobby in of itself needing few man hours to keep running. Certainly for us for instance generating supports is not a long job. Occasionally Simplyfy 3D does not do a great automatic job of adding supports, but its fast and easy to add manual supports and extract automatic supports to optimize the print. |
John Adkins WV | 11 Nov 2020 2:34 p.m. PST |
I highly recommend buying a printer. You will spend money on files and supplies so, while it does not take too many GW proxy tanks for 15mm WWII tanks to make your money back I would sell you on the versatility. We have made bookends for our shelves and a number of other knickknacks in addition to lots of gaming minis and terrain. We backed a KS called Mythic Mugs and have been making Dice Boxes for all of our gaming friends for X-mas (shhh, don't tell). Some practical advice: FDM for terrain (I love our Ender 5 Pro) and Resin for Minis (we have a Photon and a Photon X (larger) on order). A final selling point is that if you are painting minis it really helps to know that if you totally screw up a character that you can just print another rather than try to strip a $15 USD-30 GW fig. |
UshCha | 12 Nov 2020 5:01 a.m. PST |
John Adkins WV, FDM printers rule! I see no gain for a resin printing at wargame ranges. You pays your money and takes your choice. |
Albus Malum | 12 Nov 2020 3:58 p.m. PST |
With the new larger Resin printer coming online (at a very reasonable cost), printing terrain in resin is going to become popular quite fast, I think it will eventually ( not immediately) be the end of FDM Printing. There is a learning curve with them, and as other have said, it is another hobby, If I had people to wargame with regularly, maybe I wouldnt have time, for now, its creating logs of stuff. 2 days ago, I decided I needed some stirges ( Giant Mosquitoe for those who dont know D&D) and now I have about 20 of them, ready to suck blood out of adventurers. ( still have to base and paint, arg. ( another 4 hrs of printing and I can have about 30 of them) One can real easily get behind in the painting end of the hobby with them. The savings with 3d printing is when you want a lot of something. if you want just one, maybe the time factor isnt worth it, but let say you need an extra 100 skeletons, a week later, they are yours, figure $0.30 USD each or so. Need 30 hill giants, figure $1.00 USD each verses buying them for $5 USD-$20 each, of coarse, you are trading your time you may be watching TV for screen time using Chitubox, Do people watch TV any more? Not sure, I got rid of my Cable subscription years ago. I print with the Epax X1 ( which has never broken) and a Ender3 which does require maintainance. They do consume time though. |
captaincold69 | 12 Nov 2020 6:40 p.m. PST |
For me, I have a small gaming group and I don't need 20x of anything in particular, but what intrigues me is I can have 5 each of 50 different items. Resin printing is still too much of a time sink for me and I barely have enough time to paint all the stuff I have now. When 3d resin printing becomes even MORE user friendly, I'm all in, but that's a ways away (imo). |
Albus Malum | 12 Nov 2020 11:00 p.m. PST |
If the people (Artist?) designing the STL would learn the art of supporting and be more thinking about how the things they design will actually print, things will get better, that and if they test print before they release…. you know kind of like Microsoft releasing software that crashes, or engineers designing things they know nothing about… kind of like that. When the designers start releasing fully supported and tested STLs the time committment will drop drasticly. Designing for FDM is different then for Resin, like when there model comes with a attached base, it can become a nightmare to support, yet some of the models designed for FDM are easier to support, but you have to spend the time in another software program to remove the base.. etc |
captaincold69 | 13 Nov 2020 3:10 p.m. PST |
I will add this, the more and more I start down the tabletop mini's world and see how much good terrain costs, I ponder if I should wait this long to get into 3d printing. |
Albus Malum | 13 Nov 2020 4:04 p.m. PST |
To see where 3d printing is going to go with Terrain, watch this video. YouTube link Quite soon, lots of people will be printing terrain with there resin printers instead of their FDM. The quality you can get with resin is outstanding. I am using Siraya Fast (plus 10% Tenacious) for my minis, for the terrain, I would not add the Tenacious. The Siraya fast cost about $33 USD dollars a kilo, and the PLA+ I use currently is running about $25 USD a kilo, the price doesnt have to change that much for them to be competitive price wise. My Ender3 is always needing me to replace parts, and failing for some reason or other, so far, my Epax i have only had to replace the FEP once, because I did something stupid and put a hole in it. Havent checked prices recently, but I think you can get a resin printer for not much more then a FDM. I would NOT run a resin printer in my bedroom, But some people run the FDMs in bedrooms though. 3d printing is changing the hobby, and I imagine, miniature wargaming/RPG is changing the industry of printing, and is the major driving force in the 3d printing industry. (ya, I know its being used to proto-type in manufacturing and such, but just like computer games drove and still drives the PC industry, hobby printing is driving the 3d printing industry. maybe 2-3 hundred will get you going quite well but figure 4 hundred to be more realistic to be going down the hobby quite well. you do not need a 1000 dollar machine though to be into the hobby.
|
captaincold69 | 13 Nov 2020 4:21 p.m. PST |
Can someone run a resin printer down in a large basement? I've got a couple windows I can open. Not sure if that is safe enough. |
Albus Malum | 13 Nov 2020 10:35 p.m. PST |
Thats where I am running mine. I did it in my garage during the summer, but moved it into basement back room when winter hit, I am running siraya fast+some tenacious, and I can hardly smell it when its running, past about 5 ft away, there are other resins with even less vapors. Shouldnt be a problem. I would not run it in my bedroom, but you should be fine. I am washing my minis in my garage though, I am using acetone to wash them, and not interested in acetone in my basement. |