http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33850/135/

3D printing. The same technique WK used to design some of their units (I think from Falcons Prey?) Is now coming home to a desktop near you. Well .... if you can afford the $5,000 price tag that is. But give this a few years. I don't have any experience in CAD ... but with a device like this I'd sure be willing to tinker and learn in order to make my own custom figs. Heck if you got good enough at it you could even make articulated figs by producing the parts individually etc.

My big question is ... what does it use for the building material and how much will a 'cartridge' make and how expensive will they be. And how maintenance intensive will the printers be? Will they be like inkjets (relatively maintenance free)? Or be more like small business lasers (fairly maintenance intensive and rather expensive to do so)?

Looks pretty cool - but very spendy. At $0.50 US oer cubic inch, a 5x5x5 block of the material would be $62.50. I'd have to REALLY want a particular design to plunk down that kind of coin right now. I bet it will drop substantially in price in the next couple of years.

I'm sure the price will drop in a couple of years, but really now. How avaible will they be? With the price of metals (lead or what they use for lead), plastics (oil), and corn going though the roof these might be the way to go for poeple other than the rich or gentleman gamer to continue minature gaming.

But I've been reading threads like this since I started these forums. I'd pull them up too but I'm not sure I want to pull them out of archives.

With all I've spent on molding and casting I'd love to get these. If my memory serves me right there may be 3D scanners coming out as well. Make your model (for those unable to work CAD or learn) and let the scanner send it to the printer. That would make it way easier to get Elfbait models (and now SpacemanSpiff) of CBT figures that WK isn't going to make.

Now who do I send my deposit to? And can I finace the balance?

Nice,I've only got to play with CAD alittle in the past,but this will be very intersting.Howevr I would wait to prices drop down the road also.
Oh! Lordnth you can send your balance to me,I'll invest it !:)

I'm not sure what price point these units would have to drop down to before I would spring and get one. I don't think it would take me long to learn CAD well enough to make something useful (though whether or not my PC could handle it at this point is another matter). I think it will still boil down to the average maintenance cost and the average cost of the media it uses to 'print' with.

A 3d scanner? Now THAT would be cool. :)

Funny thing is, eMouse predicted this like a year ago in his journal.

He's a smart cookie, that'n.

For hobbyists, this is awesome. From what I understand, the models it produces are not very durable. If I remember correctly, WK used this technology to make parts that they then made molds from to do the actual sample model. Right now the technology is better suited to a model/miniatures builder than making household items and toys. On the other hand, to get truly cheap, this technology has to be able to have a household application, so it needs to get more durable.

This summer I saw samples of 3D printing that included color! It's definitely not pretty yet, but the potential of not just printing a miniature to paint, but printing a fully painted miniature is on the horizon. It really has the potential to completely change the miniatures gaming industry. When that happens, or before it happens, you'll definitely see some high-tech additions like RFID or other cheap electronics become an addition to commercial miniatures games.

I believe that is where I first read it. After Trev told me eMouse had more pictures that the two of us, I spent some time reading lots of his journal. Some interesting stuff in there. As well as some broken photo links ;) Must be getting ready for 3D photos :p

We use stuff like that occasionally at school. (I'm a mechanical engineering student) We produced the steering wheel for our formula car on the rapid prototype machine.

Its not like its made out of solid plastic, but it won't crush in your hand either.