3D printing and digital sculptures, the future of modelling?

[Jakko]

doh! sorry hit send without typing!

You can modify your posts with the Edit button at the lower left

In the scheme of things, business-wise, revising and re-scaling digitally is still a lot less investment than making a completely different set of tooling for injection moulding.

Of course. I was just saying that for 3D printing, it’s not as simple as is often thought.

But I think it's most likely that we will see this kind of thing from new companies- I don't forsee Tamiya or Airfix dumping their injection moulding operations anytime soon......

If they do adopt it, I suppose it will probably be for pretty much what Ian suggested at the start: for options that the purchaser may or may not want. But they’d have to be able to do this in reasonable time, because if given the choice between, say, buying a plastic kit plus a conversion set (resin, 3D-printed or whatever) for a certain amount of money, that you can have in your possession in a few days, or a plastic kit with made-to-order parts that will cost less but take weeks or months to get to you, most people will probably go for the first option.

 

[Tim Marlow]

Interesting thoughts here, but my take is that the “digital print “ model may well work on a completely different business arrangement. You may end up with design houses, print shops and distribution networks, rather than the current large scale production factory set up doing everything.
Take a look at this.....
www.kickstarter.com/projects/city-of-jordoba-3d/city-of-jordoba-3d-printable-terrain-by-otus-and-lovecraft
Using this type of arrangement, you could buy your files, port them to a local print shop, and pick the item up when printed.
Whatever we get from this revolution, you can bet that it will come along faster than you think, and be not quite what you will be expecting....look at what happened to the wet film market and how fast it happened....

 

[Ian M]

That is not a bad idea and very much the kind of direction I was thinking, Not so much in the by the data and print/get printed by yourself but the buy the bits you need/want.
The earlier comment about not always easy to just scale things up and down, my guess ir that if the model is made to the smallest scale, scaling it up would not give the same detail issues. But would that only be an issue if you where aiming at scale thicknesses in things? I have no idea. lol.

PS, I edited the HTTPS: bit out so the link works.

 

[Neil Merryweather]

Interesting thoughts here, but my take is that the “digital print “ model may well work on a completely different business arrangement. You may end up with design houses, print shops and distribution networks, rather than the current large scale production factory set up doing everything.
Take a look at this.....
www.kickstarter.com/projects/city-of-jordoba-3d/city-of-jordoba-3d-printable-terrain-by-otus-and-lovecraft
Using this type of arrangement, you could buy your files, port them to a local print shop, and pick the item up when printed.
Whatever we get from this revolution, you can bet that it will come along faster than you think, and be not quite what you will be expecting....look at what happened to the wet film market and how fast it happened....

I think that's exactly the point.
To paraphrase Mr Spock- , - 'it's modelmaking, Tim, but not as we know it.........'
Also don't forget that the hobby modelmakers of tomorrow will be much more tech-savvy and most likely will have been building digital models at school!
There are already free models of all our favourite tanks, designed for wargames scales and therefore printable in their hundreds if you so desire(and have access to a 3D printer).
I have a load of Warhammer type stuff downloaded but my son grew out of it......
At least it doesn't take up space in the loft!

 

[JR]

Some of us have enough trouble with a normal printer , let alone something that could possible produce a model !

 

[Steve Jones]

Which ever way the kit is produced we will end up kit bashing it anyway. The fun will be having your own printer churning out rivets and styrene strips. Over to you Mr T.

 

[Neil Merryweather]

here it is , the future....
free to download from a site called Thingiverse

Search Thingiverse - Thingiverse

Download files and build them with your 3D printer, laser cutter, or CNC.

www.thingiverse.com

 

[Neil Merryweather]

This is created for 1-100 scale and most likely for FDM printers with a nozzle size of 0.4mm, which means there can be no detail smaller than that as the printer can't print it
So Jakko's point about scale is absolutely correct here.
But if you have the ability there is no reason why you couldn't add in finer detail digitally for a resin SLA printer with higher definition
or re design the wheels for a different mark
or remove the tracks and add your own individually printed links........
or print the parts at 1-6 scale....
It's the same stuff, just different tools

 

[Neil Merryweather]

just thinking......
remember the fashion for 'wedgie' dioramas a few years ago?
This would be the perfect place to start if you had a bust of Michael Wittmann and you wanted a bit of a setting for it- scale the turret or even just the cupola up to 1-9 or whatever and bingo!
You can super-detail to your heart's content by manual means, but here you have the bare bones for free,more or less.
It would certainly pay a model club to pool their money and buy a printer and then members could just provide their own plastic for the printer. You can buy a kilo of PLA for as little as £20-even less.
How many injection-moulded models would you get to the kilo?

It's like Pringles -once you start you can't stop!

 

[Neil Merryweather]

well I thought I had better put my money where my mouth is , and of course up close it's not pretty at all.....

at 1-100 it will look fine, but maybe not at 1-9........
But then it's just a question of finding a more detailed model, and maybe you pay for it, but then you can print as many Tigers as you want.
just sayin....

 

[JR]

Very cleaver Neil.

 

[Steven000]

I have a 3d printer with 0.4 nozzle, layers of 0.1-0.2mm

Totally unusable for scale models that small.

You need a 3d printer that cures resin with a laser. (Not cheap)

 

[BigGreg]

i find the 3D printing fantastic... BUT... what i don't like.. or i didn't like was the layering that you see in the finished product...
is it still the case that you see those "lines" in the printed item... if it's the case i prefer my ols school kits in plastic..

 

[Jakko]

It depends a lot on the material and printer resolution. I’ve got some 1:72 scale wargames models that clearly show the layers, but I also have these figures that don’t seem to have any at all:

Though I still haven’t painted any of them, so I can’t actually say whether or not layers will show up after all … Though given that the figures are translucent, I would expect layers to show up clearly already on the unpainted models.