10 replies to this topic

[Skullcruncher]

A friend came to my house this weekend and was looking at my battle beasts, he reckoned he could easily reproduce them on a 3D printer he has at his work.  Are we at that stage yet? How color accurate would these be? Its not looking good for my SD BB's now!

[bachamn]

color accuracy isn't probably going to be very high, considering most 3D printers are going to print in a monochrome substrate ABS plastic. though there are some that offer mutli-color prints they're going to be limited to a preset index of colors I'd imagine. SD's would be a good test go though because they're done in primary colors. 

[Skullcruncher]

True, but I can imagine in a couple of years the technology would have made another huge jump.

[Draznar]

It would make it so I could own some high-end LBs at reasonable prices.

[Behemoth]

If it works...then I could own 8,000 Behemoths! MWA HA HA HA!!!

[Louk]

A friend came to my house this weekend and was looking at my battle beasts, he reckoned he could easily reproduce them on a 3D printer he has at his work.  Are we at that stage yet? How color accurate would these be? Its not looking good for my SD BB's now!

I'm just wondering, what program does your friend use when designing models for the 3D Printer?  I'm well versed in things like AutoCAD, Solidworks, and other 3D solid modeling programs, but they suffer from being unable to easily reproduce non-vector surfaces (irregular solids) that you would get from sculpting.  

[bachamn]

True, but I can imagine in a couple of years the technology would have made another huge jump.

 

Just looking around at http://www.thingiverse.com/ you could get the impression one could create some accurately detailed figures, I just wonder about the material. The only 3D printed object I've ever held was a small camp stove I made during one of my undergrad courses. It was pretty rigid feeling plastic, without any truly smooth surfaces (see an example of this below), but the detail was there though. Of course this was 8 years ago so I can't speak to the quality of the ones out now. Maybe some can even print rubber now (or soon)?

 

Edited by bachamn, 06 January 2014 - 07:11 AM.

[necksnap]

This is happening next to my studio. I'm going to check it out. All this 3d printer stuff is fascinating! http://www.3dprinterworldexpo.com/

[TheWatcher]

My brother in law works with 3D printing. The technology is becoming quite advanced very quickly.He made me some cool mini-figures for Christmas. I will post some pics when I get a chance..

[susha]

Here you might want to check this link

 

http://www.shapeways...up&materialId=6

 

Its a dude who made a "a la" muscle men miniature. 

more pertinently on the left side of the window are the options provided for material.

as you can see you can choose, colour, texture, toughness, etc.

 

Shapeways as far as toys go is popular with transformers toy collectors. Under toys u will find lots and lots of transformer toy addons, (or even toys!) such as guns, swords etc. 

also check out this one for an idea of what can be achieved

http://www.shapeways...t-explorer.html

 

 

On the other hand 3d printing is also launching new designers in the 3rd party industry (check out 

[Ericnilla]

Shape ways is one of the more popular outlets for 3D printing, but there are many out there. The better the print, the more expensive it is (obv).

And Sanjeev is a member here and has had a few of his pieces cast in to rubber by a caster and member here, muscle things. Super nice guy, goes by Brownoize most places.