I've talked before of how an old college chum of mine was playing around with 3D printing. Well, he's perfected his technique now, and is using his filament printer to create custom toys based on his own artwork. I'd figured on him resin-casting from printed masters, but he's printing all the parts up on the printer in batches instead.
You can check out his store at: http://mechazone.storenvy.com
These figures are about 6" tall, and you can see the texture of the printing in this shot. But considering that Dave is using a relatively low-end filament printer, it's pretty impressive what he's able to do. AND that he's able to sell these. Doing the parts separately to be able to add different colors is a nice touch.
Tick... tick... tick...
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It's invariable, but not as close as we'd probably like it to be as hobbyists. Most of us aren't in it for the super cheapy cheapy, and there's a lot to be said for the quality of GW, Wyrd, etc., plastics. Any kind of print grain / texture whatsoever would be a huge turnoff for me, for instance (to the point that I would not choose to mess around with the lower tier stuff even if much cheaper).
ReplyDeleteThat said, it WILL eventually look like contemporary molded plastics, and when that happens, SYFY (shityeahfuckyeah)
Comparing it to desktop publishing, we're still in the era of the dot matrix printer. Laser and Inkjet equivalents still to come. Still, this is the first really usable 'toy' that I've seen.
DeletePrinting your own army will never be as cheap as mass-produced plastic kits (except at GW prices), but you'll do it anyway (once the quality gets better). Because the printer is right there, you can have it now, and you can customize the result however you like. Including colors.