More gardening and a shopping list (comments welcome)

Although not a lot to show for it, since today's hobby activity consisted of a couple of coats of paint on the Sarissa shed and a trip to Trains4U for some (small scale) flowers and vegetables from one of the model railway ranges. Godfrey's cottage will have tomatoes, strawberries, cabbages, some climbing roses and a few pot plants. Also pondering whether to rebuild the graveyard...

Also pondering the next bits of kit to pick up for the workbench. The plan is to move the 3D printer out from the shelf over my head here (I'm in what used to be my office in our music room, as I've locked up in the office/studio/workshop for the night) onto the long counter in the workshop, and use the rest of that counter for what could best be described as 'maker tools' for scenery builds, since I'm starting to figure that that's probably where a lot of my talent lies aside from writing.

Things that would be nice to have on there, if First Direct finally cough up my PPI claim:

• the 3D printer with a dual reel/head kit so I can print with dissolvable supports or in two colours - mine's the single reel version, and the upgrade is not cheap
• a resin 3D printer such as the AnyCubic Photon (for figures etc)
• a Proxxon hot wire table and the better fence from Shifting Lands (if you want to see the amazing things you can do with this and XPS foam, check out Black Magic Craft on YouTube)
• a spray booth - this presupposes I can find my bloomin' airbrush.
• a MDF laser cutter. Low on the list, as Trev from the Rift has one I can feed files to.
• a die cutter - been thinking about one of these as an alternative to the laser cutter for things like tile strips etc, and also because anything that saves ME having to try and make straight cuts, even with a steel rule, is a win :D
• and (given some of the items on the list generate stuff one shouldn't breathe in) some air extraction 

Comments?

On a more immediate note, I'm out of PVA (would you believe, my 3L supply from Hobbycraft went MOULDY????) :D

More beach obstacles

Spent a bit of this evening (after finally catching up on the World Cup cricket final highlights) in Tinkercad, designing a beach ramp obstacle for Bloody Omaha for 3D printing.

Still haven't decided which way up to print it, and I may add manual supports rather than let my printer driver do it for me (for ease of removal), but it's looking OK.

In other news a PSC US heavy weapons sprue and a cheap box of plastic US infantry arrived so I can customise some figures from it. Still pondering the 50mm mortar problem - anyone got a box of PSC 15mm German Early War infantry they don't want?

Well, I've had better days....

A bit more work on the K&K crashed Storch, in which we discover that the Army Painter green and grey I have both dry gloss, despite considerable shaking. Hrmph.

3D printed some sandbags for Hammerhead - came back to a stalled printer and print head absolutely caked in filament, so clearly something wasn't sticking to the bed properly. Looks like that'll be Sunday's job to clean up.

And for those who missed it, the wargames retailer at the bottom of my garden is scaling down business. (This one wasn't news, since Reuben's a mate and I share an office with him. Still, it sucks.) 

Basing the villa

After a bit of thought, I decided the Sarissa villa needed a base.

One sheet A3 black foam board, roughly cut with a bevelled edge. I've sealed the edge with PVA and then spread more PVA and laid some mixed rock/ballast (no idea where it came from) on it.

First layer of paint is raw umber acrylic (I'd have used the ubiquitous Sandtex bitter chocolate, but it's at the back of the store cupboard :D). I'm aiming as per the Realm of Battle boards to drybrush with a couple of lighter grey/browns before adding some flock and static grass.

In related news, I just backed this Kickstarter, for 3D-printable design files for Dark Ages buildings - it's from the Najewitz Modellbau folks. who used to do resin buildings (as reviewed on Meeples) but have branched into doing all their business as 3D designers.

Operation Get S(tuff) Done progress....

Just so no-one thinks I've been slacking since the last update, you understand:

• Realm of Battle boards finished, Purity Seal'ed.
• Total Battle miniatures narrow latex roads painted and flocked to match the RoB boards. Wide ones still to do.
• Fair bit of 3D design work done working out the kinks in my process for doing buildings. Waiting on the print head coming back from the CEL Robox folks for a minor warranty fix, then I actually have FOUR commissioned jobs to do. 
• Made some initial steps on Sekret Project HQ. Not mine to tell.
• Sorted out the 15mm WW2 stuff after too many IABSM games with hurried cleanup left thing in wrong boxes! All infantry bases now labelled on the back edge with printed details of nationality/company/platoon/section. (And if you think nationality isn't necessary, I found two American sections in the German support tray last time!). Still debating what to do with Big Men given variable Level/number in scenarios.
• Got re-elected Chairman of Peterborough Wargames Club. (Still no-one else mug enough to take over :D)
• Found a graphic designer (right under my nose) for Sekret Projekt C.

If anyone wants the force labels as a big Excel spreadsheet, let me know and I'll clean it up for consumption by people who aren't me :D

Basically, each sheet has enough print, cutout and glue labels for all the infantry bases (but not Big Men) for a battalion (with intrinsic supports) for US, GB or German as per TFL's "Battle For Liberation" with (at least in theory) correct company/platoon numbering. The latter was a headache: as I understand it:

• US: Companies lettered across a regiment, so A-C company, then D is support company, then E-G + H, etc: platoons numbered 1-3 within each company, sections 1-3 within platoons.
• GB: A-C company, platoons 1-6 are various battalion supports, then A company has platoons 7-9. B has 10-12 etc: sections 1-3 within platoons
• German: As far as I can tell, companies are numbered across a regiment, so a battalion may have 1-3 or 4-6. Zug 1-3 within company, Gruppe 1-3 within Zug.  Anyone with better info, help!

Anyone who knows better, I welcome corrections. Just hoping not to need to relabel TOO much! I'll provide the ability to pick which set of battalion companies you want the battalion to start at for German and US.

Keeping the printer busy....

Just about to queue this lot up for a print run.

That's

• 9 x CMP 3 tonners
• 1 x SdKfz 9
• 1 x SdKfz 11
• 1 x Horch 108 staff car
• 1 x Steyr 1500 staff car
• 1 x Opel Blitz
• 1 x Dodge WC63 ambulance

Total print time: just over a day at 200 micron layer height.
Total filament cost: £7.71

Almost all from:

1:100 Tanks by m_bergman

Published on April 13, 2015

www.thingiverse.com/thing:769137

Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike

Battle Report - 7-Nov-2016 - IABSM "The Biggest Bloomin' Convoy..."

Having printed a positive fleet of US trucks (both WC63s and deuce-and-a-half's), I figured it was time to get them on the table.

Sadly, I've failed to find my partial sheet of Allied stars, and the new delivery from Dom's Decals is still in the post, so they had to go on the table merely painted without decals, but hey....

Ok... so. This was always going to be a bit one-sided, but we figured it would be fun...

Allies (me and TomG):

• one American infantry company in trucks in convoy, plus two deuce-and-a-halfs carrying Budweiser, Coke and cigarettes :D
• a troop of 5 M4 Shermans for convoy defence

Germans (AndyMac and Carl):

• one understrength infantry company
• 4 AFVs
• 1 Panther
• 1 Panzer IV
• 2 Stug III's
• 6 blinds (3 x platoon, 2 x company support, 1 x AFVs) + 4 dummy blinds

Woods by me + Woodland Scenics
Roads by S & A Scenics
Hedges/bocage by (I forget)
Mat by Deepcut Studios

The deployment rules were:

• The convoy enters bottom left: it moves on the Allied Blinds card, and may do nothing but use all its dice to advance at full speed down the road, until such time as any part of the convoy successfully spots a non-dummy German blind (or obviously gets hit by something by surprise!). At this point, the unit in question plus the units either side get their cards in the deck. On subsequent Tea Breaks, the next units down and up the convoy get their cards added (plus anything else that spots anything as before) [1]. 
• The Germans get to choose from the top left or bottom right corners to deploy - they may bring blinds on anywhere on the edge of the table within 2' of the corner they choose.

And off we went.

I make that about four feet of convoy...

The Germans went with the top left corner deployment option, allowing them to take advantage of a couple of woods for cover. They also had the considerable advantage of several goes through the (minimal) deck where only the Axis Blinds card came out.[2]

Eventually, at the point the whole convoy was on the table, a Panther appeared down the side road to the left of the convoy, and all hell broke loose.

Two shots, two trucks destroyed, most of the HQ section of the company spilling out onto the road. Fortunately? This included the HQ section's bazookas.

Explosion markers by someone off eBay :D

Unfortunately, one of them didn't survive the attack, and the remaining one couldn't shoot for toffee. That and the one round that hit clanged off the front armour of the Panther. 

Cards start being added to the deck, infantry start spilling out of the trucks and finding cover. Usefully (again), this included the 2 platoon's bazooka. It got a shot at the Stug which had immobilised one of 1 platoon's trucks further back down the convoy, and again there was a resounding clang of bazooka round off Schürzen.

About this point the Shermans managed to spot some German infantry (actually the 81mm mortar section) in the woods at the top end of the road, and began to do something useful. Sadly the Sherman in the middle of the convoy cops a point blank flank shot from the other Stug, and brews up (cries of 'Ronson' round the table!). 

Slowly but surely the US start to mount a fightback. More infantry deploys off the trucks, and a firefight ensues at the head of the convoy between 3 platoon and the German mortars, while the two lead M4s breach the bocage (and avoid getting stuck), and exchange fire with one of the Stug's and machine gun fire with an infantry section. The Stug gets a lucky shot which takes out one of the Shermans (sadly the tank section command).

At the rear of the column, the other two M4's likewise find a way across the bocage, and engage in a much more productive duel with the Panther and the Panzer IV. One of the M4s takes an engine hit in the first round, but the Panzer IV gets a direct hit and is KOed. Next round, both M4s pile in on the Panther, which is flank-on the other side of a bocage hedge, and one lucky shot wreaks carnage in the turret and knocks it out.

Meanwhile, a German infantry section close-assaults across the bocage, and drives off the remains of the Allied HQ section. 

And that's pretty much where we left it. Consensus was, we think, that the Germans had done what they came for, and (being down to two tanks) now would be a good time to bail, especially since the US infantry were starting to deploy and defend the convoy. 

In summary - what a blast :D TomG's first game of IABSM, and he is completely hooked!

[1] This isn't quite how we played it, but how we'd do it in hindsight.

[2] I know some people play without a Tea Break until non-blinds cards are added. We never have - it adds to the fog of war, and that's a win over the rather frequent appearance of the Tea Break card: statistically it all evens out in the long run, but makes for interesting fun in the short term.

Convoy!

Thursday to today's 3D printing. Little bit of cleanup still needed but we have:

• 8 x GMC CCKW 353 Deuce-and-a-half, variously with steel cabs and canvas-topped
• 7 x Dodge WC62 30cwt (one open back and cab, not in picture)
• 4 x Dodge WC53 15cwt
• 1 x Dodge WC54 ambulance
• 1 x Dodge WC57 reconnaissance car
• and a stray Studebaker US6 which seems to have missed the Lend/Lease boat, for the hell of it ;D

Not only will they do for a convoy, one of the scenarios in Belleville or Bust needs a vehicle park at some point!

Designs from m_bergman on Thingiverse

More pondering on 3D printing and pricing

Let's suppose, hypothetically, I were to design a range of 3D printed miniatures for a game - let's go with spacecraft, since vehicles are actually more feasible on current hobby printers than figures, and spacecraft mean you can even get away without wheels.

To get it pre-printed by someone like Shapeways, you'd be looking at about $25 for a large ship (15 cm³ print volume) and $10 or so for a smaller one (7 cm³). Let's then suppose that a typical fleet is half a dozen large ships and, say, ten small, from a total of three designs each of the large and the small.

FX: counts on fingers...

That's $250 or so. Call it UKP 160 or so (yes, I know the dollar exchange rate is a bit variable at present, but lets work with the figure of 160 quid's worth of 3D printed starships for a single fleet). That seems to be a reasonably comparable price to a similar fleet in other materials (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

Supposing you own a 3D printer of your own...

What's the right price for those six designs?

Assuming the 'pre-printed' ships are done in Shapeways "white strong and flexible", I'd be paying Shapeways $1.40 per cm³, which works out around $170-200, so you'd be paying me (for the sake of argument) $50 for the intellectual property, the design work, call it what you will.

So: would you pay $50 for the 3D files for those 6 ships? Say $12 for the large ones, $6 for the small, and a package discount for the lot? Fundamentally, I'm basing the figure on the typical amount of money I'd make from Shapeways if you ordered a representative fleet. Assuming you already own a printer, it's going to cost you (relatively) peanuts in ABS or PLA off-the-reel (not at Shapeways prices!) and power.

What if I said (purely on an honour basis): "those designs are for your personal use. If you want to print stuff for your club, or your mates, the price is $100 for the bundle"?

Thoughts?

The teaser revealed...

And Paul was indeed right. These are 28mm Japanese type 92 tankettes, belonging to Ryan (who is a bit of a Japanese army nut!) from our club. And they are 3D printed (in, I think, SLA resin) by Trenchworx. I was quite stunned by how good they looked when Ryan showed them to me, hence grabbing a picture to share with my readers.

Trenchworx seem to use the 3D printer as a prototyping tool now: their main range is resin-cast once they've got a working model. Does mean the 3D stuff is pricey - the type 92s are $33 a go, for instance.

Also, they make a really nice Rolls Royce armoured car in resin, as part of their (Kickstartered) WW1 range, which I'm VERY tempted by for my Home Guard.

Kickstarter Watch - Create Your Mini 3D printed minis

There's nothing more fun than when two series of posts on this blog collide. Here's a very interesting Kickstarter, from a French company, which, very sadly, just failed to meet its funding target about three hours ago (by the looks of the timescale, I blame Christmas: I gather they're planning to be back for another go...).

Essentially, they provide a web-based 3D figure editor (at http://createyourminis.com/), where you can pose and generally equip your model to taste, and then they print it for you for about €5 a figure. Reading between the lines of the FAQ on the website, they're aiming to print in resin using SLA (Stereolithography - LASERS, dudes!), rather than the hobbyist plastic extrusion method (see the stuff PatG printed for me), which gives better resolution.

This is (I think) not the only company doing this, but I did just happen to fall over it, and it's a very neat application of 3D which proves some of what I was saying earlier.

Criticisms (and they're small ones):

• I find the figures a little too lifelike compared to typical 28mm figures, They're more like some of Wargames Factories WW2 offerings (which are also designed via 3D CAD) or perhaps some of Mantic's human Dreadball players, which are more lifelike, but don't quite fit with everyone else's. I'm not sure I'd use the site for (for example) a one-off hero figure to go with a collection of metal or plastic troops. That said, though, part of the beauty of 3D printing is you CAN make things to realistic proportions if you want to.
• The web interface to design your figure is a little clunky and off-putting at first look. I had a play, and it does seem to work, though.

3D printing - an eyeopener

Arrived in the post a week ago as a thank you from Pat G, the author of the Home Guard list for Chain of Command I've been having fun testing out (along with a duplicate set of models for Rich)...

From left to right and back to front, a British Type 22 pillbox, a British Type 24 pillbox, some tank traps, some milk churns (actually two types, but I missed putting one of them out to be photographed) and some oil drums.

All are to 1:56 (28mm) scale, and all are printed using Pat's RepRap 3D printer. I asked, being curious, for some more details - basically they're printed using PLA (polylactic acid), which is higher detail than ABS, but recyclable/compostable, takes paint... Print time for the big pillbox was about 2 1/2 hours at a cost of about 90p for 19m of filament. Now, obviously, you have to offset the cost of your 3D printer against that (unless you file it under 'cool toy'!) plus the use of power, and your time to design etc...

But... Seriously! Just how totally freaking cool is this? German Fallschirmjäger assault on Godwin Battery on Spurn Point here I come!

Thanks, Pat! You may have just ensured what some of my next bonus is going on :D

3D printed objects hit Amazon

OK - it's only in the US, but there is now a 3D Objects storefront on Amazon via 3DLT (another Shapeways-like 3D design/print service).

Now admittedly, its current stock can be I think generously described (to quote my wife) as 'tat', apart from some phone and GoPro cases and holders, but it's an interesting indication that 3D printing is becoming more mainstream.

Looking through Shapeways (as an aside) it's interesting how little there is if one searches for (say) "tank 15mm".

3D printing - thoughts on DRM and per copy licensing

Some interesting and thoughtful comments on yesterday's (yes, it really was, don't argue) post.

One common thread that came up was re DRM and licensing generally. Archduke Piccolo is right - it's the big companies that are afraid of copying technology, be it tape, CD, MP3, whatever. But, and it's a big but, history says they will, pretty much, fail to restrict it. They might succeed in restricting the misappropriation of their own designs by the application of sufficiently large amounts of legal clout, but... you know what? Designs are copyright, stealing them is illegal. There's more money to be gained in copying (say) Dark Side Of The Moon than one of my albums. Wargames isn't a big market.

More to the point, the genie is already out of the bottle. Most of the software that drives 3D printers uses open file formats, and quite a lot of it is open source. The actual design of a printer is open source - look at the RepRap, which is not only a free design, you built part of it using a mate's RepRap!

Yes, it's possible (and I personally might actually welcome it) that, for example, Apple could add a category to the iTunes store for '3D Designs', and write some drivers for common 3D devices (the iMaker?) that handed iTunes design files, and possibly even ensured that a per-print royalty made it back to the designer. Would that, from the point of view of a small wargames figure designer, or even a gamer with a 3D printer, actually be that bad[1]? It would certainly indicate that 3D had hit mass market.

There are already sites out there that act as a repository for 3D designs - Thingiverse for one (follow the See Also links on that page for others). There are also (as PatG points out), and this may also be an interesting avenue to explore, sites like Shapeways who will print stuff for you: which allows you the tradeoff of access to their bigger commercial printer with better resolution in return for paying them more than it would cost you (but again, economies of scale - they can set off the cost of their big printer against multiple customers' orders).

Carl from our club also asked about full-colour printing - looks like it's here. Admittedly, the device to the left is $330K, but it is a high-end large format beast built by the same folks who make one of the more popular hobbyist machines, and... it's only a matter of time. Moore's Law, remember?

Which leads me to one final (unless you all get me thinking again) observation which brings us back to the first post of these three.

It is only a matter of time.

I get a little bit tired of threads on places like TMP where people loudly protest 'but home 3D printing's stupidly expensive and too low resolution for wargames'.

Wake up!

It might still be pushing what anything but an enthusiastic and well-off hobbyist can afford, but there are already people using it for aircraft, starships and tanks (where you can get away with slightly less detail), and have been for a couple of years. There's a shared 3D MakerBot printer in my London office. Maplin will sell you one. Micro's Kickstarter has raised over $1M for a $250 printer.  My son's GCSE Industrial Design lab has one.

The resolution issue will go away sooner rather than later, because once people have cracked it with a high-end printer, making it work for a desktop one is just about economies of scale and improving the design.

I'm starting to get that feeling I got when I bought my first home computer, my first digital camera, my first mobile, my first scanner, my first inkjet printer. I've never been an early adopter of technology (except for the iPad!): when I buy stuff, it's usually a pretty good indicator it's hit the mainstream.

Cheap home 3D printing is coming, in fact it's pretty much here: Moore's Law, the patent expiry issue  and simple economies of scale say it is. The technology is not the problem - how we manage the sale and sharing of designs will be. Think (especially if you're a designer or manufacturer) how you want to be a part of it, because as soon as next year or the year after could be too late.

---

[1] Please note: this is not a forum for discussion of whether Apple, Microsoft, Google, or anyone else is or are evil.  I am well aware of the wide range of differing opinions on that score, and hold one myself. Commercial reality and wide-eyed evangelism don't always mix well :D

More thoughts on 3D printing

After some excellent replies to yesterday's post, some of which were on the line with my own views, I got to thinking some more....

Let's suppose, and it's not unreasonable, given both Moore's Law and the expiry of certain 3D printing-related patents that will considerably reduce the cost of the technology, that in 3-5 years time, quite possibly less, I can get for the same price as my Brother multifunction inkjet, a 0.01mm resolution 3D printer that will handle print jobs up to the size of, say, a decent sized 28mm building, sitting on the shelf in my living room. (More likely the workshop, since they'll still be a bit hot, noisy and potentially messy.)

What's the market for wargaming products going to look like then?

I honestly think the closest analogue is the record market, or perhaps now the book market. In both cases, we can divide the world into three different types of producer:

First up, we have the big companies: in the record industry, the likes of Sony, EMI, CBS etc, even the 'indie' labels; in books we're talking Penguin, Random House, the big publishers. They produce volume product, and they win on economies of scale - the setup cost for a product gets swallowed up by the super-low unit cost and the high volume run. The analogue in the wargames business is plastics - GW, Warlord, Mantic, Wargames Factory etc. Companies who are popular, and can afford, and have the market to risk, the setup costs of plastic in order to reap the benefit of the low unit cost afterwards. The key target here is popular titles, popular artists, popular figure ranges, that the producer knows they can shift enough of to win on sheer volume.

Next up, the smaller companies. We're talking the bands with self-produced CDs on CD-Rs in the record business, we're talking print-on-demand or vanity publishing in the book market. The unit cost is higher, but the win for the smaller market is that the setup cost is lower. In the wargames world we're looking at the likes of Foundry, the Perrys, Crusader etc. The per unit cost of lead is higher, but the setup cost for mould making is massively lower by contrast with the tooling for plastics with the likes of Renedra. But the initial outlay is still non-zero: you have a setup cost: a mould costs money to make.

Next? In the music industry, you have the MP3. Stick it on your band's website, or pay a small fee to iTunes, CD Baby, whoever, and you're laughing. Outlay beyond the sweat of making the recording, next to nothing, unit cost to duplicate (and I'm intentionally not counting royalties in this) effectively zero. In books, it's the same. Self-publish on your own website, Kindle or iBooks: unit cost to you the producer to duplicate, effectively zero.

Let's pause for a moment here. Despite all the hoo-hah about DRM, unauthorised sharing etc, the fact remains that this last model clearly works. If it didn't, there is no way that iTunes would be claiming three downloads per human being on the planet (and remember Apple removed DRM from iTunes), and Amazon wouldn't be doing $5 billion a year on the Kindle store. (As an aside, it's an interesting point that over 25% of the top 100 Kindle books are from small independent publisher and/or self-published titles.)

Where does that leave the wargames business?

Actually, I think it leaves it in potentially pretty good shape. The intellectual property exists in the figure design, just as it does in the author's original writing or the musician's original recording. Yes, there will always be people who rip off intellectual properly... That's been true ever since the photocopier and the tape recorder, and probably before - the existence of MP3s and digital versions of books would, you think make it easier, but despite the protestations of, chiefly, the bigger end of the producers of content - this seems not to be killing the market. Despite the doom and gloom that was 'Home Taping is Killing Music', home taping didn't, any more than Napster, or iTunes removing DRM, did.

I see a future where figure designers will be much more prominent, because you won't be buying (say) a Warlord infantry man, you'll be buying a 3D design for a Michael Perry sculpt. I do think this needs the commercial equivalent of iTunes for 3D designs, and I do think it needs to be at least in part dedicated to wargaming and similar, because of two things: one being that search parameters would benefit from being tailored to a wargamer customer, and the other being a subtle distinction between us wargamers and the average consumer...

The distinction, of course, is that people tend to only want one copy of a book or piece of music, We as wargames want anything from one (say Marshal Ney) to tens (a French infantry battalion) to hundreds (a Zulu horde)...

What this does mean is that the pricing model gets interesting: the classy one-off 3D design of Napoleon and the 3D model of the Old Guard both take the same effort, the same disk space... and yet your customer will print one of the former, and potentially a hundred of the latter. If you were selling lead, it's easy - you sell 101 figures, ring it up, move on. Selling 3D files, you sold 2 designs. Question? Is the Imperial Guard design worth more? Less? The same? Can I as the designer add value to it by providing integral basing, model files that print you a block of 2 ranks deep, 12 figures wide in one pass to (say) Napoleon At War basing standards? And yet, by contrast, in a more skirmish-y game, you won't want 30 US Marines all alike, so you may well be willing to pay for multiple designs.

It's an interesting one. What would you be prepared to pay (say) the Perrys for a design that costs you circa 30p a figure to print on your 3D printer? Would it make a difference if it was a design you were only going to use once? Would you pay more for a unit block that your printer could handle in one go and then split up afterwards? If you're semi-useful with a 3D editor, you could do this latter yourself, of course. How much would you pay not to?

The comments section awaits... :D

[And yes. It's after midnight. But I'm counting this as Monday's post because I started it over an hour ago, the first draft was done before midnight, and it's IMPORTANT!]

Kickstarter - affordable 3D printer (and Moore's Law).

Via the Cardiff' gaming club's BB -  the Micro 3D printer - and inspired by finally getting a driving lesson on work's 3D printer.

Thinking back, I remember when my wife was doing her final year VetMB project, and I was basically doing the DTP for it - we used my then employer's Apple LaserWriter, which was pretty much the first consumer laser printer...

It cost (according to Wikipedia) around about £4000, and (I vividly recall this) there was one diagram - simple black and white with a number of curves - that took literally twenty minutes to print.

If I look up to my left from where I'm sat here in the living room, there's a Brother combined A3 inkjet/fax/copier/scanner. £99, three decades later, for something which outperforms the LaserWriter in so many ways by about three orders of magnitude.

This is Moore's Law in action, which basically says that the density of transistors on integrated circuits doubles every two years with advances in technology. By extension, most measures of bang per buck in technology (for want of a better term) also double every two years. Hence the contrast between my inkjet, and that LaserWriter, and (for example) the rate at which computers are getting more powerful, hard disk is getting cheaper and (ironically) software is getting more bloated - although you could make a case for the latter being an adaptation of Parkinson's Law. :)

More relevant to the hobby this blog is about, is the fact that 3D printers are already quite a way down that curve - the analogue to the expensive business LaserWriter happened about 5 or 6 years ago, and we're now at the 'Maplin will sell you a basic 3D printer for £600' stage. It's only going to get cheaper, as this Kickstarter suggests. People are already 3D printing tanks and starships for wargames, and it's not going to be long (pace Moore's Law) before the printing resolution improves, and the price drops, to the point where 3D figures in at least 28mm are affordable.  The cheaper end of the market is already capable of 0.3mm resolution (not yet good enough for, say, facial detail on a 28mm) but the top end of the market is already at 1/10th of that or better.

It's coming, folks.

Kickstarter watch - the revolution is coming!

The folks from Proxy Army Games have announced a very interesting and thought provoking Kickstarter.

To quote:

Proxy War is bringing tabletop gaming into the 21st century, letting gamers create fully custom models online, and then get them 3D printed in ultra-fine detail. Log onto a database of parts, select chassis, torsos, limbs, weapons, mutations, powers, and technology, and clip them together into a unit that is uniquely yours. You can also partner with our design staff to create a custom unit entirely from scratch. Our service lets you make anything you can imagine—from RPG characters to whole wargame armies.

They're talking about the design size/scale in very much 40K terms, but they do seem to be prepared to cope with anything from historicals to scifi/fantasy. Intriguing. I'm not as yet 100% if they haven't set their target a bit high, and some of the language in the promo video seems a bit optimistic, but as a concept it could be a real game-changer.