5 ms·

This was a very enjoyable read for me. I’ve never played 40K but have always been impressed with the craftsmanship and dedication of the community. I remember

This was a very enjoyable read for me. I’ve never played 40K but have always been impressed with the craftsmanship and dedication of the community. I remember a lot of the early hype around 3D printing, most of which hasn’t panned out where the consumer-hobbyist-level machines are concerned. My local game shop makes a lot of cool 3D printed stuff and sells it online or at cons, but even Etsy is now cracking down on prints of “commodity” STLs. IIRC under their new policy, you can’t sell a print you didn’t design yourself. This is ostensibly to cut down on the huge quantity of identical articulated toys. But the bigger takeaway (i.e., the kit car Ferrari analogy), is similar to how I’ve been thinking about AI image generation lately. You can walk down the streets of New York and buy a counterfeit Birkin bag or Rolex from a street vendor. Are knockoffs “disrupting” the market? I guess, in a way. But I think they also make the authentic item _more_ valuable by being so cheap and fake by comparison. AI-generated “Ghibli” pictures are the same.

aleph_minus_one 9mo ago
> I remember a lot of the early hype around 3D printing, most of which hasn’t panned out where the consumer-hobbyist-level machines are concerned. In my opinion people simply stopped following the big visions of that time and got satisfied with the current state of 3D printers instead of continuing to iterate on highly experimental designs that could bring the world nearer to these visions.
- samplatt 9mo ago
  Cory Doctorow waxed lyrical for many years about the ability to 3d-print clothes and other Maslow-hierarchy needs. Even the most experimental of designs haven't approached that yet... and I think we'd now be scared of increased PFAS levels even if we could.
  - kennywinker 9mo ago
    3d printed shoes are… almost a thing(1). Clothes, not so much… some experimental high fashion fabrics, but nothing you’d wear under normal circumstances. But to your point about PFAS, afaik no common 3d printing materials contain PFAS - at least not filament ones, i don’t know much about the resin printing world. 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4id0-vvu-u0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4id0-vvu-u0
    - chaosite 9mo ago
      The only place PFAS is used in an FDM printer is the filament guide some printers have. That's a Teflon tube that the filament travels in towards the hotend. Bowden style printers tend to have a long tube, direct drive printers sometimes have a short tube fully contained in the hotend assembly. I don't see how PFAS can be used as a filament in FDM printer. It's not a thermoplastic, that's one of its advantages as a material.
  - Rebelgecko 9mo ago
    Is filament that different from the plastics we already make clothes out of?
fragmede 9mo ago
Do they? The high quality fake Rolex that only a watch nerd can tell apart, vs the shitty fake Lolex are different worlds. Similarly, the AI fake Ghibli of myself is just fun. Would it mean more if if flew to Japan and commissioned a painter at Ghibli-world for $3,000 to make the same picture? Sure, but I'm not going to do that.
- netsharc 9mo ago
  There's a part in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the narrator's friend's bike needs some fixing, and the narrator said (I paraphrase) "you could use this piece of aluminum from a soda can to fix it", but the bike owner thinks that's blasphemy, the only way to fix it is with a part from the bike manufacturer... https://www.excitant.co.uk/rip-robert-m-pirsig-why-zen-and-the-art-is-a-discourse-on-quality/ https://www.excitant.co.uk/rip-robert-m-pirsig-why-zen-and-t... But I suppose a Rolex has the property of "a token to remind me of my prosperity" that a Lolex doesn't...
  - heddycrow 9mo ago
    I like where you are going with this and love that you dropped Zen here. Permit me to riff/add color, please. Zen tries to draw a distinction between mental models with an object/subject separation and alternatives. There are sane and insane reasons why we might adopt one or the other model. An object/subject thinker might obsess over status symbols, but also the frame itself can lead to discomfort over using the "wrong" part. Witness something like this in buy/build discussions where cargo-cult thinking plays a bigger part than rational thought. This probably goes well beyond object/subject thinking. The status symbol thing can be more than posturing for prosperity. Some people get their identity tangled up in brand separate from social concerns. I talk with LLM's about this sort of thing quite a bit more than I talk with humans. I get irritated when LLM refuses to allow for shorthand language. I hope I don't come across like that. I agree with what I read as the sentiment from your last line, there's something that can be unsettling about objects carrying more than their intrinsic value.
gerdesj 9mo ago
I remember when "Warty 40" was invented and largely supplanted Warhammer itself. I remember Citadel Miniatures and (A)D&D 1st editions, not to mention Traveler, Runequest, Tunnels and Trolls, Car Wars and many more. I was pretty decent at painting (quickly and accurately) and several kiddies used to pay me to get their latest regiment of space marines into action with the right colours. I went to a posh school and some of the kids had a lot more disposable income than me. I also had a lot more free time than I do now. Nowadays I own a 3D printer (Prusa 4S+ with nobs on upgraded from a 3) and an IT company. 16 year old me would have committed ... a minor crime ... for the printer but given that IT was a Commodore 64, I'm not sure how I would have driven the thing. However a 16 y/o me today with a 3D printer probably would be printing armies out of filament. I used to make plastic models too and saved up for several months to buy a double action air brush. My printer can churn out a small scale tank that rivals a Tamiya effort from back in the day. Some finishing is required but not much. I might have a go at some Warhammer models and see how it goes, just for old time's sake ...
- marcus_holmes 9mo ago
  Pretty much the same age, generation and story. I also remember Traveller and Car Wars, and when 40K was first released as Rogue Trader (and when GW said that they were keeping plastic mini prices comparable to lead minis because the injection moulding equipment was really expensive, but once they'd paid that off they'd be reducing the price of plastic minis dramatically. hahahhahahhahhahah). I had a go at FDM printing some minis, for old times' sake, and it didn't go well. The best resolution that I can get to is around 0.1mm, which is incredibly slow to print, and still not fine enough. The print layers are still visible, the detail is blurred. Sanding doesn't help that much; the face is still a mess. You can't paint individual eyeballs on them. If you remember the first generation of plastic gobbos and dwarves in the Warhammer (not 40K) beginner box released back in the early 90's, where they obviously had two-part moulds and there were no underhangs anywhere on the models, then my FDM versions were more shit than those. The author is spot-on about the hobby, and about the business model, and about 3D printing's place in it. But have a go, it's a fun challenge for a 3D printer enthusiast :)
  - 9mo ago
iLoveOncall 9mo ago
> I remember a lot of the early hype around 3D printing, most of which hasn’t panned out where the consumer-hobbyist-level machines are concerned. That is not true. I have a resin printer that is around 3 years old (Anycubic Photon Mono M5s) and it has a level of detail that simply cannot be matched by injection molded parts. I have printed some miniatures that have details much smaller than a human hair, like the needle of a syringe in 32mm scale. Once painted, the figurines are indistinguishable from non-3D printed ones unless you pick them up (they're heavier often). That said, the article is still right. Resin printers are a massive pain. They're highly toxic, and the time spent preparing, and then post-processing is quite high, but also stressful because of the toxicity. I use my filament printer almost every day, but my resin printer has been collecting dust because of this.
- raikouwithboobs 9mo ago
  Plus, one thing that the article misses, or rather, casually omits, is that some people want a customized base fig. They'll still put the time, the effort, the whole shebang. But they want to do it on something that is different on a foundational level from what's for sale on official channels. Such as, I dunno. A proxy that looks like a... Either way, no, I don't take Resin Printers as a market disruption either. But I have a rather more positive take on them: They probably grow the market itself. Because there are more people getting into the hobby. Well, that and stuff like 10th edition probably helps a bunch.
- throw-12-16 9mo ago
  Squidmar has a great video on how high res resin printer are actually too accurate for painting and can actually result in inferior models. There is a sweet spot between FDM and 4k resin printers that is perfect for painting.
bdcravens 9mo ago
> even Etsy is now cracking down on prints of “commodity” STLs. IIRC under their new policy, you can’t sell a print you didn’t design yourself. Not really true. There was a lot of drama about this when it came out, but I suspect there were more videos on YouTube about the subject than there have been actual products taken down over this. You just have to disclose that you made it with design partners. (ie, an STL you didn't create)
phantasmish 9mo ago
I waited what I thought (and what was suggested by enthusiasts to be) long enough for the tech to be mature and approachable, and finally bought a highly-recommended beginner printer about three years ago. I’ll never touch the tech again. The chemicals seem sketchy as hell (I don’t really want any hobbies that make me feel like I need a dedicated area of my house that I only enter while wearing significant PPE, and with gloves that never leave that dirty-zone) and after probably ten joyless hands-on hours burned over a couple weekends, I never got the fucking thing to print a single one of its test designs. Seems like yet another fiddly hobby for its own sake (that might eventually yield some not-remotely-worth-the-cost fruits) rather than a useful tool. I don’t need what it offers that bad, the amount of money and time I’m going to put toward it in the rest of my life is zero. It’s probably a fine activity if the act of fiddling with 3D printers is the main draw for a person. Otherwise, no.
- terribleperson 9mo ago
  My Prusa Mk3s (kit built) from 2019 has been no-fiddle for all seven years of its life.
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    Those things are indestructible. The oldest I have has done well over 100 km of filament.
    - terribleperson 9mo ago
      It's the perfect "I just want my 3d printer to be a tool" printer. There are better options now, of course, but it's one of the best purchases I've ever made. Much better than my Printrbot Metal Plus, which turned out to require all the tinkering of a budget printer at the price of a high-end printer.
      - jacquesm 9mo ago
        I've extensively used Prusa MK3/MK3+, Creality K1, Bambu A1 and Bambu P1S. The K1 is the fastest but the worst hardware. We were joking they have a half life of about 3 months. The Prusa's are workhorses, they break too but at far longer intervals, they're simple and infinitely more repairable to the point that I've 'remixed' the printers to different sizes (600 mm high, as well as 1x1 meter) modifying the firmware as needed. The Bambu A1 is much better engineered than the Prusa, but the software sucks and the company behind it sucks even more they work, until they break and then they are as often as not complete write offs but it can take a considerable time before they break. The P1S is a better version of the K1 hardware wise but the software and user interface are absolutely terrible, there is no USB port that is normally accessible the one that is there doesn't work and it does not support folders. They are essentially forcing you to use their closed-source cloud based software. You can run the printer in lan only mode but you still have no idea what that cloud plugin is up to and there are multiple reports of large data streams with unknown contents making it to Bambu owned servers.
ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
> But I think they also make the authentic item _more_ valuable by being so cheap and fake by comparison. Depends. Here in the balkans, for some reason, Louis Vuitton bags (the ugly brown one with lighter/gold lettering) have become popular with 'the kids' some years ago.. those bags normally cost as much as a modern laptop, some even much more, but due to chinese manufacturers and local market sellers, you can get counterfits for 10-30eur, depending on the design. Are the materials, seams, zippers, metal parts (well.. metallic painted plastic), etc. worse? Sure. But from far away, it's hard to notice the difference. Now, due to the huge cost difference between the original and the fake and easily obtainable fakes, most of such bags you see in the street are fakes. Since it's hard to tell them apart, people just assume it's a fake bag, when they see someone carrying it. I personally know people who are pretty rich and buy expensive stuff "just to show it around", and they don't buy those bags anymore, because no one thinks it's an original bag. A 100k mat black mercedes? Can't fake that. 30k gold watch? Sure it can be fake, but few people wear watches nowaday, even fewer notice them, and very few people assume that the watch is fake. But a 3k louis vuitton handbag? In whatever shopping center or larger cafe/club you go with that, there will be a couple more girls with similar, fake ones.
throw-12-16 9mo ago
Nobody uses Etsy for STL’s. There are some great sites with thousands of designs for reasonable prices.

aleph_minus_one 9mo ago

> I remember a lot of the early hype around 3D printing, most of which hasn’t panned out where the consumer-hobbyist-level machines are concerned. In my opinion people simply stopped following the big visions of that time and got satisfied with the current state of 3D printers instead of continuing to iterate on highly experimental designs that could bring the world nearer to these visions.

samplatt 9mo ago
Cory Doctorow waxed lyrical for many years about the ability to 3d-print clothes and other Maslow-hierarchy needs. Even the most experimental of designs haven't approached that yet... and I think we'd now be scared of increased PFAS levels even if we could.
- kennywinker 9mo ago
  3d printed shoes are… almost a thing(1). Clothes, not so much… some experimental high fashion fabrics, but nothing you’d wear under normal circumstances. But to your point about PFAS, afaik no common 3d printing materials contain PFAS - at least not filament ones, i don’t know much about the resin printing world. 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4id0-vvu-u0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4id0-vvu-u0
  - chaosite 9mo ago
    The only place PFAS is used in an FDM printer is the filament guide some printers have. That's a Teflon tube that the filament travels in towards the hotend. Bowden style printers tend to have a long tube, direct drive printers sometimes have a short tube fully contained in the hotend assembly. I don't see how PFAS can be used as a filament in FDM printer. It's not a thermoplastic, that's one of its advantages as a material.
- Rebelgecko 9mo ago
  Is filament that different from the plastics we already make clothes out of?

fragmede 9mo ago

Do they? The high quality fake Rolex that only a watch nerd can tell apart, vs the shitty fake Lolex are different worlds. Similarly, the AI fake Ghibli of myself is just fun. Would it mean more if if flew to Japan and commissioned a painter at Ghibli-world for $3,000 to make the same picture? Sure, but I'm not going to do that.

netsharc 9mo ago
There's a part in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the narrator's friend's bike needs some fixing, and the narrator said (I paraphrase) "you could use this piece of aluminum from a soda can to fix it", but the bike owner thinks that's blasphemy, the only way to fix it is with a part from the bike manufacturer... https://www.excitant.co.uk/rip-robert-m-pirsig-why-zen-and-the-art-is-a-discourse-on-quality/ https://www.excitant.co.uk/rip-robert-m-pirsig-why-zen-and-t... But I suppose a Rolex has the property of "a token to remind me of my prosperity" that a Lolex doesn't...
- heddycrow 9mo ago
  I like where you are going with this and love that you dropped Zen here. Permit me to riff/add color, please. Zen tries to draw a distinction between mental models with an object/subject separation and alternatives. There are sane and insane reasons why we might adopt one or the other model. An object/subject thinker might obsess over status symbols, but also the frame itself can lead to discomfort over using the "wrong" part. Witness something like this in buy/build discussions where cargo-cult thinking plays a bigger part than rational thought. This probably goes well beyond object/subject thinking. The status symbol thing can be more than posturing for prosperity. Some people get their identity tangled up in brand separate from social concerns. I talk with LLM's about this sort of thing quite a bit more than I talk with humans. I get irritated when LLM refuses to allow for shorthand language. I hope I don't come across like that. I agree with what I read as the sentiment from your last line, there's something that can be unsettling about objects carrying more than their intrinsic value.

gerdesj 9mo ago

I remember when "Warty 40" was invented and largely supplanted Warhammer itself. I remember Citadel Miniatures and (A)D&D 1st editions, not to mention Traveler, Runequest, Tunnels and Trolls, Car Wars and many more. I was pretty decent at painting (quickly and accurately) and several kiddies used to pay me to get their latest regiment of space marines into action with the right colours. I went to a posh school and some of the kids had a lot more disposable income than me. I also had a lot more free time than I do now. Nowadays I own a 3D printer (Prusa 4S+ with nobs on upgraded from a 3) and an IT company. 16 year old me would have committed ... a minor crime ... for the printer but given that IT was a Commodore 64, I'm not sure how I would have driven the thing. However a 16 y/o me today with a 3D printer probably would be printing armies out of filament. I used to make plastic models too and saved up for several months to buy a double action air brush. My printer can churn out a small scale tank that rivals a Tamiya effort from back in the day. Some finishing is required but not much. I might have a go at some Warhammer models and see how it goes, just for old time's sake ...

marcus_holmes 9mo ago
Pretty much the same age, generation and story. I also remember Traveller and Car Wars, and when 40K was first released as Rogue Trader (and when GW said that they were keeping plastic mini prices comparable to lead minis because the injection moulding equipment was really expensive, but once they'd paid that off they'd be reducing the price of plastic minis dramatically. hahahhahahhahhahah). I had a go at FDM printing some minis, for old times' sake, and it didn't go well. The best resolution that I can get to is around 0.1mm, which is incredibly slow to print, and still not fine enough. The print layers are still visible, the detail is blurred. Sanding doesn't help that much; the face is still a mess. You can't paint individual eyeballs on them. If you remember the first generation of plastic gobbos and dwarves in the Warhammer (not 40K) beginner box released back in the early 90's, where they obviously had two-part moulds and there were no underhangs anywhere on the models, then my FDM versions were more shit than those. The author is spot-on about the hobby, and about the business model, and about 3D printing's place in it. But have a go, it's a fun challenge for a 3D printer enthusiast :)
- 9mo ago

iLoveOncall 9mo ago

> I remember a lot of the early hype around 3D printing, most of which hasn’t panned out where the consumer-hobbyist-level machines are concerned. That is not true. I have a resin printer that is around 3 years old (Anycubic Photon Mono M5s) and it has a level of detail that simply cannot be matched by injection molded parts. I have printed some miniatures that have details much smaller than a human hair, like the needle of a syringe in 32mm scale. Once painted, the figurines are indistinguishable from non-3D printed ones unless you pick them up (they're heavier often). That said, the article is still right. Resin printers are a massive pain. They're highly toxic, and the time spent preparing, and then post-processing is quite high, but also stressful because of the toxicity. I use my filament printer almost every day, but my resin printer has been collecting dust because of this.

raikouwithboobs 9mo ago
Plus, one thing that the article misses, or rather, casually omits, is that some people want a customized base fig. They'll still put the time, the effort, the whole shebang. But they want to do it on something that is different on a foundational level from what's for sale on official channels. Such as, I dunno. A proxy that looks like a... Either way, no, I don't take Resin Printers as a market disruption either. But I have a rather more positive take on them: They probably grow the market itself. Because there are more people getting into the hobby. Well, that and stuff like 10th edition probably helps a bunch.
throw-12-16 9mo ago
Squidmar has a great video on how high res resin printer are actually too accurate for painting and can actually result in inferior models. There is a sweet spot between FDM and 4k resin printers that is perfect for painting.

bdcravens 9mo ago

> even Etsy is now cracking down on prints of “commodity” STLs. IIRC under their new policy, you can’t sell a print you didn’t design yourself. Not really true. There was a lot of drama about this when it came out, but I suspect there were more videos on YouTube about the subject than there have been actual products taken down over this. You just have to disclose that you made it with design partners. (ie, an STL you didn't create)

phantasmish 9mo ago

I waited what I thought (and what was suggested by enthusiasts to be) long enough for the tech to be mature and approachable, and finally bought a highly-recommended beginner printer about three years ago. I’ll never touch the tech again. The chemicals seem sketchy as hell (I don’t really want any hobbies that make me feel like I need a dedicated area of my house that I only enter while wearing significant PPE, and with gloves that never leave that dirty-zone) and after probably ten joyless hands-on hours burned over a couple weekends, I never got the fucking thing to print a single one of its test designs. Seems like yet another fiddly hobby for its own sake (that might eventually yield some not-remotely-worth-the-cost fruits) rather than a useful tool. I don’t need what it offers that bad, the amount of money and time I’m going to put toward it in the rest of my life is zero. It’s probably a fine activity if the act of fiddling with 3D printers is the main draw for a person. Otherwise, no.

terribleperson 9mo ago
My Prusa Mk3s (kit built) from 2019 has been no-fiddle for all seven years of its life.
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  Those things are indestructible. The oldest I have has done well over 100 km of filament.
  - terribleperson 9mo ago
    It's the perfect "I just want my 3d printer to be a tool" printer. There are better options now, of course, but it's one of the best purchases I've ever made. Much better than my Printrbot Metal Plus, which turned out to require all the tinkering of a budget printer at the price of a high-end printer.
    - jacquesm 9mo ago
      I've extensively used Prusa MK3/MK3+, Creality K1, Bambu A1 and Bambu P1S. The K1 is the fastest but the worst hardware. We were joking they have a half life of about 3 months. The Prusa's are workhorses, they break too but at far longer intervals, they're simple and infinitely more repairable to the point that I've 'remixed' the printers to different sizes (600 mm high, as well as 1x1 meter) modifying the firmware as needed. The Bambu A1 is much better engineered than the Prusa, but the software sucks and the company behind it sucks even more they work, until they break and then they are as often as not complete write offs but it can take a considerable time before they break. The P1S is a better version of the K1 hardware wise but the software and user interface are absolutely terrible, there is no USB port that is normally accessible the one that is there doesn't work and it does not support folders. They are essentially forcing you to use their closed-source cloud based software. You can run the printer in lan only mode but you still have no idea what that cloud plugin is up to and there are multiple reports of large data streams with unknown contents making it to Bambu owned servers.

ajsnigrutin 9mo ago

> But I think they also make the authentic item _more_ valuable by being so cheap and fake by comparison. Depends. Here in the balkans, for some reason, Louis Vuitton bags (the ugly brown one with lighter/gold lettering) have become popular with 'the kids' some years ago.. those bags normally cost as much as a modern laptop, some even much more, but due to chinese manufacturers and local market sellers, you can get counterfits for 10-30eur, depending on the design. Are the materials, seams, zippers, metal parts (well.. metallic painted plastic), etc. worse? Sure. But from far away, it's hard to notice the difference. Now, due to the huge cost difference between the original and the fake and easily obtainable fakes, most of such bags you see in the street are fakes. Since it's hard to tell them apart, people just assume it's a fake bag, when they see someone carrying it. I personally know people who are pretty rich and buy expensive stuff "just to show it around", and they don't buy those bags anymore, because no one thinks it's an original bag. A 100k mat black mercedes? Can't fake that. 30k gold watch? Sure it can be fake, but few people wear watches nowaday, even fewer notice them, and very few people assume that the watch is fake. But a 3k louis vuitton handbag? In whatever shopping center or larger cafe/club you go with that, there will be a couple more girls with similar, fake ones.

throw-12-16 9mo ago

Nobody uses Etsy for STL’s. There are some great sites with thousands of designs for reasonable prices.