Experiments in 6mm (3d printing)

[Forwardmarchstudio]

Two new models I'm working on...





These are in 6mm scale, and with the guns and bases are about 10mm high.  The bases are 38mm wide and 2mm deep; they are just a hair under 40mm so that they'll fit comfortable on a 40mm base, or can be cut in half to be placed on two 20mm bases.  They are designed to be cut off the sprues (obviously). 

Any comments/critiques welcome.  This is still a very early stage of the game.  I've previously done mainly 2mm stuff in 3d printing.  Which has been very fun and promising, but I've pretty much exhausted what can actually be done in 2mm, so its time to move on. These 6mm figures are actually very competitive with 6mm metals, price wise.  We'll have to see how they print up though...

Any feedback or ideas appreciated!

[Rich H]

FDM or resin?  I think in FDM you are going to struggle with the legs.

Interested to see what the ocme out like

[Forwardmarchstudio]

FDM and SLS are both in the works.

Should work with SLS. These will be competitive with metal 6mm.  Actually, they are cheaper than Irregular 6mm and Baccus once postage is figured out (in the US anyway).

If I can get FDM to work these will be cheap-cheap-cheap. The infantry have a good shot at working with FDM.  I'll know by tomorrow probably.  The cavalry might not, but they should work on SLS.  Even in SLS, the price is decent.  Like I said, we'll see!  I need to work a bit on the horses body shapes though...

[Lysandros]

They are very charming, a sort of micro toy soldier feel .They don't seem to have the crisp detail that say a Adler fig may have, does the process have it's limitation  ?
Saying that they do look good in their own stylised approach.

[Forwardmarchstudio]

Hi Lysandros-

The process has extremely hard and fast rules, and you have to design around them.  The figures I'm making are designed to be generic, and people will have to paint some details onto the figures. I don't mind that personally, because I prefer to paint over or ignore detail on my own microscale stuff.  I prefer the effect of lots and lots of microscale figs, not individual ones.  My theory with these figures is that players are modeling the division, not painting up the unit.









This all started out as what could have been (maybe should have been, haha) a personal project to do Wagram at 1:1 in 2mm.  The board for the main part of the battle would have been 30' across.  I have models that allow me to do it, but they aren't sale-able because they don't meet the requirements for public Shapeways sales.  I got the idea in my mind that I could make a 2mm range for people interested in doing something similar, but to get 2mm figures to print I had to make a massive number of design concessions that took me away from the original idea. Originally, I could have done Wagram for about $100, at 1:1 on both sides.  When I say 1:1, I mean you could see every bayonet tip that would have been at the battle, every cavalry figure, a command stand with officers for every regiment, brigade, division, corps, etc, etc.  My production models are much more expensive than those original 2mm figures were, because Shapeways won't let me sell the originals.  And, they might not have been everyone's cup of tea.  Here's one of my 2mm heavy cavalry divisions at 1:1 figure to man ratio:



Here are the infantry:



Each base is 40mm, and there are over 1000 bayonets in this Austrian battalion.  The bases are only $0.75 I think.  Or they were that price; Shapeways gave me HELL about printing these off in the store because of a long list of technical issues.  I eventually gave up for awhile, but I've since returned with a new version that I called 2mm 2.0:





Huge difference.  These are a bit more expensive, but they are so far proving to be very printable, and Shapeways hasn't given me any grief over them.  They become cheaper if you figure that you don't have to base them up; the bases have 2, 3 or 4 ranks on them.  A box of wooden bases is a hidden expense of traditional model soldiers.  You can also paint these 3d prints without base coating, without flocking, etc, etc.  They are very fast to paint and prepare, in other words.  You can get an army together in a few hours, which I think is something people increasing would be interested in. 

I'm continuing to make some changes to the models and rolling out new figures (the artillery in particular needs a tweak or two).  Designing these is tricky, because I'm trying to keep my cost down as much as possible, to be competitive with other figure lines.  Its easy enough to design stuff in CAD, its another thing to do it cheaply.  Also, I try to print out copies of every model so that I have a copy to put up on my store to show that they'll print up. 

What I really need to do is get to some conventions and show them off; people are often blown away in person, especially by my ECW pike-stuff.  But, I don't know how I'd sell them at a convention; provide some iPads?  I would actually lose money if I had them printed and shipped to me, since Shapeways has never heard of anything like a bulk deal.  The whole thing is tricky. 

[Rich H]

Awesome project

So are you on about supplying STLs or prints?

Wouldn't it be cheaper still to cast in resin?

[robh]

Two new models I'm working on........... Any comments/critiques welcome.

6mm Infantry and Cavalry figures by H&R, Adler, Rapier, Baccus etc are much more detailed, they have uniform details, clearly defined hat/helmet shapes, weapons can be identified and most importantly can be recognised on the table as to which army, troop type and/or regiment they represent .
These do not and could not replace or work alongside figures from those manufacturers in games where that recognition is important. I very much doubt you could make these sufficiently cheap that that is acceptable when compared to an Adler figure for example.

With your smaller range this is not important as at 1/800 or 1/600 the individual figure in a close ranked unit is pretty much irrelevant and people's expectation is that the unit becomes the identifiable thing not the soldier.
In 1/300 however I think there is an expectation that you can tell what something is by looking at it.

Shapeways gave me HELL about printing these off in the store because of a long list of technical issues.  I eventually gave up for awhile, but I've since returned with a new version that I called 2mm 2.0e

I wondered what had happened to those original ones, a couple of times I ran the ££ on getting enough to try Waterloo at 1:1 true ground scale despite having many thousands of painted 15mm Napoleonics already. Sadly direct from Shapeways it was still beyond what I could justify as a one off probably single use set so never went for it. Although the temptation still  remains to try it as an aspect of my gaming, but with ACW which I do not game at all currently.

I would echo the point made by RichH, would these not be possible as Shapeways masters then cast in resin or white metal?
Either would be cheaper, Shapeways is a very expensive place to shop for models (especially in those countries like Spain where they add a 300%+ shipping surcharge and insist on only courier delivery)

[Goliad]

Have you thought about selling the stl files themselves?

[Forwardmarchstudio]

RichH, Goliad-

Selling the .stls has crossed my mind, maybe in a big tranche with all the files for everything.  So, for, say, $20 or something you could download an entire range and get a license to print as many  as you want.  But I'm not sure of the best way to go about it.  The idea behind this project was originally to see if I could create an entirely 3d printed line of miniatures and get people to use it.  The money was sort of a side issue; I'm not really concerned about that, but it would be cool if people started doing 1:1 wargaming.  So the original idea was to get something new started, and therefore selling the .stl files was an idea I had from the get-go.

Advertising 3d printed stuff is difficult, as I said.  In particular I've thought about putting my original 2mm files somewhere that it could be sold, then people can go to Shapeways to print the stuff themselves.  Or, they could try it out on an FDM printer.  The new models do work on well made FDM printers, best with a good operator, and that makes them cheap-cheap-cheap. A bad FDM printer creates blob-like figures, which frankly are about the same as current metal 2mm. 

Not having to worry about people's print quality would be a really cool side-effect of hanging the files, quite honestly.  There's a lot of drama involved in 3d printing on Shapeways.

See, as I'm writing this I'm becoming tempted...
   
My goal with this was more to do a big one-off, as robh just mentioned.  I'd already done a lot of stuff with 3mm O8 figures, but, even though those were fast to paint, my idea for a huge convention game was taking too much time; these 2mm figs are very fast to paint up.

I suppose that, if I really wanted to sell my 2mm stuff as a regular product line, resin would be the way to do it.  I wouldn't do it, but I'd pass the masters on to someone.  I know some guys who might be interested in that . . .

[jon_1066]

Your 2 mm stuff is inspired - looks brilliant and could work as a game.

I wouldn't bother with the 6 mm.  The level of detail you have is a lot worse than commercial products already out there.  There are already a number of good choices for 6 mm.  Yours wouldn't cost less seemingly and wouldn't look anywhere near as good.  You also still have all the same problems finding a distribution method as the 2 mm.

Concentrate on the 2 mm, that looks fantastic.  Your photos actually look like a real battle.

[Forwardmarchstudio]

Yeah, on second thought I think you guys are mostly right.  6mm might be pushing it for what I'm doing.  I'll still post some printed pictures when I get this in.  I'm curious to see how it came out.  My pikes, lancers and ECW pike/shotte blocks in 2mm have all printed successfully. I'm excited to see all of these; there's a lot of interest in the Renaissance stuff, maybe more than for the Big Battalion things.

I'm also working on a game that you could play by buying a single $20 army all on one sprue.  Its DBA-like, but it plays on a larger scale.  The pieces are divisions, and the game board is drawn onto plexiglass.  The turn is one hour, and games can end inconclusively.  The idea is that you can play a campaign in a day, as a series of battles that only take a few minutes to set up and maybe thirty minutes to play.  The pieces are somewhat modified versions of my standard 2mm stuff show above. The infantry don't have bases and stand right on the plexiglas.  The infantry and cavalry are more robust, taller, and have solid walls on the backs of the pieces so that you can write some unit information there, and they all have flag poles to make adding a tiny paper flag to the bases easier.  We'll see how it goes.  It'll look sort of like this:



ROBH- regarding the "original" ones.  There were the "original" ones that are for sale and the "original original" ones that were never for sale, just for my own use.  Using the ones that were just for me, that were not sellable, you could definitely do a battle like Waterloo at 1:1 for a very reasonable price.  Shapeways is sort of like that though; they give and take away.

I am going to run an experiment with FDM for my new 2mm stuff on 3dhub.  I found a guy who swears that he can get it to work with a tweak or two; if they can print up the cavalry, infantry, artillery and officers in FDM, I'll probably just hang the files and charge a download fee.  At FDM prices that would enable any modeler to create armies of unlimited size for bargain basement prices.  It probably won't work for the ECW stuff because of all of the pikes, but for the tinier still it probably will.  We'll see...

[Goliad]

Fingers crossed for the 3d hub experiment!

[robh]

I think those infantry strips without bases are very clever. Are they the 40mm or 60mm frontage?

The biggest drawback I saw with the painted strips you show in the pictures above is the lack of definition between the figure and the base. The blue undercoat seems to blend them both together.

With the base and figure separate you get the chance to paint both individually and create a distinct shadow area.
A thin shim of plastic card painted black beneath the strip would enhance the effect further.

Have you had any thoughts on the deployed skirmish rank yet?

[Forwardmarchstudio]

Hi robh,

Those are 30mm in frontage. They are the focus of my attention now, as I think I've found a way to do both the infantry and the cavalry without bases.  I'm going to order up some of the cavalry just to see if the idea works.  I found out a way to print them out in single rows instead of double rows.  So, between the baseless infantry and baseless cavalry, not only are the figures slightly cheaper, but you'll be able to base them like normal models.  I did a really interesting experiment the other day with a base of the infantry at a customers suggestion.  I reconceptualized (haha..) the bayonets as heads, with faces, hats and a dot of color as pompons. This let me "open up" the rest of the model, and the outcome was, I think, a huge improvement:



This has sent me in a slightly different direction. First, I'm now wondering if bayonets are as important as heads and rifles at this scale.  You can now tell what regiment those 2mm Austrians are from (or, narrow it down).  I have a version of these models coming that include heads and bayonets.  The print was successful, so its just a matter of getting it in the mail and painting it up.  Even if it doesn't work, I am very tempted to center the "bayonets" now...

The infantry from the picture above, without bases are really cheap, even for Shapeways models.  You would be talking $0.75 per 40mm strip, and maybe less, after I work some magic on the spruing (I'm working on a technique of nesting the models now that gives me maximum models at volume, and which protects the pieces from breaking during handling, which is the main cause of bad prints).  I may also be able to get the infantry to print off in a single row, but we'll have to see about that.

Here are the new baseless horse:



These new baseless 2mm figures are half the price of the ones with the bases, and should all be printable (I know the infantry are because I already printed them; the cavalry should be fine). This will allow people to make huge diorama bases instead of being stuck with the big, shelf-like ones that I've been using. 

It will also allow traditional basing methods in general, which will be huge for the figure line.  Having to paint the bases was really restricting.

This will really take the whole line in a new direction.
This is why I posted on here for comments/ critiques!

For the record the 6mm stuff also printed up and is in the mail. 

Skirmish screens I think are best represented by a bunch of small bases with my figures; large skirmish screen bases are really expensive and are mostly open space.  I need to get some out though.  They'll probably be little round bases with some figures on them, like my officers.

[Forwardmarchstudio]

Ok,
I think I figured it out.



This model is four racks of infantry, in 40mm strips.  There are 72 strips, which works out to about $0.23 per strip.  These are taller and thicker than the models seen painted in the picture above by about 25%; if they were the same height this would be correspondingly cheaper [EDIT: I messed around with the model just now and was able to get the price per 40mm strip down to $0.20.]  That said I think the extra mm will be useful for people who are basing these up; the models can be flocked without covering them up quite as much.  Now these can be used just like regular infantry strips; no more problems of how to paint the grass between the ranks, no more being stuck with a huge shelf of a base. The frame around the strips should placate the Shapeways engineers too.  This should be an extremely strong print.

And best of all, I don't have to make a bunch of different base-variants for the store. There can just be this one model, and if people want 20mm or 30mm or however wide a strip they can just cut the strips in half.

I also did a new artillery sprue, which is designed to be based up on a traditional base.  Here, I still need to use a standard base.  This isn't quite as big a deal as with the infantry and cavalry.



I'm really excited to see how these look on some big diorama bases . . . it's been awhile since I did one.