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You are right. I used to own a huge industial sewing machine and run a small shop selling tactical gear as a hobby. It kinda broke even, and it was pretty obvious that you need a larger scale operation to make a successful business. With 3D printing, you either buy a crappy home printer and spend 90% of your time troubleshooting, or outsource to places like Shapeways and pay too much.
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Aug 24, 2016 19:59
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The important thing from an industry standpoint is rather that a ton of tiny butique companies have sprung up because of prototype 3D printing, since it's a lot easier (and cheaper!) to find a nerd who has spent years of fudging around in Maya or 3ds max, than it was to find someone who had spent years practicing sculpting tiny army men in green stuff.
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Aug 24, 2016 20:03
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah I mean I am not just talking out of my rear end here. Just because I don't agree with you and everyone else here doesn't mean I think you're talking out of your rear end. I started in IT when redundancy was a cold-standby media converter and if you had bandwidth utilization issues it meant standing up a second router and switch. Now I'm working on validating autoscaling groups in AWS. I remember the jokes people made on this forum in the mid 2000s about some failed streaming game service and today I read about some service that Playstation is doing to let you play PS3 games 'in the cloud'. Cell phones from the 2000s seem like 1980s tech compared to your middle of the road smartphone of today. I have no doubt that things as they stand now are a ways off from devastating the manufacturing sector in general, but I see a strong potential for savvy companies to cut out a tremendous amount of overhead by selling DRM'ed, single-use 'recipes' for download rather than having their own manufacturing facilities, delivery contracts, etc. (I think this goes beyond 3d printing and will also involve leveraging the internet of things poo poo and the advent of 'smart' appliances) But I think there's a real market potential in the 'go on amazon, buy a single use license for use in my smart appliance/3d printer' it's just a decade or two down the line. Should that happen the prevalence of in-home manfuacturing, for lack of a better term, will inevitably give rise to a independent and amateur artists providing tons of free or low-cost hobby poo poo as just one of the ways that our lives would be revolutionized.
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Aug 24, 2016 20:51
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Not to mention GW has been doing 3D printing for their masters and prototypes for around a decade now. They still do some traditionally sculpted stuff but basically they draw up a generic miniature, get it prototyped, and then a sculptor sculpts faces and details onto it. A lot of the plastic rank and file are pure 3D models though, I know the plastic Rat Ogres were the first ever miniatures that were designed and printed entirely on a computer. It's also how Heroclix (the worlds most popular miniatures game) does it's models now as well.fnordcircle posted:Just because I don't agree with you and everyone else here doesn't mean I think you're talking out of your rear end. I started in IT when redundancy was a cold-standby media converter and if you had bandwidth utilization issues it meant standing up a second router and switch. Now I'm working on validating autoscaling groups in AWS. I remember the jokes people made on this forum in the mid 2000s about some failed streaming game service and today I read about some service that Playstation is doing to let you play PS3 games 'in the cloud'. Cell phones from the 2000s seem like 1980s tech compared to your middle of the road smartphone of today. Yeah but if this happens they're going to get under cut by GW. Once you have a printer that is accessible to normal people that is a reasonable size GW is going to cut all their stores down to a single small room with a 3D printer in the back, you'll walk inside and get handed an iPad where you'll select all the different components of your miniature and then some poor wage slave will standby while their rack of printers in the back bangs you out your custom Deathfyre Bloodboiler Chariot or whatever. El Estrago Bonito fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 20:51
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I can totally see a good chunk those tiny little fly-by-night mini and bits companies that show up at conventions and stuff jumping hard on 3D printing as soon as they think it's feasible.
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Aug 24, 2016 22:13
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Apparently the last traditionally sculpted GW model was the magos dominus. Not sure if that goes for FW too
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Aug 24, 2016 22:17
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That beetle model is really cool looking but gently caress paying that amount for it.
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Aug 24, 2016 22:58
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fnordcircle posted:Just because I don't agree with you and everyone else here doesn't mean I think you're talking out of your rear end. You're talking about technology, and how it inevitably makes tasks, products, or services better, faster, and cheaper. And I don't think anyone here disputes that in any way. But LF is talking about economies of scale, which mean that even with equivalent technology (and let's ignore for a second the fact that price-points for industrial equipment usually puts BETTER technology in the hands of endeavors with more capital), it is still going to be cheaper for GW to produce, distribute, and retail tiny plastic fight-mans in quantity than it is for you to do it yourself. Because even if you're using the exact same super-awesome stereo-lithographic 3D printer, you're using ONE of those. And you're buying your resin base at retail rates. And paying for the power to operate it at residential rates. With after-tax money. GW would be operating an entire factory full of those machines, buying their resin base at wholesale prices, running it all on power purchased at industrial wattage rates, and writing every single one of those costs off as expenses (i.e. saving on taxes). They could produce in a day what it would take you literally months to crank out, and still do it at a cost savings that would probably cover shipping to get it to you anywhere in the world in 36-hours and still let them turn a tidy profit. The best thing that in-home 3D printing offers is uniqueness. If you can take the time and have the skill to design something cool, you can have an army of fight-mans like none other in the world, which is pretty rad. But if that's the case, your best bet isn't to try to start up your own small-operation 3D printing studio to sell those products, it's to license your design to a 3D printing manufacturer and reap sweet, sweet royalty checks. I'm not saying it can't happen - the explosion in companies that do laser-cut terrain in the last decade is mind-boggling. But the vast majority of those companies are side-line operations (i.e. a dude doing it in his garage on evenings and weekends once he gets home from his real job) rather than full-time manufacturing day-job operations. And that's because the equipment is expensive, the volume is small, and the competition is fierce. Once you factor in the time it takes to create and layout the designs, the materials costs, and paying for laser time, it's still cheaper to buy it from someone else than it is to do it yourself (and this is coming from a guy who has access to a laser-cutter and has made his own laser-cut terrain). I look forward to the scarcity-free utopia where anyone can just walk up to a machine and say, "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." (mainly so I can punch that smarmy rear end in a top hat in the face). But we're still a bajillion miles away from that. Ilor fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 23:26
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Leperflesh posted:The answer is pretty straightforward. the answer is pretty much why we invented specialization of labor like 3000 years ago and tried the whole "town" thing out as a species "why buy your food when you can harvest it yourself instead! checkmate, GW  "
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Aug 24, 2016 23:27
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Ilor posted:I look forward to the scarcity-free utopia where anyone can just walk up to a machine and say, "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." (mainly so I can punch that smarmy rear end in a top hat in the face). But we're still a bajillion miles away from that. yeah if you want earl grey you should be required to mix the dish soap into the tea yourself imo
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Aug 24, 2016 23:36
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Business Gorillas posted:the answer is pretty much why we invented specialization of labor like 3000 years ago and tried the whole "town" thing out as a species what the gently caress would a gorilla even know about that ugh
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Aug 24, 2016 23:36
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El Estrago Bonito posted:Not to mention GW has been doing 3D printing for their masters and prototypes for around a decade now. A lot of companies (at least the bigger ones) have been doing this as well. My halfling by Mantic was a 3d printed master.
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Aug 24, 2016 23:50
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Business Gorillas posted:the answer is pretty much why we invented specialization of labor like 3000 years ago and tried the whole "town" thing out as a species Yeah this is one of those things that anarchists, hardcore libertarians, and other various modern-day philosophers have never quite fully absorbed or understood. Individualism has never been a successful human tactic - we were living in collectives for ten million years or more before we were even our current species - and specialization + division of labor has globally and universally outcompeted individualism. Moreover, the "invention of specialization of labor" was enabled due to an even more fundamental and important invention: government. In order to create economies of scale composed of numbers of people larger than the maximum an individual can know by name and face and be familiar with (which is no more than a few hundred), it was necessary to create authorities and, later, bureaucracies. Even from a purely economic viewpoint, having a group of specialists do something under the authoritarian direction of an elite is just massively advantageous over self-directed "democratic" (that is, driven by fully-informed group consensus rather than representative or dictatorial) organization of production. ...and that's why a company (or a government) can make poo poo more efficiently than an individual. This has been thoroughly tested in every conceivable arena of production and it prevails in almost all of them. I'm sure there are exceptions but it's hard for me to think of any. Bearing in mind that efficiency isn't necessarily the only or dominant desirable approach: we still have many reasons to make things inefficiently, and do so constantly. I make sandwiches at home instead of buying sandwiches made by an assembly line in part because of the customization options available, and in part because I discount the cost of the ten minutes of prep time, and in part because sandwiches are so cheap that even if mass-produced sandwiches were completely free, the time and cost of delivery may outweigh the time and cost of home preparation. Although once I account for my time spent shopping for sandwich components, the inefficiencies I have to deal with (more bread than filling, condiment went bad before it was empty, ran out of loving mustard) and additionally the greater options the sandwich factory can present (menu of 40 customizable sandwiches to choose from vs. my three sandwich options at home), the sandwich shop still has a very clear and defensible segment of the overall sandwich-making marketplace that I am not able to effectively compete with at home. Mass production tends to require centralization*, and centralization tends to require time and cost to deliver the goods, and some items may be so cheaply made by hand that mass production cannot overcome the cost of delivery. Whiiiich might be the one possibility for 3d printers at home to outcompete with mass-produced minis: if, somehow, even if a factory made minis for free, the cost of delivery (or for the customer to go to the factory outlet to get one, which is the same thing) was still higher than the total cost to the consumer of making them at home, inclusive of labor and design costs. But again, that "segment" where a home 3d printer might be able to compete doesn't consist of the entire plastic-objects-for-tabletop-wargaming market. My costs to make one, specific figure, for which I already have a free design, may be below the cost to ship me a figure even if it was made for a penny by a factory; but, most customers want dozens or hundreds of figures, and shipping gets more efficient in bulk, so ordering a box containing twenty unique figures for (say) twenty dollars plus shipping almost definitely outcompetes the labor, materials, and time costs of 3d printing 20 unique figures at home, especially when you factor in the power of advertising to make me prefer the store-bought box. Maybe you and I are wrong: but the story of civilization over the last 10,000 years suggests we're not. *Where innovators have found ways to decentralize mass-production, they have often been wildly successful. A factory can make food but has to deliver it to people in the city: a restaurant can make food closer to home, and thus find profit despite the existence of food factories: a food truck further reduces travel time for a smaller customer base, and thus finds profit despite factories and restaurants making food; and the pizza delivery system allows customers to get mass-produced food delivered hot to their homes in less than the time it would take them to make the same food at home from scratch. Hence pizza delivery companies still find profits despite running directly out of an actual pizza restaurant, and despite factory-made frozen and fresh pizzas available in grocery stores. Again we see an option for miniature makers to leverage 3d printing, to reduce the costs (money and time and energy) of delivery from a mass production facility, and very likely still effectively compete with the home-maker: your 3d printer, like your oven, can produce a thing for you in a one-off way, but probably a mass producer can still get you one cheaper, possibly in less time, and possibly offering more or more-appealing options. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 00:52
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Speaking of sandwiches have you ever bee to a WaWa? I'm visiting Virginia for a few months and holy poo poo you dont even have to talk to anyone with their nice screen ordering system. Very tasty. Oh yah and GM bad. Except some of the new sets seem kinda good.
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Aug 25, 2016 02:30
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I've been to a wawa. I don't understand the love. But I do drink white ceylon tea, delivered from my contact in Sri Lanka after the mid February harvest.
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Aug 25, 2016 02:47
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A Real Horse posted:This too. lmaooooo
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Aug 25, 2016 03:58
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I live on the west coast and have not seen or been in a "wawa". We do have Togo's here, which is not half bad for a chain. The ideal sandwich shop is a good, independently-owned delicatessen, though. When I lived in SF, there was a place called Moishe's Pippic, a New York style jewish deli, made the most ridiculously good pastrami sandwiches. They weren't cheap but it was worth it, you got like a four inch mound of pastrami on that thing. The place closed in 2013 when the owner retired after 26 years in business.
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Aug 25, 2016 06:39
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Leperflesh posted:The ideal sandwich shop is a good, independently-owned delicatessen, though.
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Aug 25, 2016 08:56
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GW seems to be actually changing for the better. I dont play any of the games but from the sounds of things they are giving good deals, an effective Web presence and responding to the community. Im just staggered its taken them the lifetime of the company to get somewhere on the right track. How can you have such poor management for so long?
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Aug 25, 2016 10:09
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Triggered posted:GW seems to be actually changing for the better. I dont play any of the games but from the sounds of things they are giving good deals, an effective Web presence and responding to the community. Im just staggered its taken them the lifetime of the company to get somewhere on the right track. How can you have such poor management for so long? Just because they have done a couple of actually reasonably smart things over the last few months, this does not mean that GW is changing for the better.
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Aug 25, 2016 10:10
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When has GW ever done something reasonably smart? The only way is up when you are standing on the floor of the sewer.
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Aug 25, 2016 10:13
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Triggered posted:How can you have such poor management for so long? former CEO Tom Kirby, aka the guy Forbes magazine called a "loving tosser" dunno if that's true or not but i'll keep repeating it
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Aug 25, 2016 10:20
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Leperflesh posted:I live on the west coast and have not seen or been in a "wawa". the greeks and jews make fantastic sandwiches. If the place doesnt smell like armpit its probably not very good
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Aug 25, 2016 10:30
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Fauxtool posted:the greeks and jews make fantastic sandwiches. If the place doesnt smell like armpit its probably not very good Yet another argument for the specialization of labor!
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Aug 25, 2016 10:52
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Triggered posted:When has GW ever done something reasonably smart? The only way is up when you are FTFY. Even someone swimming in an ocean of their own filth needs to come up for air sometime. Right before they dive back in.
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Aug 25, 2016 11:36
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Specialisation of labour predates government  ... But government allows division of labour beyond food procurement strategies and religious specialists
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Aug 25, 2016 11:38
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lenoon posted:Specialisation of labour predates government I think Leperflesh was saying that government allows huge scale specialisation; certainly we've probably not had governments like we'd recognise them for ten million years.
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Aug 25, 2016 11:48
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Triggered posted:GW seems to be actually changing for the better. I dont play any of the games but from the sounds of things they are giving good deals, an effective Web presence and responding to the community. Im just staggered its taken them the lifetime of the company to get somewhere on the right track. How can you have such poor management for so long? Also they aren't giving good deals
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Aug 25, 2016 14:27
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Fauxtool posted:the greeks and jews make fantastic sandwiches. If the place doesnt smell like armpit its probably not very good Correlation is not causation, however - the sandwiches at the local game shops are terrible.
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Aug 25, 2016 14:36
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Compared to the normal GW prices the boxes they are offering now seem to pretty cheap.
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Aug 25, 2016 14:36
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Triggered posted:Compared to the normal GW prices the boxes they are offering now seem to pretty cheap. The Dino box almost, almost seems like a good deal. But having seen the carnosaur in person I don't actually want it in my Salamanders army because it's just too drat big. But I keep looking at that loving Turtle Tank from Pond Wars and saying to myself, "Someday... someday."
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Aug 25, 2016 15:07
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Triggered posted:Compared to the normal GW prices the boxes they are offering now seem to pretty cheap. That is damning with faint praise.
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Aug 25, 2016 15:43
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Ive seen box deals that have been more expensive than buying the models individually from GW, so like I said its a step in the right direction.
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Aug 25, 2016 16:17
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Still significantly worse deal than literally any other company on the market, including one man metal casting operations in Russia.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:00
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Triggered posted:Ive seen box deals that have been more expensive than buying the models individually from GW, so like I said its a step in the right direction. and yet they are still fuckin awful
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Aug 25, 2016 17:08
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Triggered posted:When has GW ever done something reasonably smart? The only way is up when you are standing on the floor of the sewer. Warhammer 40k 3rd and 4th editions were both full of smart changes. I don't think it was enough to make the ruleset good (it was still a tedious slog), but it was a marked improvement. GW also used to do smart things like letting you order individual bitz, had a full range of skirmish games that were very well-loved, and was at one time the only real producer of polystyrene sci-fi/fantasy miniatures. There were actually periods in GW's history where they did smart things. Shocking, I know, but if they had never done anything smart, no one would care enough to have a thread about how they're bad now.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:00
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40k 2nd-3rd edition was definitely a big jump in quality, even if the result wasn't actually a good game. The miniatures got quite a bit better in that period, too.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:14
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3rd was amazing coming from a guy who spent his entire high school years slogging through rogue trader and 2nd.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:34
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:40k 2nd-3rd edition was definitely a big jump in quality, even if the result wasn't actually a good game. The miniatures got quite a bit better in that period, too. Yeah, I mean the current Space Marine plastics are basically just the 3rd ed plastics with some extra bits and different sprue design.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:41
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3rd was a really radical shift and it made the game much more playable as a massed battle instead of the smaller level that 2nd was really built around. It wasn't necessarily a good game, but it had the courage to make sweeping changes and try to clear off all the cruft that had built up. 3rd edition was also around the time that GW released the plastic Eldar guardians, along with the Vyper and the Falcon (which is also the base for the other tanks). All those are still the versions in production today. I just realized that that's almost 20 years ago now. God I'm old.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:49
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