ArcanEngine - 3D Printing customized tabletop miniatures - Ask anything!

[Zynkh]

Hi there, I'm Zach Hill and I'm the founder of ArcanEngine, where we're going to allow anybody the ability to build and 3D print one-of-a-kind gaming miniatures. We're currently running a Kickstarter which you can check out here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...f-a-kind-table

Most of the info about what we're up to is on there, and I'm opening the floor here for questions, comments or additional ideas. Have at it! Thanks for your time.

[Geoff]

Hi there, I'm Zach Hill and I'm the founder of ArcanEngine, where we're going to allow anybody the ability to build and 3D print one-of-a-kind gaming miniatures. We're currently running a Kickstarter which you can check out here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...f-a-kind-table

Most of the info about what we're up to is on there, and I'm opening the floor here for questions, comments or additional ideas. Have at it! Thanks for your time.

Hi Zach, I have been following your kickstarter project, are you guys going to look at investing in colour miniatures in the future? You have a great idea, but speaking only for myself, and being right into miniatures also, If I were going to the trouble of ordering a custom miniature online, although I have the ability to dry brush it myself, I would be looking at a fully made customised miniature, one that doesnt require finishing or painting. The DLP resin you guys are using is nice, but as you can see from your demo figure on the kickstarter page, they are all going to look fairly messy and crystal like, so unless you are changing the dye colour and making alot of options (and different colours on each miniature) they all sort of will look the same at a general glance.

The only thing I can suggest to get to your backing it looking into some other form of 3D printing, I know shapeways are a big company, but laser curing, full colour etc really should be what you are aiming for with tabletop miniatures.

That being said, I've never tried to paint on DLP cured resin before, does it paint like ABS with normal acrylic?

[Zynkh]

Hi there Geoff, currently the only way (to my knowledge) to 3d print in full colour is to use dyed sandstone, and the resolution on that material isn't fine enough to accommodate the detail we are accustomed to with tabletop minis. Technology is progressing though and as soon as full colour becomes available in that resolution we'll be right on board with it.

Shapeways actually uses several methods to 3D print, depending on the material. My sample mini uses a UV cured acrylic which I think is a similar method to laser curing. It's extremely high in detail, so high in fact that my camera couldn't do it justice. But it does take paint well,
https://www.shapeways.com/materials/frosted-detail

Can't do much about colour though. There's a new desktop 3D printer available at http://botobjects.com/ that appears to be a full colour option at high resolution, but I'm not sure how robust the colour is on it just yet. Won't be worth it til it can match what someone can do with paint.