The year of the 3D printed miniature and other lies we tell ourselves

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.

I 3D print items that aren't mass produced, either because I'm one of few people who wants them so there's no market or I'm the only person who wants them because they're customized for me. Most reasonable 3D printer users don't believe they'll replace mass production. They use them for parts you can't buy.

I'm part mechanical engineer and I 3D print things on a near daily basis. My job would be a lot slower and more cumbersome without it. Mind you this is all FDM.

I only played with resin printers briefly, and not only do they produce extremely brittle and off-dimenension parts, they are extremely messy and use chemicals that you really should think twice or three times or four times about having under the same roof as the one you sleep in.

With how useful FDM is to me, it seems really strange that resin printing's killer app has been "miniatures", like it's the niche it fell into after everyone bought one and discovered they aren't great for much else. I am in disbelief that people would willingly deal with resin printers just to do miniatures, like there's no way it could possibly be worth it even if you really like that hobby. It feels wrong even to refer to both under the same umbrella of 3D printing.

That said, if you're not regularly designing parts you need made and/or aren't a CAD user, I don't see much use in the average person having a 3D printer (I have 5 btw)

I play a wargame (Battletech) where the rulebook says "use a bottlecap if you want to as long as you can tell which way it's facing" and even there 3D printed minis are uncommon. For Battletech there's two official sources of minis, plastic from CGL and metal from IWM[0]. IWM has a model for almost every unit published in the last 40 years, but some of them are... very hard to look at. CGL's plastic ones look much and cover the most common units so you can usually get by with just them (although, I did just order a couple minis for an upcoming tournament). If I ever see a printed mini, it's either a) one of the ones where the IWM model looks terrible, or b) a model ripped from the Mechwarrior video games that the person thinks looks better aesthetically.

Where 3D printing has been revolutionary for Battletech though has been terrain. Battletech's played on a hex grid, and ever hex has an elevation printed on it to form hills, buildings, and rivers. There's one company (Thunderhead Studios) that makes STLs of the elevation of the official maps that's very popular. Popular enough that they've actually started mass manufacturing them and selling prepainted terrain retail. That shows up in every event I've been to, even official events where 3D minis are banned. But it's a decidedly ancillary part of the experience for Battletech.

[0] Catalyst Game Labs and Iron Wind Metals

This was a great read, and perfectly conveyed the combination of passion and anger of every WH player I’ve ever met has had.

Given the time, it’s hard not to view this same argument through the lens of AI. People who love crafting their creative works will still do it, even when AI can do it. They will still inspire others because they demonstrate what humans can do, and what we can aspire to.

Thanks for sharing. I've recently been thrown into the 40k universe thanks to my son (who is 9) becoming obsessed with it.

What started out as a "oh look, they've opened a Games Workshop store in this shopping centre... hey it looks like they're giving away free miniatures and showing you how to paint, lets kill 5 mins in the store" has turned into starter packs, combat patrols and lore deep dives with books. All in the span of... 4 weeks.

That said, I have to say, it's been awesome learning about everything Warhammer 40k from him. Normally, I would research something myself to the point of overkill so I could answer his questions, but on this one his enthusiasm is driving it all and he's constantly telling me about this particular faction or that faction.

It's just nice to have a hobby that keeps him away from screen time these days. It also requires patience, dexterity, and creativity - plus there is obviously an incredible amount of lore, world building, backstories, etc, plenty to keep his imagination entertained.

The one big problem, of course, is the money required! Which is why someone recently said to me "maybe get a 3d printer" and we had this exact discussion about quality of printing etc, and regardless, I just don't see that impacting things like book sales or codex's.

Anyway, cool to read about how people got into it and just thought I'd share!

I fully agree with the article, and I have experienced the exact same pain with resin printing, which has been collecting dust since my first printing streak.

But I have to say that the comparison between the time investment in resin printing and preparing official Warhammer models for painting is very incomplete.

Ultimately, if everything goes well with the printing (and it usually does), the whole process will take around an hour of active time (preparing + post-processing) a plate of 20-30 models (however many you can fit). It will DEFINITELY take longer than this to get the same level of quality from plastic sprues. Removing the pieces from the sprues, removing the mold lines, filling the worst ones, etc. is extremely time consuming, and it is really the most boring part of the hobby.

It took me at least 20 hours to prepare around 100 models (small ones), when it would take only 4 or 5 when printing them. This time saving is time you can reinvest in painting.

I also still believe that at some point, with advancements in printers (which happen consistently year over year), but especially in resin formulations, we will reach a state where it will be safe (or at least much safer than it is now) to 3D print models using resin, at which point it will indeed have a large impact on Games Workshop's business.

I'm one of those small sculptors in this space, and I chuckled at the comparison to a Meth lab. Honestly though, my own printer is more like a grow-op. It's all contained in a half size grow tent in order to contain the mess, and easily vent the vapors. It definitely looks sus, and I'm probably on a watchlist for all the gear I've bought.

Great essay! I have never played WH40k but have been quite into Magic the Gathering at times.

Before I started playing I asked a friend what was to stop me just printing or photocopying cards (even in the 90s this would have been possible)

I understood how silly that question was when I felt the pleasure of actually owning a high quality product. Sure, I could spend the time to make my own cards but playing the game is only part of the fun.

Warhammer and MtG get mocked for being expensive but in reality they are comparable to cars, sports, fashion, and all the other things humans spend their disposable income on.

His description of resin printing, especially the meth lab comparison and

> At one point, he said the phrase "you really don't want to get this on your skin" with the casual tone of someone who had definitely gotten it on his skin.

are spot on.

There are currently 10 3d printers in my household and there have been maybe 30 unique ones in total over the past 2 years but after the first 3-4 months of resin printing that was given to a friend and never revisited.

I felt like it couldn’t be done casually and even moderately safe at home but needed some sort of lab with good ventilation. We Jerry rigged a hood using a portable enclosure meant to grow weed in while routing the smell out of your dorm through a window and wore proper PPE the whole time but I still felt sketched out

I don't know Warhammer that well, but I see a lot of 3D printing for historical wargames. Seems popular for naval wargames for instance, but I saw many printed tanks as well. Not so much small scale infantry perhaps. There are so many very specific models that can be needed for historical scenarios that mass-production can't provide everything. Some companies of course print models on demand now, but others sell STL files.

I'm so confused. I've resin printed DnD minis for everyone in several of the campaigns I've played in. They all love them. Yes, there were gloves. Yes, there was alcohol baths, but I just dropped them in the automatic washer and walked away for ten minutes.

The entire manual involvement for me from hitting go on the printer to handing out their minis to my friends, ready to be painted, I would estimate at just over five minutes per mini. This includes removing supports. This reads like it was written in 2010, not 2025.

3D printers absolutely revolutionized small volume plastic manufacturing and prototyping.

If you do something useless with a tool that's not on the tool, that's on you.

There's 40 of them sitting in my garage doing useful work that would have been absolutely impossible without this tech.

3D printing is fantastic for terrain, which is typically larger and smoother, so it’s easier to hide or sand away any printing issue. It’s fine for things like busts or some display mini, where you can afford to be careful and spend the time fixing rough edges. But it really isn’t there compared to good quality plastic for smaller minis with dynamic poses. It’s too cumbersome, too finicky, and the material is too brittle or not hard enough. I don’t doubt that it will get there eventually, particularly for companies that can afford to invest in high-quality, expensive printers and material.

I think GW will sell in-store printed minis before sufficiently good 3d printers are common in players’ homes. The OP makes good points about why this is impractical in some ways, but I can see this happening for special releases or some less popular minis. The other side of the impulse-buy coin is that a lot of people need minis that are not usually in stock in stores. Then, waiting 15 minutes or even an hour (say, whilst you play a game or watch one, or paint some stuff, or just chat with fellow nerds) to get your mini printed beats the current "order on the website and then wait 2 weeks" process.

I am a new initiate into the world of 3d printing for minis. I decided a resin printer does not suit my small apartment lifestyle, and got an Elegoo Centauri Carbon FDM printer. It's pretty plug-and-play, there was very little setup required.

www.reddit.com/r/FDMminiatures/ will give you an idea of the level of quality you can reach. With the smallest 0.2mm nozzle, will it reach resin levels? Close but not really. Is it good enough for me to screw around with, improve my painting skills, and play casual games? Certainly.

Also I subbed to the OnePageRules patreon, they offer alternative minis and rulebooks that are very similar to GW, with an alternate for fantasy and 40K, as well as fleet battles and other stuff.

This really is a fantastic piece of writing, one of the most entertaining I've read on HN

A least the 3D printers today are great to print terrain, ruins and so on as a base for painting and decorating.

Loved his writing style - happily read the whole thing.

3D printers are really cool, in a way that's hard to grasp until you use one. My apartment came with a single trash bin, conflicting with the CC+R requirement that you separate out your recycling. I designed and 3D printed a retrofit to hang two trash bags in a single can. Now I can separate my recycling without having it out in my living space.

I also had a kitchen island that came with a drawer that was shorter than my utensil tray, with a frustrating amount of dead space behind the drawer. I bought a dremel and some wood glue to mod the drawer to fit the utensil tray. I 3D printed the tools I needed to do it - like a jig and some vices.

I've been meaning to design and print some hangers for my plastic instruments - I still have my Rock Band kit from college.

Maybe people who play WH4K care about the OEM seal of approval. Maybe they look down at 3D printing. Surely, it still opens the hobby to people who _don't_ have thousands to invest in miniatures. I would 100% print miniatures if I was into that game.

But it feels like he's too focused on that particular micro-market. Maybe there's something in that subculture that makes them look down on 3D printers (and maybe not understanding that is a useful analogy to other "from the outside, this is dumb" situations). But there's a whole lot of utility in 3D printing that has nothing to do with wargames.

Also, my office has a makerspace. I've seen _plenty_ of people printing pieces for tabletop games. The author has his biases too.

Really enjoyed the article! I'm someone who could never afford 40K as a kid, but since gettinga 3D printer have been fascinated by the potential for printing minis and toys for my own kids. I'd definitely be planning to print my kids minis if they show an interest in future, now I have some knowledge and experience, especially as I find the games workshop business model too predatory for my liking. I'd much rather buy smaller artists model designs and stick to only heading down official routes for rulebooks, codexes and lore.

I'm seeing a lot of people in comments dismiss FMD printers for minis, and thought I'd highlight the work of a youtuber called 'Once in a six side' who did a deep-dive into FDM mini pronting and got some really impressive results with even stock settings and basic PLA filament (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8fuNDTQJCY).

Once he really explored support placement, settings and ideal configurations his best prints rivalled resin in some cases once painted. Really cool to see as someone who isn't interested in messing with resin anytime soon.

> For those who had friends in high school—and I'm not being glib here, this is a genuine demographic distinction—40k is a game where two or more players invest roughly $1,000 to build an army of small plastic figures. You then trim excess plastic with a craft knife (cutting yourself at least twice, this is mandatory), prime them, paint them over the course of several months, and then carefully transport them to an LGS (local game shop) in foam-lined cases that cost more than some people's luggage.

> Another fellow dork will then play you on a game board roughly the size of a door, covered in fake terrain that someone spent 40 hours making to look like a bombed-out cathedral. You will both have rulebooks with you containing as many pages as the Bible and roughly as open to interpretation. Wars have been started over less contentious texts.

I think it's also worth mentioning, along with all the very valid points of the article, that 3d printed figures, even at their best, simply cannot match the properties of GW's injection molded plastic at the same time.

FDM prints have visual artifacts you cannot escape with many shapes, and even the most flexible of the expensive resins isn't nearly as durable as a plastic model. Plus plastic models insta-bond with plastic glue making them both easier to assemble and repair (as everything will eventually get damaged through years of play).

I've been doing model work for 30 years, and while 3d print stuff has many uses within the hobby (like making epic terrain way more accessible), replacing the core figures for something like warhammer, to anyone who cares about finish quality and durability at the same time is not one of them.

This article was great but the writing was an absolute delight.

> The community is incredible. When I moved from Chicago to Denmark, it took me less than three days to find a local 40k game

Somewhat off topic from the rest of the comments but:

Knew someone who was in the Jane Austen Society (New York City chapter). She told me how a member from the Melbourne (as in Australia) chapter was visiting NYC, had never been there and so reached out to the NYC chapter to see if people wanted to hang out.

After the hang out, my friend says: "OMG, she was one of the coolest and most fun people I've ever met! So much fun to take someone else from JAS around NYC for their first time"

This is one of my favorite stories about how a community can grow out of an interest in something and then span the globe. Cool to see the same thing is true of 40k

The author has a sharp poetic knife he writes with. I first came across war hammer while in school for jewelry design at FIT while the other students had painting miniatures as side gigs. At the time I was heavily into 3d printing jewelry models and it was much more involved because personal printers didn't really exist for easy consumption yet. Several years later and I have moved on to designing even smaller things (too small! No one can see them only feel their effects!) now I've tried to scale back up again, and keep coming back to 3D printing. The hassle of owning my own machine continues to make sending out for prints more appealing.

There are other ways to exit of W40K such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrikWars .

Happens all the time - a tool takes 90% of the effort out of part of an effort. They say Its a productivity miracle!

But the thing is, that was one step in a larger process.

For instance. It used to take hours to lay out your software widget controls - dialogs with checkboxes and pulldowns and whatever. They invented tools that let you do it in 10 minutes. CAD saves software!

But reality check: that part of the project was a whole six hours saved, out of a schedule stretching over months. The savings disappear into insignificance.

So it's just a technology problem. As soon as bambu or someone evolves the tech sufficiently to have full color full resolution, the meta will change.

You can absolutely 3D print warhammer.

“The bottleneck isn't acquiring plastic. The bottleneck is everything else.”

Getting models is certainly a bottleneck if you dont have $1000 to spend on minis.

In my city you can resin print the same army for $100 at one of dozens of 3D printing shops.

Same goes for high end mtg proxies.

If you are interested in a great game with an open license that encourages printing and hacking together your own models check out Trench Crusade.

3D printed miniatures are best printed not on FDM machines (the kind most hobbiest have) but on SLA machines. I'm not a gamer, but for Model Railroading, FDM 3D printing has changed the way a lot of modeling of architecture is done. For printing little HO scale people, SLA is a must -- and it's too messy/smelly/dangerous for me to deal with.

Great essay.

I posted my thoughts on this checks notes five years ago, but it's largely in the same place: https://variancehammer.com/2020/08/06/3d-printing-and-the-ho...

There are places where 3d printing has revolutionized the wargaming hobby. Terrain is one of them, and the biggest one I think. And there's games like Trench Crusade that got their launch via being 3d printable, allowing them the critical mass to get to plastic production.

But at the end of the day, if something is in plastic, I'm buying it in plastic. And I am disappointed by the amount of energy and talent not going into creating new things but...Legally Distinct Space Marines, often sculpted with no notion of actually ever being painted (way over-detailed, etc.)

> [about W40K] ... while still providing frightening amounts of depth if you're the kind of person who finds "frightening amounts of depth" appealing rather than exhausting.

This is me looking at Kenshi, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, and most recently Stationeers in my "last played" games.

I've actually never heard a prediction for a "self driving car in every drive way within 5 years" and I can't think of a single context where that claim wouldn't be immediately ridiculed.

They are in some people's driveway. That's the remarkable part anyway

This article is so good. I wish everything on the internet was this clear and good.

I visited my childhood general store while seeing family last week. I was interested to see that the decades old 'fill your own bag with polished rocks' display had been replaced with a bin of 2$ 3D prints.

That is a funny read. I love my Bambu P1S for the flexibility it gives us in our house. The 3d printing community is also only matched by the software community in terms of the open-source ecosystem. There's a big culture of remixing and this and that. My wife and I have printed half a dozen things around the house that are useful. I've only ever made one tiny item and I don't think it's of much use to most people because I just used an LLM to build it: a mount for my Eufy E21 baby camera. It's just a box with two pins that end in a cone shape for lateral strength. It works surprisingly well and all I needed was my calipers, a few minutes with Claude Code, and some iteration with the print. Great fun!

This game and Shadowrun where always meant to be either fully simulated in software or at least calculated turn by turn even on table top. It would eat up too much time otherwise.

"Games Workshop will be selling overpriced plastic crack to emotionally vulnerable adults long after the sun has consumed the Earth." and the earth is flat.

This was a great read. It reminds me slightly of the book Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. I used to play Warhammer (Fantasy, not 40k) so it was really nice to reminisce.

Honestly, resin printers are a god send to the miniatures community. Hands down best tech to print warhammer, n-scale, D&D, you name it.

Yes and No.

Look, 3d printing is almost a psychological thing. You almost nailed it but skipped right past it.

The term proxy used to delineate between wysiwyg and non-wysiwyg. "I am using this chess piece as a marine" The Deoderant Bottle Gravtank from White Dwarf - Not a proxy. They made it custom rules. It was a miniature, and it was furnished with love and care. This culture is now only found in like, airfix or custom scifi modelling.

Modern GW has waged a psychological war on these things, encouraging game stores to do the same.

Proxy is now used, as you have demonstrated, to cover anything not GW. Even if its wysiwyg, its looked down upon, otherised. GW stores have even gone as far as preventing people from playing official GW minis that are end of life in their stores. Soon these will be referred to as like "official proxies" or something.

I have 2 local non GW stores.

Store 1: Owner does not permit unofficial minis in the store at all. Will rant about this policy to anyone who listens. He says there's no way he makes money on printed minis so screw them (I was in the store to purchase paints and brushes and so on for my printed minis when I caught this rant)

Store 2: Has 3 3d printers, sells printing services, sells resin. Doesnt give a crap.

But it doesn't matter in either case, because 40k players are policing each other. GW has shifted the language to otherise armies that even have converted 3d printed bits, let alone full prints.

Not to mention: 3d print resin isnt that bad. The 3d printer business makes a lot of money selling filters and tents and housings and gloves and what not at inflated prices. Some of these things are worthy, others are not. But I was using UV resins for SFX before printers caught on, and guess what, resin fx are smellier and less able to be hidden in a dark corner of your house. Not really a huge impediment. The terror about UV resin seems to be coming both from the people slinging the extra gear, and the people concerned largely with these evil "proxies".

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but GW mostly makes money from new players. Old grizzled angry veterans arent their bread and butter anyway.

Give it 10 years, let more stores embrace 3d printing, let some more permissive games take hold, and then you might have a chance at killing gee dubs. But they will still be selling huge expensive kits to 12 year olds using mums credit card.

how about 3d printing backup boat propellers?

i dont own a boat.

i imagine real propellers are somewhat expensive. and people often dont buy 2 to keep a spare on board. and on occasion they do fail.

why not a 3d printed backup propeller then? it only needs to last 1/2 a trip..only the way back...

Besides anything you discussed, you are a very good writer.

Thanks for the laughs my friend.

Nice article. It kind of puts model railroading into perspective.

The opening remarks before getting into the 3D printing itself, are a bit of criticism of over-optimistic tech predictions. It made me pause and wonder, why do those show up so much? I think it's because they have been right a lot during the exponential part of the silicon S-curve, and it feels like there is a bit of left-over cargo-cult behavior echoing from those times.

A 3D printer can't even print a DVD case, with the transparent insert thing.

There's a long way to go.

Some people play warhammer to win.

Some people play warhammer for the cameraderie.

Some people play warhammer to get outreache to sell their 3D printed components, which probably started out as a "hey look at me" but like all side gigs can, has become foundational in who they are, and now occupies them more than cameraderie or winning.

"I have a high tolerance for tedious bullshit. This exceeded it."

That has to be one of the more amusing reads I've had in a while. And agreed, dealing with all of the extraneous crap that comes along with 3d printing is amazingly high on the tedious scale. Frustratingly so.

Why not just transition to LEGO for the figures and units ?