"Why Do It?" - 3D Printing

“All things are ready if our minds be so.”

 - Henry V, Shakespeare

Welcome back to another Friday on The Art of Caesura!

I hope things are going okay for you, and I'm sending you lots of positive vibes, especially if you need them today. 

We're getting deep into the woods of resin 3D printing here on the blog. Two weeks ago I gave a poetic meditation on 3D printing, and last week we looked at what it is and how it works in more practical terms. 

Today I want to explore some of the reasons why people get into 3D printing. 

Opening Doors

This is the reason that I got into it. Long-term followers of the blog will know that painting is my main jam. I have got back into gaming in recent years, but painting is still my grá. And I am fortunate to be a hobby butterfly and I love to paint everything! A few years on, I'm still working on my modern Black Templars army, but that's because I've painted loads of random stuff at the same time. This really prevents hobby burnout for me. 

Having a 3D printer kicks open pretty much every door in terms of miniature painting for me. I want to paint a kick-ass bust?...no problem, a Trench Crusade army?...you bet, a super-hero statuette?...I sure could! With a 3D printer, my painting options are pretty much only limited by my imagination (because chances are, someone has sculpted most things that I could imagine wanting to paint). 

Cost

This might seem like a funny one, because the buy-in for 3D printing is still steep. Very roughly, my set-up probably cost around 500 euro - with the ventilation fan, wash and cure station and all the accoutrement (It would certainly be easy to shave a couple hundred off that by getting a much smaller (but just as high-resolution) printer and cutting a few other corners). Anyway, once you have the initial buy-in the per-model cost for printing is literal pennies. In terms of resin cost, to print every single model for a Trench Crusade faction would cost about 5 euro. Total. Now that figure is a bit misleading, because there are some maintenance costs with the printer (every few months you have to replace the FEP film which costs about 6 euro - but is a humongous pain in the ass) and there are ongoing resin costs but again, per model these are negligible. 

The point that I'm trying to make is that after the initial set-up cost (which you could mitigate, as I am, by selling 3D prints) you could probably print a 2000 point Warhammer 40k army for less than 20 euro worth of resin (depending on the army, this could cost around 1000 euro of "real world" money it you were to buy if from the shop). 

Looking for a New Hobby or Hobby Pivot / Interested in Tech & Gadgets:

This is actually the least reason that I, personally, got into it. I said multiple times "I really don't have time for another hobby". But here I am. And quite happy to be here, I must say. Some people (I now count myself among them) just enjoy 3D printing (read my post 2 weeks ago, and you might begin to understand what I mean). It is kind of magical. It is also a bit of an adventure - there are times that prints fail and you get to solve the challenge of why that happened, and how to fix it. 

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Are you interested in 3D printing? Why? Whatever the reason, welcome to the club!

Reading: about ReMarkable Paper Pro

Watching: Severance (First episode!)

Next Week:

How...