3D Printing: Is It Scratch Building or Something Else?
3D Printing is clearly headed towards the modern world at full speed. But let’s talk about the ethics of the practice…
Reader Builder asks an interesting question:
I have been playing 40K since Rouge trader, I enjoy the game, love the hobby and the community. About a year and a half back I got a 3D printer, since then I have designed several playing pieces that can be used as stand ins for some of the larger pieces that can be used in the game.
In my gaming group we were discussing the moral (not legal) implications of printing gaming pieces. Three opinions were expressed:
- 3D printing is the same as scratch building
- 3D printing is copying someone else’s work
- 3D printing is something completely new
To put this in context, I am not scanning and printing, but designing models in sketch up and then printing them. The process takes quite some time. With my space elf model racking up about 20 hours of design time, and each print takes about three days. The whole process feels very satisfying, and scratches my scratch build itch nicely. However, the difference is that where scratch building a thunder hawk took me 40 hours, and left me with one thunder hawk, scratch building these models takes roughly the same amount of time, but I can produce many models.
I will not share my design files (for several reasons), but I can imagine that it will not be long before others do. Even a brief trawl of thingiverse shows that early legal interventions from GW has not dissuaded the 3D printing community at all. I would anticipate that over the next two to three years many communities will include people who will print a portion of their army. How will you feel about this?
What to you think the answer is and where do you draw the line?
Top image: 3D-printed dress for Dita Von Teese by Michael Schmidt and Francis Bitonti
