How Much Does It Cost To 3D Print Imperial Knights? 

“It’s expensive because we gotta keep the local stores open, pay the designers and artists, and pay off the corporate overlords mostly, but it’s irrelevant that our supreme leaders need for another Bugatti” - a totally real employee of the imperium

I strongly recommend a wash cure station. Makes the experience so much more pleasant and easy. Great video and love the knights

As far as I understand: The cost of the actual plastic is actually pennies on the dollar. The majority of the cost for models are in design and creating injection molds. Artists, Designers, and Engineers need to be paid. The injection molds also needs to be paid for (and apparently each one can cost upwards of $200,000 for high quality industrial molds meant for constant repeated use). Then there's supply and logistics. These are made in the UK and then shipped all over the world. I heard they did have some factories in China for stuff like terrain but last I heard they were shuttering them due to issues. Should the cost be as high as they are? Probably not. However, doing a direct cost comparison of materials and equipment is cutting out a lot of other considerations. For me, personally, I much prefer my models be in plastic. Until plastic printers are as good as resin printers, I'll probably end up paying that premium. The other issue is that GW doesn't have great competition. It's not that they lack competition but GW is the big fish and only they can offer the things I want. For the most part, GW plastic is good quality, the sculpts are well done, and it's not made with questionable labor. I think it's great that 3D Printing Hobbyists can create an entire army for only a fraction of the price of buying from GW. Please continue having fun with the hobby in whatever capacity you can and want to. Also, please continue to let me bum Krieger heads for my Guard army.

Awesome video! Side note, ALWAYS remove supports before curing. Wash in IPA or other solvent and then a hot water bath will soften the supports and make them easy to remove. this step changed my resin experience after years of printing without it!

This is the 3d printing models video ive been waiting for extremely informative and helpful overall thank you for shedding alot of light on a potential future venture

Great video Sam! Just a note, you don't have to use isopropyl alcohol (IPA) for rinsing/cleaning standard resin - you can use methylated spirits (also known as "denatured alcohol") too. This can be handy as certainly where I'm from methylated spirits is considerably cheaper and more widely available than IPA :) Do the cost calculations where you are of course!

I find that my resin containment and cleaning supplies are where a lot of my money ended up going. I have a small grow tent hooked up to a fan that vents outside that probably added another hundred or so. 3d printing also has a more restrictive time commitment than off the sprue. Still a LOT cheaper than GW, but the startup cost can be quite a bit.

pro tip to new 3d printers out there. Resin quality matters, you will get a nicer experience with the quality stuff. It shouldn't price you out of the hobby though! The standard anycubic resin you can get for about $25 bucks per L is cheap, but smells super bad. My house hold is super sensitive to the smell of it as well. The phrozen 4k resin I've been using recently has only given me 2 print failures over 3 bottles and has almost no smell ($30/L).

What I've been recently doing is printing Death Korps of Krieg. They don't have as much detail as the resin casted infantry, BUT that's mostly the model's fault. The creator I print models from releases cleaner models that are easily printed and I absolutely love them, more so than the Forgeworld equivalent hilariously enough. If you want to see some cost savings there, the cost of print 10 kriegsman is ~$3 USD. The cost to buy the same from FW? $79 or $60 in plastic from GW (granted the plastic kit is absolutely amazing and comes with extra bits), and that is NOT including your local state taxes and the such, or the time for delivery from FW. Or I could print ~200 Kriegsman for the same price o.o I don't know man. 60 points of Kriegers for ~$86 after my local tax, or 70 points of Veteran Guardsmen (Grenadiers) from GW for ~$65 USD or 1200 points for ~$62 USD? Anybody who wants to argue the cost of a "3D printer not being calculated meh" into a horde army such as Guardsman can just shush themselves, because my previous 1500 points of Guardsmen cost me nearly $1,800 USD to assemble. I shudder to think how much I could create with Resin nowadays.

Instant subscription. I've been trying to get into the hobby, and price has been prohibitive for years. You saved me time, money, and gave me access to this game that I've been fascinated.

My brother wasn’t big into the hobby and didn’t want to spend anything really on getting into it, fortunately I had my printer and so now he has a full 2k point army (and extra) to use if he ever feels like playing I will say I love building plastic models and resin doesn’t quite compare in that regard, but for everything else resin all the way

I love 40k, but playing the tabletop has always been a far, FAAAR dream for me. Living in Brazil makes things almost impossible for non-millionaire Warhammer fans, bc GW doesn't even sell here, so you HAVE to import the models on top of paying WAY TOO MUCH for them in the first place. But now its different, the stuff you showed here makes collecting 40k cheaper by AN ENTIRE ORDER OF MAGNITUDE, and I might just do it in the future.

I had someone tell me the molds cost a ridiculous mount to fabricate, i believe it. But with how much money they're making.....doesn't excuse the cost.

I suppose GW still make money from selling paint. And if they had *any* sense they'd sell their own 3D printable models, perhaps on a subscription model.

What key words are you guys using to search for the files? Like "jarhead knight" or "space boxy boie". I feel like there are stls for so many things I'm looking for but don't know the hidden search terms.

I was interested in getting into 40k but I didnt know anything at all about the costs of figure. I dropped a total of 100 USD on supplies, a crappy brush, and 4 little space wolves figure. I thought this hobby might be beginner friendly like DnD but I was so wrong

I recently paid $60~ AUD for a Chimera, not from GW or an affiliate store, but a company that does A LOT of wargaming and TCG and the price was about Retail anyway. There was, A LOT of problems with it, like, A LOT of flashing and the sides of the cab at the front where woefully larger than they should have been. The rear parts of the roof where it connects to the base at the door at the back also where bent out of alignment so I needed to force that closed and instead of plastic cement because it just wasn't working well enough I had to super glue it down. IF I had a resin printer I could have had it done in a fraction of the time with next to no errors outside of the usually suspects for 3DP. The fact that I can get a knight, a woefully price prohibitive model for like an 8th of the total cost is abysmal. I know why Injection Molding is woefully expensive, but Chaos be Damned do they push people to the Illegality with the effectiveness of 3DP.

My knight that i printed is my favorite model to show people 3d printing for warhammer.

There was an account that made a 3D Warlord titan that got taken down sadly, The model had insane detail

Where would we get the files from? I noticed there were no links in the description, but I recently got an Ender 3 pro and would love to try these out, did you like them somewhere and I just missed it?

I'm guessing that they have to justify the mould injection process, the moulds for the process, staff, stores etc. I fail to see how those models are worth £100+ though.

GW premium price gone so far. That is why i am moving to Gundam. i can buy a (protagonist) Gundam Aearial (1/144) for $10. any HG grade Gundam is around $12 ish. it shows How Much regular plastic models cost in production. P.S. Gundam is Not Wargame. So You have 1. never need to build hundreds points of Army. 2. never need to collect/buy multi of same boxes for skirmish. 3. never need to build/paint multi of same models for units. buy, build, paint one of your fav Gundam kit in any faction.

One thing that makes their models so expensive is the way they ship things. They don't do the smart thing and have places in various locations that can be used as a dedicated factory/ shipper. They get everything made in one country over seas then ship it back to the UK. They ship the product from the UK to various stores around the world. Sometimes they even have to go through one country to another which just makes shipping cost more. The amount of money they waste is staggering so of course they get us players to pay for it. It's like taxes stores are supposed to pay on goods in terms of sales tax, but pass it to the customer instead. The amount of useless employees also doesn't help. They desperately need to be rightsized.

So my question becomes how indistinguishable are the models from the real thing? I'm thinking local game shops and tournaments really don't like 3d printing for obvious reasons of cost and lost sales. However as you rightly point out the actually models are ridiculously expensive!

Personally I prefer to still try and get paid files because 1. usually those are produced with others so you can choose one you really like, 2. you get an assurance on quality, and 3. I think it's a bit better for the hobby as those skilled artists and sculptors do like getting paid.

I got a Saturn S this Christmas with no intent to print Warhammer because I simply didn't know it existed. Then I started down the dark path of printing a couple models and really enjoyed the process of printing, gluing, and painting them. I will never give Games Workshop a cent based on what I learned from them so quickly. I already bought STL files from the creators to support them, and printed free models. Sorry not sorry Games workshop. You had a change to sell STL files at reasonable prices ($4.00 - $10) which I would have paid for since it would be easier and consistent to find official pieces. We've seen this happen to companies. You either adapt or die.

I'm almost sick after watching this. With all the money I've spent on any one army alone, I could have bought a 3d printer, curing light, and a ton of high quality resin.. so thank you for being the guy who convinced me to finally get my own 3d printer

GW's like "Wow you're right, how can we justify our prices with free prints available like this. Let's take down those prints!"

That 3D printing is much cheaper than buying is normal. Wargaming is a niche hobby and industrial casting molds are very expensive. But the last two rise of costs were not necessary. The price of a necron monolith goes up from 50 € to 120 € in Germany. With this price changes more and more buyers are pressed into 3D printing. Also the price difference between the army's is to much. Astra Militarum players pay almost the same for a troop of 10 figures like SM players for 10 marine models. But the AM players get only 55 pts to 200 pts for the SM player. But the most annoying part is the missing game balance. If they would make lower prices, make a codex more Fluff, painting and gaming Tutorial and give the Stats/Rules for free, 3D printing would stay a niche in this niche hobby. I love my FDM and resin printers and they are great tools for customization. And for props as well. I am collecting 11 war games, but use the printers only for props in Warhammer 40k. For the other games only for customization, bases and terrain. I buy only original 40k minis, if they are in a bundle in my non Warhammer local stores. I accept original prices for the other small company miniatures to support them. But I'm not willing to pay GW bad price strategy for a semi good game.

Unfortunately for GW the 3d Printer Genie is out of the bottle. Now they are stuck playing Whack A Mole not only with ChinaForge and Comrade Recaster but now with STLs as fast as GW can take them down they pop back up renamed. Though they did finally kill the MEGA site with all the STLs sadly.

It's expensive because people will still buy it. If people stop buying GW monis, the price will drop until they fo, or until GW goes out of business. Part of the reason they can get away with chatging so much is because they mandate official GW models for all official events, which is fair, but also monopolistic.

It is a very easy Question to answer, why GWs Models that expensive: Because they did not change the Way they produce their Stuff, if they would go the 3d Print way, it would cost less then half with all the margines and personal costs.

Well I mean its simple why its so expensive. There are people out there who don't have the technical know how to operate a 3D printer (myself included) and GW know these people will pay for the model (Not myself included).

Just curious, were do you get these models? I've looked for some Ork models and, I mean yeah I get some models but nothing Games Workshop quality tier of detail.

I have the files for that Knight. I dont even play 40k and I'm just going to print and paint one for fun.

where do you find all free files, would you share list of your models and where fron or link, would be nice to share a bit good links for the community!!!

Within 3 days of my print adventure I grabbed nitril kitchen gloves and it’s much less expensive . Quick dip of my fingers into the wash station and my glove is still resin and sticky free two years later. Rest of this is pretty solid overall!

A lot of people are defending GW. I agree they're important for a lot of stuff but my main point is that buying purely from GW is a rich man's life I personally have a mix between the two spending no more than 100 a year on official models but most of my joy comes from painting where I buy a mix of paints from around the range. Honestly I think what I do is a nice middle ground between 3d printer shenanigans and supporting the people who make the game.

I don't mind that GW makes money off of models. I mind that they think it's somehow acceptable that a single army should somehow cost more than the 3d printing tools and materials to buy. That's just insane to me and I refuse to buy anything that far detached from it's production costs.

Handling the resin prints with your bare hands will give you diarrhea

You forgot the most important part ! A respirator rated to deal with volatile organic in the air!

Great Video! What does need to be taken into consideration is that the 3D printed file is a copy. But a team at GW had to concept it, design it, model it, arrange it on sprue, it then had to be milled into a solid block of metal, which If I recall can take a week on its own. Each injection modelled sprue, probably costs less than a £1 to make, but there is SO much behind the scenes. When you print it you're just taking the last stage :) Also you only factored in resin, how many things would you have to print to get over the cost of your printer. If you print one thing (for example), you have to factor in the whole cost of your printer, washing set up, curing set up. Its (Cost of File) + (Cost of Print) + ((Cost of Printer_Washer_Curing set up)/Number of prints to date)) = Cost of End Result Model More you print cheaper it is! Which is always nice. If you had a spreadsheet of every print you'd done, you could see past prints getting cheaper as the costs spread out over a life time! Would be interested in the cost of your knight now vs when you first started :)

Man, love the channel...yeah if you play 40k...3d printing is a must now.

Where do you get the files?

"Why do they cost so much?" Art has a cost that follows market dynamics liek every other industry. The orginal art piece costs more than the copy.

Brilliant remake brother iv not even played my knight army yet. But every time I look at it on my shelf I smile and think screw you GW. People if you really are serious about smashing out 4 or 5 armies get on the patreon it really is worth the couple of quid for the stuff and knowledge you will find on there.

The very moment when a good 3D printer costs less than an army of 2000 points from GW. 😅😅

Do you happen to know the keywords you used to find the files on Cults? EDIT: Ah, got to the part of the video where you talk about direct links. Nevermind then. Ill start hunting them down myself!

Good plastic is less brittle than resin, so it's good for some smaller details if you plan to play with something on the table, or even bigger things if you might not be the most gentle and they got weaker spots on them. So there is a reason to get plastic, that's casted, and thus more expensive, and it's a valuable service that some companies provide. This said, for larger models like Titans or Knights... the advantages are minimal, and the cost is just... way too different. Oh well if one part breaks, you can literally have ten more titans as back ups for that one. Probably good enough for most people that.... This all said, you can do casted plastic much more cheeply than GW does it, they have a huge margin on their parts for their IP. I got some Forge Fathers/Steel Warriors from Mantic games off Amazon the other month, built them this month. Great little kit. Ten guys, ton of options and extras left over. $23 bucks. That's like a third what GW has for their stuff at around $60 for most kits. Granted they're like a cubic inch, so closer to a $50 gaurd kit than $60 space marine, but you get the point. These had even higher quality than most GW kits I'd gotten, much finer mold lines and better designed points for sprues to connect for easier cleaning. Detail was great, overall loved them, as compared to most of my old Ork kits. So even if going for plastic, and letting a company take a profit margin to live off of, GWs prices are just... ya, completely unnecessary. And if you want to play GW games, you need to be aware of that, or... get a 3d printer and just play with your friends.

I get that GW needs to pay hundreds of employees, ship models across the world, pay for storage, AND manufacture and box all the models - But I also think there's just way too much markup on the models, and they really do just gouge players for the privilege of buying their toys... I wouldn't be surprised if you could halve the cost of their boxes, and everybody would still be able to make a profit.

Games Workshop needs to embrace the next area in miniatures if they want to remain relevant. Release official GW print files and allow them to be used in sanctioned events. There's no reason for anyone to get into the official product at this point due to the cost. Very few people have the kind of disposable income it would take to get involved in this hobby. I've been interested in 40K and GW products for 13 years now, but never bit the bullet because the cost of entry is just so high. Now I can make an 1500+ point army for less than $400? And it keeps getting cheaper the more I print? I'm sold.

I printed a warlord titan with an FDM printer a couple of years ago, mostly to challenge myself and my printer, took me almost a year to print everything, and half a year to glue and paint everything. Very therapeutic but FDM printed parts are VERY tough on your brushes and ruined quite a few of them.

There's free Questor and Armiger models out there. You can print this for just the resin cost. For legal reason I would advise you to not look up a corpse dragon on the purple site (you know the one, it told Gee Dubs to get stuff last time it threw a hissyfit).

Currently finishing up a Rampager/Desecrator proxy. Cost a $10 patreon sub and $20 in resin Tenascious/Anycubic mix). Without printing I'd never be able to even dream about having a Chaos Knight army as the dream would die at the sight of a $150 model. However, now I can have my DG themed Knight army for about $200. So far have an Abominant, 2 Wardogs, and the Rampager/Desecrator. Next on the list is a Tyrant and some Karnivores...not sure which I'll do first.

Really great video mate it was very useful. Might look into it with Black Friday coming up.

The cost savings is one thing, but one thing I don't see brought up enough is that 3d Printing is fundamentally a more valuable skill. Learning blender, producing your own minis is 100x as useful as buying a box and putting them together.

Where to buy the Titan model file in the video?😢

yeah I ended up using more resin with reprints but yeah 2000 pt army for like 70 bucks with supplies(Resin/Fep/ALcohol/Gloves)

It's crazy how expensive some models are. My personal turning point were ork meganobs - 65$ for 3 models...3!!! Need I to say that ingame they are cheap fodder unit compared to other terminator units, that you'd better take 10-15 models, so thats 325$ for 450 pts atm. This is just bullocks.

Games Workshop: “It’s expensive because money.”

I normally call foul ball on most all pirating and bootlegging, but sheesh their prices are OUTRAGEOUS! It's still sus to bootleg but they're asking for it at that price hike.

The costs of 3d printing - 3d printer, tools, resin, IPA, and if u dont know how to model, and want to pay - model, also time costs of sprued model - design, modeling, manufacturing (injection mold machining, materials, injection machine, labor), packaging (design, labor), marketing, storage. All this ads up, and the least bought models are made in less quantity, so the costs are bigger per unit. But yeah, many companies proved that injected models can be a bit cheaper than those from GW

Hey man, just bought a 3d printer and really enjoying your videos, joined your discord which has a huge amount of useful info on it so just wanted to say thanks :D

I am finding it hard to choose what kind of resin I should be using. I heard of Resinaway and thought ABS resin would be good, but are there any ABS resins that aren't too bad smell wise?

You should check out Angry Badger Minis, he does a very simple yet effective pose technique for Imperial Knights and did one for a chaos Resin Knight recently. Just a cut at a knee joint and some green stuff.

I don't know a lot about 3d printing so this question might be stupid: Aren't imperial knights a best case scenario for this comparison? You just need 2 files to build the entire army which also looks almost identical. Wouldn't it be different if you were comparing 2 "normal" armies which would need 5 - 10 different files which might not include all the weapon options and/or look less like the original? I am sure printing such an army yourself would still be cheaper than buying the official minis but I guess the difference wouldn't be this big and it might be even smaller when you don't own a 3d printer (not everyone can afford having a separate room for a printer so you'd have to pay someone to print the minis for you).

Great video brother! Is this now gonna be a series with a video for each army? :3

Printing a Porpharion knight easily paid for my machine.

I am the last person who would defend GW (and effectively, I am not), but, tooling and resin molding costs for mass production is hella expensive. Back in my day of Oldhammer they were a lot less due to the "lead" used, then they had to use the much more expensive Pewter to jump into the US market and now plastic is much cheaper for mass market, but injection molding needs a lot of tooling and, because of the work that goes into it, you kinda need to get a good return on those costs, usually done by re-using the tooling. (Yet another) but, GW keep changing their models with their flights of codex-change fancies, so one would assume they don't get the return on cost for keeping a box set going, hence the stupid cost as well as garnering a healthy profit. Honestly, if Gdubz embraced 3d printing, they could be as fickle as they like in their ever changing rules.

Hey, really nice video. Didnt excpect the price difference to be this huge! Would be nice to see how many hours it took roughly to find the models, print them properly and assemble. I'm guessing it's around the same as getting and building the GW kit but could be a bit harder to pull off for someone new to 3d printing. Especially if there are failed prints x) It could add a bit to the "cost" even though it's not easy to measure in dollars. I make 3d art and assets for a living and i gotta say we often overlook how hard it is to design and make these things, even though in the end it costs almost nothing to produce, the initial cost is really high (imagine the price of a full team of artists working for months on a specific design) In a way it's similar to softwares and programs with liscences where it technically doesnt cost anything to make a new copy of the files but making it in the first place is hard. Out of the models i've made none of them really ended up being worth it in terms of revenue and hours spent for instance :[

With that paint job, that sure is a Pretty Squire. I'm sure all of the Imperial Warriors will be jealous of that color scheme. You would have to join a cult to find something that nice!

I think, if where you play, they allow 3D printed models and your friends have them or have no problem playing against your 3D printed models - then why the hell not. Purchase GW rules and away you go. From what I've seen so far, the creators are as good if not better than the GW designers. I'm sure within 3 years GW will get in on the act and sell STL files ( of course I'm sure each file will be extortionately priced)

Hey do you know were I can get good ork stl files?

This is nice and all but, where do i get the STLs now rhat Cults has been purged?

I use Sunlu Resin, its really good stuff. Its cheaper than most resins, its strong for not being abs, and it can do details nicely. I can also buy 2k Liters of sunlu for the price I pay for 1 bottle of the stuff I use to get. I highly recommend it.

Can someone hook me up with where he got these 👀👀

Does anyone know where I can find the knight STLs he used? I can’t find any near that quality

they don't sell the elegoo mars 2 pro anymore

This is much easier explained then you last video which I watched about Space Marine. But I need to learn the black magic arts of 3d printing.

You should put the links on new tech sites and/or in emails when requested

It is a curious bissness modle GW and Forge World have got especially with 4K and now 8K printers about, it's not really justifiable anymore but the linchpin of their modle is 8 year old boys and pester power.

-Prints the Knights legs in Pieces instead of one Piece, digitaly assembled and Posed so it looks cooler, then complains about posing issues -Cures the Pieces before removing Supports and then cries about it Happy days Brother! Really gave me a good chuckle. But those Knights really look good, wanting to Print one but kinda scared because of the size. I'll get there eventually. Nice touch exposing the Greed, always funny to see what you could buy instead with the Money you save from Printing.

I cant believe GW can even turn a profit with the really expensive models. Who aside from youtubers and shop owners can affor 50K point armies with massively overpriced everything?

Where do you get the files from?

This is so cool!!! I love this. I was sitting and economically calculating everything always ending like why would I spent thousands on Warhammer just because they changed my codex..I realize what to do now.

I already have an FDM printer. So my plan is to buy a kill team, print and maybe even design the map parts myself, the rules for kill team and datasheets for units can be found online anyways. And later on I'll buy a resin printer for the big armies. I'd buy one now, but I live in an apartment in the city with no garage so I am really concerned about the fumes, do you have any input on that? Also I wish I had your patience in dealing with these GW fanboys and apologists, they live in another world it seems.

part of the cost of the GW kit is labour for not having to deal with and dispose of toxic resin. and another part goes to paying the original artists who came up with the designs for these miniatures

Totally! With one bottle of resin for about 33$ I printed out 1500$ worth of primaris.

3:33 Ah. Smart man. Those are the good quality ethanol-resistant nitrile gloves. I won't use anything less - mostly because I get them for free.

I play Adeptus Titanicus. I have 2 legion, what can have 2k point in ally maniple variation ur just from one unit. Bought them all from GW, but I am planing to print the weapon options, because there is a lot. Btw GW should make stl files too for print. Othervise they will crash like Kodak.

I tried to find a the knight file you speak of but cannot find it anywhere. Was it taken down?

What annoys me a lot of the time is the unique characters and special units. Some models are, dare I say, reasonable. Like I really like my Reikenor and I think he has a fair price (34 euros) but something like the knight relictor which is just a stormcast with different clothing to be 27 euros is ridiculous! And this is for AOS which is generally less expensive. For space marines you got things like Primaris Captain that is 31.50 for a little space marine or Primaris Lieutenant with Power Sword that is 27 euros and it's just a normal space marine with a sword.

good on ya for having solidarity with the 3d makers, GW's scummy corporatism is why we need them in the first place.

For recording on screen use OBS that way you don't get the bars

Do you know of a store that I can buy a 3d printed knight? I don't really want to buy a whole 3d printer

I want to do this so bad but I still don't get how to manually do supports. I've been printing PLA for years but just ordered an Anycubic Mono 2 to get started with printing Warhammer.

Warlord titan cost only 180$ - 6l of resin. Its ridiculous how much they want from us for 56 cm miniature xDD, good to have a 3d printer :)

"$600 for a 2,000 point army." *Laughs in Australian*

sorry for the specific question but can i use methylated spirits instead of isopropyl alcohol?

ooo warlord titan, i just finished mine and getting ready to paint. i printed it on photo mono 4k and it took him 3 months