Haha, very cool Ken. We'll keep our fingers crossed that the Inquisitor doesn't find you.
Yes, I think the 3D printing industry is just starting to gather steam (no pun intended here) with the miniature wargaming hobby. As the prices of 3D printers come down, and more people start buying them for home use, I wonder if we'll get to a point where gaming companies build computer files for 3D printing of their models (soldiers, ships, whatever) and give you the option to buy the file to print at home instead of buying actual miniatures from them. Maybe they'd have a few models made to be shown on their website, but that's it. I wonder if that would bring the cost of miniatures down, as they wouldn't have to buy all the raw resin/white metal/other material to make thousands of individual models?
I'm not a computer guy, but I'm sure there is a way they could limit a purchased file to only being printed 3 times or something like that-- so you could print yourself a squadron, but not an entire fleet. To me this is the next logical step, kinda like a lot of gaming companies now offer free PDF downloads of their rulebooks.
Or maybe this is already a thing (purchasing 3D print files instead of miniatures)?
