Launching

[Thiel]

Why choose expensive 3D printing? No sane person will spend 50€ on a Kerbal. They could start small production and significantly make the cost lower. Also since the price will drop everyone will afford the kerbals and planets, and there will be the supply required. But apparently SQUAD never studied economics(not an insult).

Because the initial investments would be huge and they'd need to sell thousands of units to cover it. It would also take quite a long time and to set up. They'd need to have the dies made which is no simple task, find a manufacturer with the required production capacity, find a paintshop to do all the painting, set up the transportation, storage and distribution.

The fact that they'd have to be hand painted by some fairly skilled people to get the same quality as here really limits the field and drives up the price significantly.

3D printing on the other hand involves no investment aside from the man-hours that went into designing the figures and since they're using shapeways they don't have to worry about distribution or anything.

[Camacha]

They'd need to have the dies made which is no simple task, find a manufacturer with the required production capacity, find a paintshop to do all the painting, set up the transportation, storage and distribution.

The fact that they'd have to be hand painted by some fairly skilled people to get the same quality as here really limits the field and drives up the price significantly.

Of course, you would not want to do all that yourself. Best would be to outsource it to a company with a lot of experience that has all the connections and can produce them cheap. If that is not an option because of the limited numbers, there is always the possibility of going with low volume high quality vinyl figures. They would probably cost a bit less or at worst the same, but they would actually look a lot better and be a little more robust too.

[Thiel]

Of course, you would not want to do all that yourself. Best would be to outsource it to a company with a lot of experience that has all the connections and can produce them cheap. If that is not an option because of the limited numbers, there is always the possibility of going with low volume high quality vinyl figures. They would probably cost a bit less or at worst the same, but they would actually look a lot better and be a little more robust too.

Again the capital outlay for such a production is huge and they'd need to sell several thousands units to get it back. Even if we assume that SQUAD has that sort of money lying around it still entails a huge amount of risk. And even if it does pay off we aren't going to see any sort of product for at least another nine months and it's going to take even longer before SQUAD can recoup their investment.

With Shapeways we get a product now, SQUAD doesn't run any risks and all that money they'd otherwise have to spend on production can go into the game instead.

[Zephram Kerman]

Since there are many prototype products on Shapeways, I suspect Squad will be receiving introductory letters from a number of Chinese factories in 3... 2... 1...

[StevenRS11]

You know what would be incredible? If we could send .crafts to shapeways and they would print the rocket/spaceplane/whatever for us. Now THAT I would spend some money for.

[-RanZ-]

I would like to have something like this but this is way too expensive

[Djolox]

He's not fat. He's sitting on a helmet.

lol thats fun

[iDan122]

You know what would be incredible? If we could send .crafts to shapeways and they would print the rocket/spaceplane/whatever for us. Now THAT I would spend some money for.

Actually you can find 3d printing services around your area and send them a 3D model for printing.

To turn a .craft into a model, you could try using the part welder mod, weld all parts on your ship and create a part.

Every part has a model, so you pretty much just got a model! If you want it colored, that mug cost extra and would require the texture files too.

[Camacha]

Again the capital outlay for such a production is huge

Actually, not really. That is the point of doing vinyl ones instead of injection molded figurines. The quality is higher and the initial investment is low. They will always be more expensive than mass production, but the main advantage is that they are of a real collectable quality.