mermaid wrote:Scaledecs offering of a paper deck. Why not to post it as a jpg file so anyone could print it?
Except when you consider that it took hours to engineer, days to test fit and refine the cut, time to preprint the stock, time to mount the printed stock and align it with the laser cutter, time to cut the sheet, maintenance on the laser cutter that racks up for every hour of use, not to mention the investment expense of the computers, software, and the investment in the plastic kit itself that we have to measure to work from. Having an operation where we give away all of our labor "for free" is not a sound business plan by any standards.
Actually, the cost of the material is a fraction of the expense of making these decks - and the variance between the cost of a sheet of photographic paper and a sheet of teak, maple, or black gum is so insignificant that I charge the same for all four materials.
Trumpeter probably only spends a buck or two for the styrene, paper and cardboard to make every Roma kit. Why don't they sell that kit for five bucks instead of a hundred? Because the cost is not in the materials.
At scaledecks.com, we spend a ton of time trying to get the appearance of the planking right (we don't just burn it in with a laser) and we print incredibly fine details. Then we try to get extremely accurate laser cuts so that the piece just fits in perfectly. That effort has an associated expense.
If you want to just have a piece of paper and cut it out yourself with an X-Acto knife, and don't really care about the quality of the printing (and assuming that your printer can produce an image exactly 100% of the size that it is supposed to be - and trust me, they don't all do that!) then nothing is stopping you.
Did you see this?
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84358
That's from a different manufacturer. It doesn't have individual plank tinting like we do, and the planks and framing are overscale, but it's a nice uncut picture. You could try to use that if you like.
There is a great cartoon from the old "B.C." comic strip by Johnny Hart. In it, the woman says to Peter, 'Three thousand clams for a fur coat? That's outrageous! Don't you have anything cheaper?"
Peter hands her a bow and arrow and says, "Well, we have 'the kit.'"
