I just did a search for "3d printer" and found many of them listed. Just looking at one seller, PCRUSH.com, I found two pages of printers listed from about $350 to about $4500 (US). Lenovo, HP, and Cannon all had 3d printers listed on this site.

Cute.  I went to Shapeways this last Yule and bought the family 3D printed D&D dice sets.  I bought myself a nice over-sized D20.  I thought I was being 3D printing gamer geeky, but this goes several steps further. 

Nice! GJ

I've printed quite a few miniatures from Shapeways for a table gaming project, quality (with the right material selection) has been fantastic.

For comparison, here's our prototypes done off a Makerbot (I think).

You can see my thumbnail in the first picture for scale (man sized hands), the second picture the model is sitting on top of an SD card for scale.

If anyone is interested, I can show some comparison's between the material options and/or provide advise on choices based on what's we've done for our miniatures.  There's several things to consider in regards to material choices.

I'll have to upload some more pictures at home.  The naming varies a bit depending on the particular site, but in Shapeways terms, the main ones you'll be looking at are...

Ultra Detail/Frosted Ultra Detail - If you've got a design with a lot of surface detail or fine edges, this is the way to go.  Finish has a slight grainy feel to it.  Smaller models may have to go this route for Shapeways to print it.  Downside is the material is very brittle.  If your model is just going to sit on a shelf and/or in a case, it's fine.  But if your going to use it as a gaming piece or have it somewhere it can be bumped around, you may want to reconsider the material choice.

Detail - Not too much different than the Ultra Detail in most cases, but doesn't have as much of a grainy feel to it.

Strong and Flexible - Typically the cheapest option (by quite a bit), also the most durable.  Material can be flexed quite a bit more than the above options without breaking.  Main downside is you will lose a lot of surface detail, if you have any, and the edges are rougher.  Surface is a bit rough. They now have a polished option which presumably takes care of that, but I haven't gotten to test that yet.  Probably in a couple of weeks.

Steel - I will be ordering one or two models in steel in the next few weeks, can post back details when those come in.

In my previously posted picture, the largest ship was printed in the White Frosted Ultra Detail (to retain the texture on the top and bottom of the wing), the two small ones were printed in White Detail.  To give you an idea of what I mean by brittle....  A small manual (the one they are sitting on), slid about 2" onto the tip of the upper section of the large ship and broke the tip off (it's glued on in that picture).  So, keep that in mind.

Frogboy or one of the other Stardock guys, correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect the models from GalCiv won't have too much surface details (based on your picture) as the game depends on textures for that.  If that's the case, Strong and Flexible will probably be the way to go.

The other thing to keep in mind is a balance between size and cost.  A larger model is going to be more durable and retain more detail, regardless of material selection as there's a limit to how fine of details they can print.  However, as volume increases, so does cost.  Drastically.  The above large ship was about $30 to print in Ultra Detail.  A 8.5" across replica of Deep Space 9 in White Strong and Flexible (meaning cheapest material) is $200.  Fortunately you can use a free program called netFabb Basic to re-scale your model.  I have zero 3D modelling experience, but re-scaling is very straight forward.

On that note, Frogboy, what kind physical dimensions are we talking about for the GalCiv exports for say a medium sized hull core design?

I have to admit this is pretty cool! Thanks for providing the details/education, XavierMace, it's appreciated!

I just realized I never posted the additional pictures, sorry about that.

It's a poor paint job, but it lets you see the details of the model itself.  As mentioned previously, this was printed in the Ultra Frosted Detail.  As a show piece, the quality of the model is fantastic.  All of the details on the wings are clean and visible.  All the edges are nice and smooth and all the thin areas are solid.  As a gaming piece however, it's had to be glued back together twice now.  Once from having a small manual slide like 3 inches onto it and the second time from falling on the floor about 3 feet.  Fortunately the breaks are clean enough you can't tell it's been glued back together, but who wants to be gluing a gaming piece back together every time they use it?

That was printed on a Makerbot.  The edges are far less smooth, especially on the nacelle pylons and the saucer section was a bit too thin for the printer and therefore the edges have some holes in it.  If you are ordering from Shapeways, they do a wall thickness check to make sure holes like that don't happen.  Shapeways now gives you the option to apply automatic fixes to the models to fix wall that are too thin.  Based off the render they show you when they apply the fix, it doesn't look like the most refined thickness fix, but it's hard to say without seeing the actual results.

I've got 3 more ships in processing right now with Shapeways, so I'm hoping they'll be here by next weekend.  A larger ship in Strong and Flexible, and two small ships, one in Polished Strong and Flexible (to see how the finish looks) and one in Ultra Frosted Detail to see of the smaller ships are as prone to breaking in that material.  Unfortunately did not get to do one in Steel this run.  Hopefully the next one.  Let me know if you guys want me to keep posting pictures of the various materials.  I had them apply the wall thickness autofix to all 3 of these models rather than do it myself to see how the actual results look.

Let me also stress again, this is not a showcase of the best these printers can do.  There's a limit to how thin a 3D printer can print and most of my models are right on that edge.   The "Detail" materials can be printed a bit thinner than the stronger ones, which is why most of my small ships are being printed in the detail.  They are simply too thin to print.  All of my Makerbot examples were printed on the stronger material.  You can flex the pylons quite a bit without breaking them, making them far more suitable as gaming pieces.

Unfortunately I only have my phone available right now, but I wanted one picture that showed a good size comparison.  The ship sitting on the penny was printed by Shapeways in Frosted Detail.  It's not much thicker than the penny it's sitting on.  The ship to it's right is another Makerbot print and again shows the Makerbot's struggle with the really small parts.  The pylons are very rough, although solid to be fair.  The edges of the saucer like the larger example again have holes/missing chunks.

Oh, I know.  I did models for about 10 years myself, but that was almost 15 years ago and this was just a rush job on "prototypes" so I wasn't terribly concerned with the end result.  Those are good tips to be sure, and the Pledge Floor care is a new one for me.  However, I'm trying to set expectations for people not familiar with the technology.  I'm aware they can be fixed (and again, your tips are great tips), but I suspect many people buying them are expecting them to be ready to go save for paint.  I just want it to be clear that may not be the case.  

The next run I've got coming in has mounts in them for bases (as I'm using them for gaming pieces) and base coats will be done by airbrush, assuming the model comes out right.  That said, the one advantages of the rough/grainy finish of the non-polished materials is paint sticks surprisingly well.  I've done them with and without primer.  I'm using acrylic paints as well, the last of the enamels were thrown out ages ago.

Maybe once the in game exporting is in place we should do a sticky on tips for prints?  Frogboy/Island Dog, thoughts?  And can you let me know the physical dimensions we are talking about?  Same as the teasers you showed, or will the exporter let you scale it?