"3D printer quality" Topic

Are any "home" 3D printers capable of printing good wargame figures?

I have printed miniatures using S-ways FUD and they are OK. Next step is to buy a printer but few manufacturers seem happy to show printed output, other than simple solid objects or convoluted geometric shapes. I have looked at specs of UM2, Makerbot, CreatBot etc but the question is – will they actually work for wargame figures? I have also watched many vids on utube and most people in the industry seem to have been used car salesmen in their previous job.

Wargame figures with faces and equipment detail…no.

That is unless your "home" style budget is way bigger than most people.

Good wargame quality in the 15-32mm size range is going to cost you in the neighborhood of a new car---a nice new car.

While I'm sure there is an appeal to printing something in your basement I think 'buying time' on someone else's printer is still the way to go for fine detail.

Unless, as mentioned, you have tens of thousands of dollars just cluttering up your bank account.

I have bought 10-12 WWII ships from Shapeway and The quality
is as good as the plastic models from Axis & Allies War at Sea

I've been buying naval miniatures in 1:6000 and 1:1200 scales from Shapeway and been very happy with them.

I run student computing operations for a university and we have a Lulzbot Taz 4, a Makerbot 5th gen, and a Projet 160. The Taz 4 and Makerbot are the kind of 3d printers that you would commonly see for home use or just getting started. The quality is hit and miss as we've had some successes as well as some spectacular failures. The Taz 4 does have a variety of resolutions, but when doing small jobs they sometimes slip, which could be a problem for creating miniatures. The other issue with the plastic printers like the ones above can be the long printing times and the inability to do multiple jobs.
The Projet we have on the other hand can do some spectacular work, is much faster, and you can stack multiple items in the build box. It also has an extremely low rate of failure. However, it's also around $23,000. USD

The affordable technology is not quite there yet. Another five years of innovation and we should be able to add eyebrows to our 1mm miniatures for the cost of a piece of paper.

Look around for a local Makerspace or check your library (ours just put in 2 3d printers) and see if you can get someone to do a test for you.

Rich

This one looks like it might be good for printing miniature figures. What do you folks think?

littlerp.com

Upon further investigation: possibly good for ships / spaceships / vehicles, but not quite enough resolution for faces. You folks agree?