"FDM Printer For Miniatures" Topic

I tried some more miniatures for my FDM printer, and the results were not bad.

172minis.blogspot.com/2021/01/new-year-and-some-more-3d-printing.html

I would have said perfect. They are bigger than you would see on the table so you could say they massively exceed the criteria for visibility on table.

As we speak my Ender 3 FDP printer is printing out a squad of infantry in 10mm!

FDM may not be as good as resin, but for the tabletop it is perfectly suited.

What kind of settings are you using for your printer? What size nozzle are you using? For a FDP printer, they look great.

If you have not already found them, look up FatDragon Games profiles for the Ender3 on YouTube. Even though I use a Prusa I found some good items to tweak to get good results.

Thanks UshCha!
To all, I actually use a modified version of Fat Dragon Games' profile, but with (most of) the numbers transferred into Prusa Slicer rather than Cura. Cura did some crazy stuff with some of my miniatures, and I don't trust it anymore. I just use a standard 0.4mm nozzle, but I print at 0.08mm layers rather than 0.1mm as recommended by FDG.

Gauntlet, please show your miniature here when they are done. I'm always willing to compare notes with other FDM printers.

Like what you've done gregmita2.

I've had a CR-6 SE for a couple months now and have been impressed with the quality I can get. I've printed a bunch of terrain and Barbie sized furniture using a 1mm nozzle, various things with the 0.4mm and a few minis with the 0.2mm. I'm using FDG's Cura profiles slightly tweaked for the minis and finer detailed things. The last couple of days I've been fooling around with 1/285 WW2 tanks.

I can't find stls for that scale but have found a ton of 1:200 and 1:100 files so have been testing things to try and get decent prints. Bergman's 1:200 tanks off Thingiverse print real nice just by rescaling but the others need extra work that I may have figured out now.

Loving my printer and it's got me planning space fleets and WW2 armies that I've wanted for ages but never spent the money on.

Thanks Zinkala!
You should put pictures up here too, when you are done printing those models.

@gregmita2

My 10mm/12mm prints aren't super quality but they are certainly good enough for wargaming and the 3 foot rule.

imgur.com/2ArnPz1

My photo skills are poor, front mg34 is out of focus.

Gauntlet, those look nice. I just downloaded these link a few days ago. They look goofy on the computer but when printed you can tell what they are.

gregmita, I'll take some pics once I get respectable copies of a few more things. Right now I've got about 5 really nice prints of medium and large tanks. Spent a bunch of time the last couple of days figuring out how to get printable rescaled tanks from 1:100 down to 1:285. Getting nice panzer 3s and working panzer 1s now. The pz1 is tiny, less than 14mm long. The good part is these don't take too long to print. Now that I know what I'm doing (well maybe)it's getting much faster and easier.

Zinkala,

I got that 6mm set as well. They are kind of funny haha.

Those 6mm and 10mm scale infantry actually look pretty good. I don't really go down to that small of a scale with my prints, but you guys' pictures give me confidence about printing them.

I've only done 28-32mm scale for ages but have some old Epic, Renegade Legion and Battletech that are smaller. Always dreamt of having a bunch of armies for WW2 at 1/285 so decided now is a good time to try it out.

I just uploaded some photos of what I've been working on here. link
These were all printed at 0.12 layer height using a 0.4mm nozzle and FDG's settings. The smaller tanks are rescaled 1/100 models (with a bit of tweaking in Blender) and the larger ones are rescaled from 1/200 models with no adjustments. The sdkz 231 was the last one I did and I'm hoping that's the quality I'll get going forward. Just need to figure out what I need to play and prioritise which things to print.

The last few vehicles you did look great!

I was satisfied with the 2 grey ones even with their flaws but loving that I'm getting better quality now. I thought about switching to the smaller nozzle but these look good enough for now.

Yeah, when you are first building an army, the 0.4 mm nozzle is good to get them out quicker. Once I had ~50 vehicles I switched to a 0.3 mm nozzle since I wasn't rushed to get more.

Here is a pic of group of infantry painted on the table with some printed jagdpanzers and buildings.

imgur.com/4Fs4tRj

Do either of you guys have issues removing supports from figures that small?

I did at first, but after switching to tree supports, no.

I haven't tried tree supports. I did a bit of tweaking with support setting based on what Danny the 3D GM advised on youtube. That seemed to help along with orienting the models in Cura to minimise the amount of supports.

First thing I did was a bunch of Battletech mechs and some of them were in support cocoons that were pretty hard to remove. Had a few broken legs and misprinted arms but glue and reprinting just the bad part got me through it.

With the tanks I'm doing now I print them with their noses straight up.

Threw a few more pics in my folder that show what the CR-6 can do. Honestly soooooo impressed with these. Love Bergman's files. Some panzer IVJs, a 25 pounder and 2 tiny soviet machine gunners. These had a few seconds of clean up except the 25 pounder that was semi encased in supports.

Really need to start my own thread instead of hogging this one. I'm testing some advancing soviet riflemen right now. I didn't think I could do 6mm infantry with an fdm printer but it's looking hopeful.

If you are doing resin, best way to remove supports is. Wash then dip them in hot water for about a half a min then they will come off super easy.