"3d Printed Naval Miniatures?" Topic

Recently had the opportunity to experiment with 3d Printed (Resin & Filament) Naval miniatures, mostly files found on "wargaming3d"; Looking to fill holes in my (vintage) 1/24oo collection, most of the models on offer are scaled at 1/1800 and focus on every German WWII variant and Pacific War variants. Plus two different "Great White Fleet" ranges (Pus the War Times Journal) Which makes three choices.

BUT, some prints I ordered from "xpforge" came out with significant hull curvature, is this a natural feature of the medium, or just those particular models.

My own Prints (One Resin Printer, two different Filament Setups) Some were good, some meh (Brother in Law and Nephew); Got some real nice 1/1200 using "PET-X" (?) filament.

Comments?

That sounds like a bad print. Never saw warping after a good print personally.

Generally that is due to the resin. Heat in boiling water and clamp to rigid bar (Al) to cool. Possibly cool with ice water, haven't tried that yet.

Good suggestion; Am also going to write the digital designer and suggest he beef up the depth of the hulls, even if they end up over scale; Most of the photos are water level more or less, so exaggeration in that dimension would look fine while flying over the fleet in your helicopter.

Which resin are you using? Naval miniatures generally benefit from having fairly tough material, so you'll want a good tensile strength with a reasonable high elongation at break.

Soaking too long can also cause the sides to warp as the solvent is absorbed. Letting it dry out can reverse the problem, but not always (depends on material and what was used for cleanup). With soak-induced warpage, rinsing instead of soaking can help avoid the problem.

I print ships on an FDM (filament) printer fairly often and have never had a warpage problem. I think they end up being quite serviceable on the table.

I have printed a bunch of 1/300 scale coastal craft from Wargaming 3d files. I use resin and at the time used Anycubics Eco grey. Now I use a mix of 80/20 Siraya Tech Fast to Tenacious for strength with some flex.

Most prints came out fine with no warping. I did have an issue with elephants foot printing hulls flat to the plate on some prints. I printed a 1/300 Hunt class destroyer in several pieces, standing up.

For WWI ships I would recommend:

broadsideempiresofsteel.comsubheadinghindsTMP 

Keep in mind that the definition of a "warped" print differs from gamer to gamer. What's serviceable to one gamer may not be to another.

I don't know much about 3D printing for 1/2400 scale naval miniatures, but I did see some of the models offered by XPForge on Etsy that looked pretty nice. They seem to offer printing options in either PVA UV resin or FDM. Which is better option for miniatures of this scale and is XPForge reputable in offering a good product? Thanks for any feedback.

I recently printed some 1:600 ACW ships for a client. I use Elegoo printers (Mars 2pro and 3pro). I print with Siraya Tech Fast ABS which I mix in a little of their harder Siraya Tech Tenacious resin.

I found the ships with the very thin bottoms (5mm) seemed to bow up a bit. This occurred on a few of his models in a recent order. Not sure what can be done about that. I too think it has to do with thin base portion of the model.

I do cure in sunlight. Wondering if my Elegoo curing station would do a better job?

Chris

I bought a bunch of 3D printed 1/2400 ships from Shapeways, never had a complaint. Better resin is a must for the tiny ships.

Better resin is always a help. What resin do you use?