"Please recommend me a printer and medium" Topic

Hi,

There is so much stuff I want for my gaming projects that are either: completely unavailable or out of production. For example, after being VERY interested in the minitech Macross stuff, it turns out I can buy a VF-1A Super Valkyrie in battloid and gerwalk, but not in fighter as it's sold out.. : (

I am mostly interested in printing very small scale stuff.

The biggest being 1/285 – 1/300/6mm micro armor infantry and buildings. I am also interested in printing Macross valkyries and space ships at 1/3000 scale or smaller.

What is the printer, medium and possibly software for me? I'm running Windows 7. Fanks.

The Anycubic Photon Mono X is on sale right now.

I love my Photon Mono with Anycubic Resin

Resin for detail at the cost of dealing with fumes and toxic waste.

IF super detail is not as important, an FDM printer can do the trick. For simple, low volume (both number and size) I like my XYZ DaVinci Jr. Simple to use (designed for the K-12 classroom)

Right now, after all my research, I settled on a Mars 3 Pro- which is about $300. USDHowever you'll end up spending more for all kinds of various accessories and cleaning products. I did not find it hard to do, but messy, and slightly a pain in the butt. You have to ask yourself if the number of figures you want will be worth the cost, rather than having someone else print them. You do get misprints, resin spills, and all manner of minor issues which some find part of the hobby, others will hate and be frustrated. If you are only running Win7 you may have some problems with software.

Hmm thanks for all the replies, I really appreciate that.

Resin seems ideal and I live alone so messiness and fumes are not an issue. Frustration and ing around? Maybe an issue?

Reputable Australia 3d printing services for super small scale
exist?

After having two Phrozen's die on me, I settled on an Elegoo Saturn MSLA3 which I have been very happy with. The only accessories I bought are a flexible magnetic build plate sheet and a good thumbdrive.
I have had great luck with Phrozen washable grey resin – Elegoo resin not so much. Total cost in not counting resin is about $350 USD and I print anything and everything from aircraft, ships, 10, 15 and 28 mm figures to dinosaurs and crochet equipment. So far I have printed Lizardman, robot, alien and fantasy armies of at least 100 figures each to name a few.

The Saturn has a much bigger plate than the Mars, and is $303 USD on Amazon right now. All in all it is a much more solid, reliable printer than my Phrozens.

Down the road you will need about $25 USD to buy some FEP replacement film, BTW.

Oh…. this does not include $900 USD for the utility sink, counter top, plumbing and shelves my WIFE wanted, ostensibly to make printing easier. :)

Software, called "slicing software" comes on a thumbdrive with the printer and is a simple download. You will have to select your printer type and go online and select best settings for the resin you are using. This is easy to Google.
Both Phrozens and Elegoos come with slicer software called Chitubox.

Chitubox is memory intensive, so you may have to run it with everything else closed.

Once you get it downloaded, the print process is simple:

1. Go online, find, (buy if not free) and download your chosen STL file.

2. Move said file to a dedicated directory and unzip if zipped.

3. Fire up Chitubox

4 Load your STL(s) into Chitubox

4a Scale your figure to the size you want

5. If pre-supported, skip 6 & 7

6. Tilt your figure 40-45%, with the most important side facing away from the build surface

7. add supports (this is really easy)

8. Press "slice" button and Chitubox prepares your file for printing. Can take a couple minutes

9. Save to thumbdrive. Can take a couple minutes.

10. Save what you did as a project (which is different from the print file) to your hard drive in case you want to modify the print file later. Once you save it as a print file and not as a project you cannot change the print file and have to start all over if you want to change something.

11. Stick thumb drive in printer

12. Look for file in print screen window, press print.

13. Find something to do for the next couple hours.

OH! Great INTELL Virutalscartchvuildier! Thankyou very much for your insight.

Added more since you posted.

I will second what Jgawne says though….

It can be messy, the resin handling is tedious as is cleanup, and you WILL get misprints….The most common causes of which are:

- dirty build plate
- build plate too smooth
- resin settings incorrect
- build plate not level
- crud in resin
- resin contaminated
- previous misprint stuck to FEP film at bottom of vat
- supports too weak
- model not tilted enough or too much.

All that said, I do at least one and some times three prints a day. My success rate with the Phrozen resin is about 95%, about 75% with the Elegoo resin. Not sure what the difference is… have not figured it out yet. I have only been printing since June.

But here is the basic price point –
A bottle of resin runs about $35. USD Out of that I might get:

60-100 28mm figures
and
10 10mm tanks
and
6 1/144 aircraft
and
6 1/1200 battleships
and
3 1/2500 Star Trek starships

That's probably a couple hundred worth of stuff if bought online.

Hmmm, if I become employed I may have to save up for one and try it. But I'm still not sure I would have the patience. Thanks hombres.

It really depends on whether you are a wargamer or a warpainter. If you are a warpainter you may want a resin printer. Under a magnuifying glass you can see the lines, somtimes on very low gradients they are even visible at close range (circa 6") to the naked eye when painted.

If you are a wargamer, view range nominal 3 ft and busy playing not slowing the game looking at figures, no then an FDM printer is perfect.

I have a Prusa I3+ it will do sensible fighures down to 12mm, but mininal details at that size, however real models at that scale can have no scale detail anyway. At 25mm they are fine seen lots of them as RPG figures (not mine) and are excellent for play.

To be fair I have seen staggring N guage railway figures in resin, but they would be useless for playing the detail is far too fragiles.

In summary Modlling Resin, Playing FDM

the teacher I share a classroom with has a few 3D printers set up in the room. From what I can tell the filament based printer isn't going to do a decent job on 1/300-1/285 scale models. The layers will just be too big.

I realize that's a very indirect source of knowledge but it's something.

This is good knowledge Optional Field, thank you.

Thank you also Uscha.

I'm not a princess about detail but I want my 1/300 Macross Chinese restaurant to look repectable!

Might have to go with Resin if I can get the money together, but then the fragility issues many state worry me…

optional field – an FDM may do a decent is job in reality. I don't know how much knowledge you have. At a show a gent was astounded by our 1/144 stuff. Turns out he was not aware or had an undersranding of Layer thickness. For 1/300 models you need a layer thickness no more than 0.1mm. Typicaly printers say for kids larger stuff and all my DIY bits are done on 0.3 0r 0.2mm layer thickness. You may have only seen prints at that thickness.

Some FDM printers will take a maller nozzle typicaly its 0.4mm diameter but some machines and the software to run them, will cope with smaller diameters, my printer uses 0.4mm but can go down to 0.25mm. The gain is not great for my 1/144 models but it does help somewhat on the figures.

Maybe somone could point to 1/300 scale stuff thay have done.

How about 1/2400

link

Anycubic Photon Mono: download, open, slice, print. Nothing fancy

I liked 3D printing that I decided to open my own shop. I have 11 printers. All are Elegoo. 7 FDM and 4 resin. I only use Lychee as my slicer. I found chitubox to be clunky in comparison. I would never use FDM for printing figures. It is excellent for doing buildings, terrain and some vehicles. Print failures are 90% related to either temp or levelling. It needs to be 70 degrees F to get consistently good results for resin. I use auto supports by Lychee. Almost 99% light supports as they are easy to remove and leave little or no marks on the figure. I also use Lychee's island detector. Then I'll add my own supports usually around the base of the fig. I have a 95% success rate. I really enjoy 3D printing!

Thanks

John

@ John Leahy

Do you have an Etsy page or a site where you offer your wares?

Like @ John Landry I too started a business with 10 Elegoo Mars Pro 2 and 3 printers. I have a website, an eBay shop both doing well. I have started up an Etsy page and am slowly building it up.

I also will print for other people. They send me their files and I quote them back. No mess on their part. Turnaround is usually 2-3 days.

Chris

My site is wargamerprinting.com I will be adding a bunch of new items this month. They are available in multiple scales, Prices are very competitive.

Thanks

John

Mine is dayofbattlegames.com

I print mostly LOTR, Medieval and Horse and Musket.