"How much of your army(s) is 3D printed." Topic

I'm curious to know how much of your army is 3D printed.

I have two army's

Note home printed are all FDM at 0.1mm layer height with a 0.4mm dia nozzle.

Russian/Czech

All 3D Printed. Most on the home printer lots of which done on a cheap Monoprice I3. The IMR2's are a mixture of home prints and commercial prints (AOTRS Shipyards).

Infantry all my own real scale prone stuff printed at home. Some specialist stuff is Commercially printed, AT4'S some but not all IMR2's. All other vehicles are home prints.

Germans,
This is now an old army going back perhaps more than a decade so the spread is much wider.

Probably 2/3'ds of the tanks are Cando or equivalent the rest home 3D printed.

Marder AFV's most commercial prints (for now).

Jagdpanzer Jaguar 1 Original 12mm Minifigs the only metal left.

Other vehicles,
Buffalow Engineering vehicles, Unimog Truck, Iltis Jeep Luchs, Home printed.

Infantry again generic home printed "flats" plus a Charlie G team, Milan Team.

Commercial 3D print's

MG3 in SFMG role (plus a few home printed).
Mine rollers for Leopard 2
Fennek recon vehicle.
German modular bridgelayer PSB2

How about your army(s)?

Very small percentage – most of my troops are 6mm or 28mm but for WWII I do have a fair number of 20mm – of these, I have 3 M-5 Stuarts and 3 M-10s that are 3-D printed by a friend – the other AFVs are a mixture of Armourfast and Plastic Soldier company

I collect only 28mm. Out of about 6000 painted troops, only about 60 are 3D printed, so one percent.

Chick

Zero

Five mounted command with my face in 54mm. Say 3%? A very, very small percentage of 28mm SF. Maybe 50 castings? And three mounted command in 28mm H&M. Say 2% of 28mm. None at all in 2mm. 6mm or my ACW 10's.

A pity. I could use some specialist figures, and probably some civilians in F&SF, but there aren't a lot of gaps left to fill.

Since this is on the exclusive 1/144 board, nothing. Have a few prints in 15mm, and recently acquired a bunch of movement trays for 28mm.

zero

zero

Varies, some of my recent fleets are 100% 3d printed

none.

A faction of a percent I figure. Among tens of thousands of painted miniatures I can think of maybe 200 3D prints.

As far as I know, none of it

18 out of 3000+ vehicles.

Zero. That is something I have no intention of getting into.

About 1% if that.

Zero

None. Don't have the printer, don't want the hassle, and traditional metal and even mass-market plastic remain cheaper.

Buildings= >2%; Figures=0

None

Zero

Of my 10mm fantasy collections about 75% 3D printed.
Of 15mm and 28mm about 1%.
Of 6mm about 25%.

Cost savings in smaller scales for 3D printing is considerable.

An ever-growing proportion of my 1/144 collection is 3D printed, because…. that's what there is.

The pre-painted models are out of production and almost always command ridiculous prices. These never covered all the right niches anyway.

Victrix is still expanding its range.

I don't like metal models in this scale (lower quality, don't store/transport well mixed with plastics), so I automatically rejected what was available in metal – I don't own any Arrowhead or Minifigs that I'm aware of. (I do have quite a bit of Pendraken 10mm stuff which I bought because it was painted, and some Pendraken AA and crews awaiting paint because that is the only way to get AA besides the 88 Flak that is even remotely in scale.)

I don't own a 3D printer, so I've bought 3D printed vehicles from sites selling them as completed model. That has been a fraught process – I have to make test orders first to make sure I like the quality. I really dislike layer lines, and sometimes there are other problems (insufficient curing, turrets that don't fit in hulls, pieces that are too much work to assemble, etc.)

- Ix

Bits and pieces are getting printed as I need them. Things like 40mm Bofors AA or 2 of a specific tank/TD model

It's interesting that on an exclusive 1/144 board you get answers from folk who do not do 1/144 or even 10 or 12mm size figures.

Parzival
"None. Don't have the printer, don't want the hassle, and traditional metal and even mass-market plastic remain cheaper."

I assume you have no 1/144 figures. At 1/144 3D printed are cheaper and better than metal and very little is available in Mass market plastic at this scale. Certainly all the moderen stuff is excruciatingly expensive now.

None.

I will be printing 100% of all my miniatures in 3d resin going forward. 3D printing is cheaper, more options available, and more flexible than traditional figures.

Todd636 +1

"traditional metal and even mass-market plastic remain cheaper"

I printed a 15mm WW2 Finnish army, used around £15.00 GBP of resin. White metal cost would have been £450.00 GBP Even starting from scratch with a brand new printer would have been £100.00 GBP cheaper

I've got stuff I've accumulated over 50 years of gaming, so as a percentage of the total, 3D prints are miniscule.

Of stuff I've bought in the last few years though, the proportion is huge, at least 50%, if not more, although it is all vehicles and guns, not figures. The massive increase in the price of plastics has contributed.

I expect that proportion will only increase in future. The range and quality of 3D stuff is just amazing these days. Where else can you get an artillery traction engine, or a NAAFI van serving tea?

Martin Rapier I am amazed most of my heavily used metal has ended up as scrap, it chips and breaks with heavy use.

I have some very old metal. proably 30 to 40 years old but it has not been used hardly at all in the last 20 years so it's still OK(ish). The Stargrunt II stuff just failed due to wear and repainting seemed pointless as 1/17 platic offerd lots of advantages.

My 1/144 metal stuff just got scraped although most was close to scrap, it was dumped as 3D printed is lighter and with locked turrets just so much better, lighter and does not chip paint or break.

I game only in 15mm so ZERO.

I do have five 10mm buildings that are 3D printed. Really nice.

I 3D printed a Flames of War army and a few medievals (28mm). I generally feel that army printing isn't quite ready for prime time.

Then I got an FDM printer for scenery, that was better: a ruined cathedral and some pirate ships.

There is a real convenience factor with plastics

0% in 1/144, though I don't have a lot in that scale, only a few dozen models. About .06% of about 18,000 miniatures otherwise.

I've been tremendously unhappy with most of the printed stuff that I've received to this point. Uncured resin, bad scaling practices, miniatures arriving broken, layer lines, enough "scaffolding" on the print to make cleaning it more time consuming than making a conventional master and casting (I actually threw the prints away).

I'm surprised that you've had such bad experience with metal. I can't express how much I prefer cast metal or resin.

irishserb You probably have been listening to too much BS. and buying resin prints. At wargame ranges FDM is perfect, you can't see a 10 thou step (0.1mm) 4 ft away even less when painted with a decent paint Like Tamia with some ability to smooth out a surface. FDM prints are "bomb Proof" drop them and they bounce. Now my mate who does 1/35 modelling used high resolution Resin prints but he expects to be looking at his stuff 3" away, but in his case durability is not an issue, his kits are far too for wargaming. The Cando 1/144 model have very detailed pintle machine guns but they are pointless for wargames use, far too fragile.

I do have some sintered nylon stuff from commercial printers like Shapeways but nowadays I can get as good from FDM on the home printer at a fraction of the price.

There is a bit about this on this thread:-
TMP link

But of course 1/144 is even better as 0.1mm steps are less and the models are smaller so far better than available commercial plastic and not a sniff of resin around. They are robust enough for actual use.

None!

0% of my 15mm WW2 items
20% of my 6mm WW2 (all tanks will be going forward)
80% of my middle earth minis….GW prices are a joke

Depends on the period/genre:

28mm FIW = 25% of my figures
10mm ACW = 50%
28mm Napoleonics/Skirmish = 20%
6mm WW2 = All of my terrain/10% of my vehicles

I use both FDM and Resin printers.

What are your favorite sites for 1:144 STL files? Or do you buy a different scale and re-scale?

I use my own files or or AOTRS Shipyards.

Rescaleing is not as simple as just scaling the file. It can make things stupidly klunky or unprintable. I guess its how bad you will accept a print.

Scaling down is a big issue you may get something unprintable or to fragile to use. Scaling up just means a crap low detailed print unless you add more detail. Not easy with an STL, file.

Zero

None.

8, unpainted 28 mm medievals. None at all in 1/144
My total figure collection is approaching 8000 painted and at least another 1000 unpainted, so 3D printed is insignificant and will remain so.

None of my 12mm stuff yet but I think that will change this year. Probably 90% of my buildings & bridges are printed. My son has both resin and Plastic printers. He will design and print them for me.

I did get into 1/4800 pre-Dreadnought naval this year and that 100% resin printed from various companies.

About 12 miniatures which in my collection is less than 1%

Zero

My Western Desert 1:144 armies are 100% resin printed

Getting more over time. Dumping old stuff as it gets damaged and replacing with newer better 3D printed stuff. Some older models were too detailed to be practical and or poorly designed for wargames. 3D printed stuff can be optimized for gaming. Even my 1/72 stuff, definitely not my passion, is being replaced with better more practical stuff. The hated Revell Marders (modern) are being replaced by far more practical 3D Printed versions.

Zero for me right now.