"Ten Kingdoms brand 3D printed figures" Topic

Anyone familiar with the 3D printed Ten Kingdoms figures, right now consisting of Khitan-Lao and Song ranges? I was looking at figures being printed by a Mick's Bits EBay seller, but probably there are other people printing and selling these STL files.

They look quite good, and are available in either 15mm or 28mm.

They are very good, with Song and Khitain-lao ranges, next are Jurchen-Jin and Korean (from same era).

I have cleaned up about 350 Kitain-Lao, (another 130 to go) and they do not need much cleaning up, just a quick rub on the base to make sure that they are level .

There are probably other USA printers, but Mick is very good at producing these figures.

I definately recommend them.

Why are resin figures produced from STLs so expensive? The actual material costs are negligible. A good quality 3D printer is relatively inexpensive.

I assume the hours of "labor" in terms of the time the printers are occupied printing those miniatures, plus any cleanup of the models after printing. Some of these printing services that sell on Etsy or EBay likely also own multiple printers to handle volume, and their prices are aimed at recouping the costs plus pay them a wage of some sort. But I would bet the answer to your question is also partly that these resin figures are expensive because the miniatures market charges so much for metal figures that the resin guys figure they can charge same or more for their "boutique" figures printed from STLs.

You also have to factor in the service charge that the stl designers charge. I main line tripled his monthly fee a few months ago and my second line has doubled his. Plus you have to factor in miss prints so that means printing an extra figure or two just to cover your self. And it is fairly time consuming.

I didn't think about the time wasted on misprints. Yeah, when I watch how-to videos, that is a problem especially with unfamiliar files/figures.

Oh, I can jump in and provide my experiences with 3D printing costs. I have many, many thousands of USD tied into 3D printing over the past 12 months; both resin and FDM. Here's my cost to print my first KG of resin which I'm guessing produces about 125 28mm resin figures minus a 25% failure rate for an out the door estimated 94 usable figures.

Prices are in USD
1. 3D resin printers costs vary. I purchased a middle of the road printer. Last year I got a Elegoo Saturn 2 – $350. USD
2. Aycubic cleaning machine – $100. USD
3. Ultrasonic cleaner from Amazon – $125. USD
4. Curing station – $100 USD
5. Various Rubbermaid vats to assist in cleaning – $12. USD
6. Various supplies – paper towls, latex gloves, cleaning sprays and more – $25. USD
7. Decent 3D resin runs $25 USD to $40. USD I'll guess I spent $30. USD
8. 95%+ gallon of Isopropyl alcohol – $30. USD
9. a "personal" license of a typical set of STL files off of Kickstarter or a full set off of MyMini Factory – $60. USD Keep in mind a license to allow printing for sale (comercial) typically costs about 4X more.

I forgot to add in the resin vat sheets which puncture and wear out. $20 USD for a set of a few plus an hour of time replacing it each time.

Time spent:
1. Setup printer and all other equipment.
2. time spent purchasing everything listed above.
3. Time spent setting up software and learning how to use the software effectively.
4. Time spent finding STL models, purchasing them, downloading them.
5. Time spent setting up modles in software, optimizing them, supporting them, hollowing out, positioning, etc… getting a print plate configuration set up.
6. Time spent setting up the printer for the print job with resin and cleaning the work area after each and every print.
7. Time printing the plate.
8. Time washing (2 stage for me) and curing the models.
9. Time cleaning models and removing supports.
10. Time spent redoing all of the above when I have failed prints which are about 25% for me on the Saturn 2. (Yes, I know I can spend another $400 USD and get the Saturn 4 ultra which is reported to be more reliable.) I had also purchased an Anycubic Photon Mono 2 for something like $150. USD It worked great until it didn't. I got 20+ plates printed until a major printer failure happened (stripped gears somewhere near the motor) and the machine was unusable and unrepairable. It also ruined a few plates worth of prints trying to troubleshoot it. Thank you Amazon for taking it back.

Can someone else do this cheaper? Sure, but every corner you cut will affect your overall production output. If you want to print 25 figures a year, by all means cut corners but your per figure expense will still be significant. If you want to print print a few hundred figures a year, you really need to invest in the equipment you need.

I'm estimating my initial buy in for the almost 100 28mm figures printed was about $832. USD After that, I'd estimate my costs for each additional kg of resin prints including all associated consumables is about $50 USD per 100 figures. Others can and do print for a little less, but this is my experience .

My total time learning and setting up the equipment has been 100+ hours and each new print I do probably involves about 30 min – 2 hours of my own time all in.

I haven't sold anything yet, but I am guessing I would charge about $2 USD a figure and I'd give a discount if a large quantity were sold. Given I have a decent paying full time job outside this hobby, selling at these rates would only be because my love for the hobby and not as a source of income.

And this is with zero storefront and not accounting for any business expenses or taxes.

ThunderAZ, your analysis seems flawed in my estimation. Yes, start up costs are high but compared to metal casting yours are quite minimal. A good casting machine is probably $5,000 USD plus. To set up a whole enterprise for under a $1,000 USD is pretty remarkable. Also, I have gaming buddies who print resin figures and their misprints are not close to 25%. They tell me it is pennies of resin to print 28mm figures. Now of course, we are not including the design of STLs or any licensing fees. I would assume that is a big chunk of money per figure. One advantage of printing over casting is that that with the former once you hit print you can walk away. With casting it requires labour to get the figures produced. With that all said, I am not saying that resin should be cheap. I would have presumed that resin figures would be priced roughly the equivalent to plastic figures. But they seem more in the metal range of cost.

To each their own I suppose. No mention of casting in this topic thus far so I'm not understanding the relevance.

The costs I provided above for resin printing and are my actual personal costs out of pocket so I can validate they are 100% correct. Actually, I omitted a few things and the total cost is actually higher.

25% misprints is also in the realm of accurate. At least 20% for sure in my case so I'll give you that, but not less. Between prints not adhering to the plate properly, breaking off of supports during print, parts breaking off of the model during print, and print layers of the model mid-way through the print delaminating, yes these are correct. I primarily print highly detailed 25/28 mm figures and vehicles. Maybe those who print items with fewer bits hanging off have a higher success rate. I assume a newer model of printer will be better on this front.

I had a base model Anycubic printer recently too. Spent $150 USD for it and it printed beautifully while it worked. It only lasted a month. It also only had about 5% errors with this machine, but when a gear stripped, the device completely failed and I returned it.

What your friends are telling you are between you and them. If they tell you it costs pennies to print, its very likely they aren't adding in all of the costs from start to done.
Resin alone, sure.

Here's a most minimal scenario I can imagine and probably similar to your friend's: Low end printer like the AnyCubic Photon 2. $150. USD Basic water washable ABS-Like resin that produces OK prints and bought on sale: $15. USD Free STL files from Thingiverse that aren't allowed to be printed and sold.
Use leftover Tupperware acquired from the kitchen to wash. Free. Use cleaning supplies like paper towels and cleaning solutions you already have. Free. Skip the cure station and cure them in the sun. Free. With this scenario, your first 200 prints will cost you 82.5 cents each and will likely have a lot of residue on them. Not accounting for value of time spent.

No-one who is half way serious about trying to make a business out of selling printed models will have this setup. Most likely online shops have 10 to 50 decent quality printers and multiples of all of the other items mentioned. They pay business taxes and pay rent / mortgage for space used. They spend a lot of time running the business.

Just my thoughts.

I think their "pennies to print" comes from the screen that tells you the cost when you go to finalize the file to print. It might say the print costs you 98 cents. That I suppose is just the estimated cost of the resin itself created by the finish software

I find after miss prints the most product loss comes from removing the supports.

I print most of my miniatures in batches of 6, mimicking the Mini Figs packaging of days of yore :)