"Drilling Resin" Topic

I have some 15mm 3d prints of cataphracts. IMO, their integral lances are too short & I've bought some metal replacements- they're about 0.8mm in diameter. Clipping the printed lances- not a problem. I've tried drilling pilot holes & then 1mm holes for the new lances, but the resin is v brittle & the whole hand snaps off. The resin is standard Sunlu with about 12% Siraya Tenacious mixed in……thoughts/solutions?

What sort of drill? I've had reasonable success, but I use pin drills. And hands would normally be held in place. And even a 1mm hole is fair size on a 15mm--like putting a 4" diameter hole in your hand.

Plan B would be clipping the old spear, cutting a groove in the hand with a razor saw and inserting the lance in the groove.

Plan C is clipping the old lance, and gluing the new one to the side of the hand closest to the body.

Let us know how this works out, please.

I haven't actually tried to drill resin but would go with RP's plan B above. I have had to do the same thing with fiddly 15mm metal figures.

I believe brittleness in photo resin is from over-curing. RP's answers are probably the best, but if I wanted to add something I would say print them, remove the support material, drill them while they are soft, then cure them. Maybe even put the lances in place before you cure them to prevent any change in the size/shape of the hole. That means doing the drilling wearing gloves, and if your workspace works like mine that means the drill is now dedicated to use with gloves. But I think it would solve the problem.

Otherwise cure less.

Another option, Dolphinless, would be to hold the hand you're drilling, to avoid torque on the hand-arm joint. Some wider-jawed, clamp tweezers can be used to hold the hand, so you can see what you're doing. Using clamps mean you don't have to concentrate on keeping the tweezers closed. Something like the tweezers below may do the trick.

It's worked for me when building plastic models with very small parts, but I haven't tried it with resin.

PS Use a thin strip of double sided tape on each jaw and that will stop the hand from slipping in the tweezers, mate. A quick wash with isopropyl alcohol will dissolve the glue and make it easy to open the jaws without damaging the figure.

I was using a pin drill/vice. In the end, I clipped off the hand & moulded some blue tac into a hand shape then hardened it with some super glue. They'll look Ok when painted