"3Dprinted Resin Minis & the Tabletop" Topic

They are, or rather, at least some of them are for the level of abuse I subject them to.

My son and my grandsons have a tabletop full of them and they're taking a lot less care in handling and storage than I do with metals and kit plastics.

I'll find out shortly. I've ordered my first completely 3d-printed forces from Etsy. Vehicles have been holding up fine, but the skinny guns and arms might seems a lot more dicey.

I've ordered 3D figures from 3 different companies. None were as "bulky" or robust as the render photos. NONE. Very deceptive advertising.
Cavalry came without bases. All had very slim legs.

No way in hell am I going to purchase ANY 3D printed figures again. If any company is stupid enough to not give their figures bases, they do not deserve my support.
These were cowboys, Indians and Pirates, by the way. I won't name the companies involved. You can figure that out yourself.

I did get some bateaux and a sloop. These were very solid, with no problems whatsoever. They could just as well have been resin cast, they were that sturdy.
Some 15mm tanks looked like corrugated sheet metal, though.

It depends upon the resin used: the less expensive, more commonly used resins, are quite brittle. I've broken many resin 3D printed mini's just by dropping them on the floor, a distance of three feet.

Last night, I was assembling some new 3D printed Dwarves and Ballistae. I dropped one, several times, and it bounced, rather than breaking! The seller promised his resin used was more durable, more likely to flex than to break. He was telling the truth.

I love the 3D printed sculpts I've received, and I have hated the resin most were printed in because most of them broke off at the thin ankles of the figures!

If they are printed in a more durable, more expensive resin, they can withstand gaming usage, dropping, and the like. If the brittle, less expensive resin is used, they can keep their figures! Man up! Use the more resilient resins. Charge a higher price if necessary. It will be worthwhile for everyone. Cheers!

Even if some resins are more bouncy and immediately survivable, it's way too soon to say if they will last over time.

I still have deep emotional scars of my Airfix figures' ankles turning to dust from when they used a bad plastic formula in the late 70s.

Call that a definite 'No opinion' vote in regards to the poll question.

Not my cuppa! Give me cast metal figures over any others!

Jim

I think zero tolerance is the right standard in terms of breakage. I've had bits snap off while I was painting them, many break at the ankles, thin parts like rifles, pistols snap away.

I won't buy any more until reliable printing because ubiquitous and fool proof.

This crap about how you can get your files printed everywhere, even at your local library! is exactly that, advice. Well, you didn't use the right resin. Oh, off.

OFM, they may be trendy rather than cheap. Lots of 3D prints designed without bases matches a growing trend toward transparent bases. I don't follow because I'm too deep into my present systems,but if I were starting over, the 28mm skirmish/RPG would go on transparent bases, and shipped to me without bases would be the preferred option.

So far only using 3D printed vehicles but they seem to be OK for gaming – at least as good as the plastic ones

Well, I do not like transparent bases either. 🤨
Once again, you would have to glue a baseless figure by the foot.
Then, the bases themselves are SHINY, which is a distraction, and scratch.

I do not dispute matters of taste, OFM. It was the accusation of "cheap" which surprised me. I gather a reasonably durable material for his 3D printer costs about five cents a figure. For myself, I buy the plastic imitation quarters they sell in school supply shops. Hard to beat them for a cheap 1" base.

I note no one's talking about the scale advantage. I'd been looking for a not-Princess Leia in bikini in blaster to match my old West End Games Star Wars figures. My son bought the stl then, since we didn't have my figures handy, he printed it out in a set of five--full scale, 90% 80% 70% and 60%. Stl and materials cost less than $5 USD, and I had a dead match for my existing figures at 80%. All you people complaining that you can't get true 15mm or 25mm figures any more should think about that.

robert piepenbrink, you are correct: 3D printing would allow us to scale our figures to precisely 15mm/20mm/25mm/etc. I have thought about that, long and hard.

I spent the last 15 years trying to collect figures which matched Gary Gygax's size ratios he listed in his 1978 AD&D Monster Manual, so that I could truly see his monsters in their proper sizes relative to Humans, and to one another (Gary's Elves were 4-5 feet tall, not 6+ feet tall; Goblins were only around 3-4 feet tall; Gnomes are shorter than Dwarves, with larger noses…). I was partially successful: I bought figures that matched the correct millimeter sizes, based on a 6-foot tall Human being 25mm tall. It took a lot of research to find suitable figures.

In the end, though, it proved impossible as sculptors go their own way, with their own size interpretations -- no one followed Gary's sizes accurately, even with me mixing different scales to fill in the missing sizes of various races (1/72 scale figures helped fill in several missing links, however). The 3D printing option would have solved my dilemma, but 15 years ago, appropriate STL files did not yet exist for everything I was looking for. Back then, 3D printing was still too young, for my tastes and abilities.

Instead, I did the best that I could with what the market offered. It was a blast to do the work, find figures in the correct proportions, and to paint them as Gary described them. The man had a gift with color schemes and size ratios that most of his fans will never see. Heck, Gary gamed with mostly 40mm Human figures at his sand table! I assumed that since he referenced 25mm figures in his 1979 AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, that he gamed with only 25's… Nope. But that really underscores his genius in proportions and color schemes, for me. It was/is a fun hobby unto itself.

My figure collection is too big, too well developed, to go the path of 3D printing now, after 30+ years of collecting/building my armies. Cheers!