Thankyou for covering our minis! That was very generous and kind of you we really appreciate it! - As for the results - They look pretty good! Im certainly impressed and its far beyond what I would have thought you could get out of an FDM printer - Would I be happy with these for my minis to paint? Its not quite there yet - But we are painters and hobbyists first, gamers second. And if I was ready to play a game with a friend and these models came out, and they were painted, well that beats my grey plastic! Your hobby is your hobby - Not mine to control. Great look into the process and pitfalls of printing with FDM, no doubt the technology will only continue to improve!
Dude. I probably wouldn't have given FDM a second look if it hadn't been for your videos, so to see one of my minis (the assassin) showcased in this video has absolutely made my day.
I find it helps a lot when you identify areas where the layer lines will catch people's eyes, and sand and fill them. That way you don't have to sand the entire figure, but only certain parts.
I got a Bambu Lab A1 Mini a few months ago. It's taken a lot of dialing in and practice. But I am printing guardsmen and using stl files for resin and the ones I have had success with are superb 😁
@@LtmuffinmanCA Some models won't print, no matter what I do. But others I've had good success. A lot of the settings I got from RUclips videos and putting together what works for me. In the printer I changed the retraction: Length 2.75, Z Hop retraction 0, retraction speed 28 and deretraction speed 40. Think these are taken from a Painted 4 combat video. You don't want a Z hop doing delicate miniatures. The filament I changed the bed temp to 70. The process settings are complicated. If i can find a way to share them I will.
@ Thank you I will give that a try for sure. I’ve been having an issue with larger prints warping off the bed so I just turned up my bed temp try and help with that. I will definitely be adjusting the retraction. I think it dragged and smeared a few things.
Tips and ideas: If those pipes/coils snap off, try looking for a 3D printable version of a Green Stuff roller, so you can easily sculpt your won and glue them back on. Another thing you can do is to use bass guitar strings instead. I have been happily printing on my A1 mini for a bit now and the details that come out of the printer are almost as good as on the original miniatures, but the damage to them gets done when trying to take those blasted and thrice cursed supports off. Regarding the missing details on the faces, how about printing the whole model on a FDM printer but only the faces on a resin printer? Or printing the model on lower settings to speed up the printing process, and then the faces separate on the highest settings? Keep up the good work!
My general 4ft rule. If the miniature or terrain looks good above the table and while playing, I am playing with them. Then again, I take joy in the building, creating, and playing, not the painting.
I'm happy to see painted minis of any type on the table. These look great - fair play. For me I like my resin printing, but its great that people have options. Good video
if you have a “multicolor” printer (like Bamboulab's AMS or creality CFS), the trick is to use petg for the supports. Petg and pla don't stick together. They're easy to remove and leave virtually no trace on the pla.
But don't you end up with a lot of fdm "poop" like that? Given that the supports and the miniature itself are usually printed at the same time the printer will have to switch in between the materials on almost every layer.
@@TheRlyNewHide Yes. For some miniature prints, you've got almost more poo than “useful” filament (although in absolute terms, that's not much, given the size of the miniatures). And this considerably lengthens printing times. But this is a recurring problem with all multicolor printing, not just this particular case. (unless you're wealthy enough to own a Prusa XL or handy enough for Ender IDEX)
@@TheRlyNewHide I haven't tried it yet myself, but I read a tip somewhere that there is a setting to make it so that only the interface layer is petg, so the printer only has to switch filaments to print the topmost layer that touches the model. Still a lot of waste from poop, but this tip should reduce it quite a bit!
This was a terrific video for many reasons. First off, I agree with your point that these minis are absolutely good enough for most people. Secondly, I really enjoy it when you are so obviously happy with the results of something. It’s fun to see that excitement!
I'm using the Fat Dragon Games print profile with the A1 mini and Sunlu PLA Meta... an awesome combination that is closest to resin I've seen and not a single clog yet. Thing is, I'm not a minatures guy, but I love watching these videos to see how far the technology can be pushed. When I did my first ultra detail print, it was like discovering 3d printing all over again... for days I just printed tiny things, it was addictive and by the end of it I had only used a tiny amount of the spool. One thing I've learnt is to orientate the model for layer lines even if it's at a weird angle... I've suspended entire models on a bed of support and support material cost is still only a fraction of 1 gram.
FDM all the way for me as well, and really happy with my new A1 combo. I have stopped using my resin printer since I dont have a safe work space for it anymore.
Those look great! As someone who made the jump from FDM to resin a few years ago, I'm not sure I would have if the FDM prints looked this good back then.
I've done this with a few minis since your last video. The plastic kits normally come with extra heads, arms and weapons. It makes a huge difference adding just spare heads and arms onto 3D printed bodies and legs, probably backpacks and that stuff too, when there are spares. I get that in this video you wanted to demonstrate what you can do with FDM alone. Definitely you should have a go at mixing in parts from kits though.
One huge downside to FDM printing vs resin if you need to print multiple of the same FDM printing time changes dramatically but does not change at all for resin.
I would love to own a Resin printer, but due to other issues I can't get one, for the foreseeable future. However, your video on the A1 sent me into a rabbit hole. Long story short: I am waiting for my A1 to arrive this week and Thank you for making that other video!
It's funny that you mention that views are down in 3d printing. I just started getting more recommended to me because I'm back on a printing kick which means I'm consuming tons of printing content. Lol
The whole mini paiting community is kinda being suppresed by the algorythm atm, so you really dont get it recommen if your not already with oke foot down the rabbit hole
Very interesting, the scarring from supports is clearly the most challenging part! I tried to do this micro printing stuff 10 years ago. I failed miserably with the FDM printers back then. Even with a .3mm nozzle.
F**K YEAH 90'S ELDAR ARMY! do it! I'm trying to learn to sculpt to recreate the 90s models in the larger scale! Used to love that avatar too... though the new giant one seemed more appropriate... 😁😁
I'm a recent adopter of a Bambu A1 and after some searching and testing I'm really happy with the quality of minis it can produce. It especially nice for me to print indivigual bits that I want for exaple just for one model. I think with that my over all quality of miniatures will get little bit worse over just using original plastic kits and resin BUT my fun from the hobby (and 3d printing itself as its offshoot) is compensating that many times over
Happily printing minis on my A1 mini 0.2 nozzle thanks to your initial videos. Results are great, wont be for everyone but as I can't/won't do resin they are fine for me. Thanks for these videos.
If you have the AMS for Bambu 3d printers or a way to use multiple filaments, I recommend using petg as the main filament and pla for supports/interface. Neither material sticks to each other after cooling so my supports have been coming off almost perfectly clean on miniatures and organic shapes.
Saw a printer mod once that lowered a Sharpie to color the tops of supports as a release so layers printed above would remove very cleanly. Be great to see an off-the-shelf printer offer something like that as an option (perhaps with a release agent other than a marker...).
I can’t believe I wasn’t subscribed, really enjoy your videos, I’m more of a 3D printer guy that’s gotten into tabletop, but I really appreciate the way you make your content
In my opinion sculptors and modelers should really put more efforts in supporting FDM printers, I think a lot of users would buy more models if they were easier to print.
I'm wondering if that will start to happen - FDM miniature printing has always been a very small niche, but the Bambu Lab A1 and A1 Mini feels like they might have been the crack in the dam as it were, to it becoming accessible enough to attract a bigger user base. Hopefully that might in turn mean more of a market for designers to have it in mind....
I am old enough to say that I was around in the days of pewter casting minis for roleplaying games. We had very good rpg gaming with those minis and they were awful compared to even bad fdm prints today. And the level of painting you would not believe it. We pretty much just painted them in one layer of glossy paint for the whole mini, then painted boots and gloves in black or brown. Face in yellow and maybe added a dot of black where we guess the eyes should be in the featureless ball for a head. So yes it WAS possible to play with bad printed minis. But I am not so sure if it IS possible today. It is very hard to go back to a lower standard once you have access to something better. I guess this is going to be a fight as hard as if it is legit to play warhammer with none genuine GW minis.
Thank you very much for this video and the previous one you have done. I have lung damage from chemical exposure many years ago and we just do not have a space in our home to set up proper forced ventilation for resin printing. And I have worked in chemical production for some time prior, so handling is a non-issue and it's really something I want to do but I have to put health first. So to simply enjoy the hobby my wife and I are forced to use FDM at this time (and even then I still can't be around it very long while it's running). From your original video it got me to look closely at settings and how to achieve tabletop quality with our mostly stock Ender 3 S1 Pro. Now with only a 0.2mm nozzle change, we get models that with minor cleanup look just as good as if they came off a plastic sprue. I recently got some Stedi glass files which are largely used in Gundam model building alongside a foam nail polish file for smoothing large flat surfaces and it's been a joy to print off the models I've gotten from Pipermakes. And I have to second and really highlight the point you make in this video about print times. Yes resin is faster for printing multiple pieces, and if you are running a print farm that throughput really matters. But for the average hobbyist who works full time, if it will take me an evening to build an paint a model on average then that means I can afford 24h print time per model. I don't care at that point if resin can print it in 2h vs a 12h 0.08mm height 0.2mm nozzle print. It will still be ready in time for when I'm ready for it. Looking forward to exploring the 3d printing hobby further. Keep up the great work!
I still mostly paint those old metal models, since I bought too many to do quickly back in the day and I am slowly working through them. Their quality level improved a lot from the 70s to the 90s.
Awesome! Definitely more & more tempted to get an FDM printer alongside my resin one, if I can make a square foot or two of space. The mess is such a pain. XD And thank you for featuring the TTT campaign!
The _sculpts_ may be nicer than ancient models, but the print quality of FDM certainly isn't better than the lead/pewter/early resin/plastic molded casts. None of those technologies have changed significantly (i guess arguably for small unit casting the silicones for molds and variety of options are much better now). Not that FDM is bad if you're ok with the layer lines, but even with a 0.2mm nozzle they're still visible to the eye, and we're often people who care about mold lines, let alone a line every .2mm ;)
I've been using an Anycubic Kobra 2 Neo for about a year now and recently started printing Trench Crusade models from the Kickstarter. I'm super happy with the results and the printer, especially with how easy upkeep and clean up on FDM is compared to a resin printer
If you use "smart fill" with painting on those supports you can, with some models, be very specific about what overhang you want supported without having to fudge the paintbrush tool.
As someone who knows both resin and fdm printer, my solution is fairly simple, infantry is printed through resin, vehicles are through FDM and that has been very good for me. But yeah, removing FDM supports will always be far far far worse than any kind of resin one. Fdm ones can be a true nightmare
I initially got a Ender 3 V3 KE, but after a hellish experience changing nozzle, trying to set up a profile just to fail and seeing how effortless it was to print minis on a A1, I just refunded it and got a A1 Combo. Best choice ever, I'm loving the new printer.
Resin Miniatures often come pre-supported these days - my question is if whether or not there could be FDM profiles with pre-painted supports on them? I think this would be an interesting area to dive deeper into! (as well as some idea of a common "best profile" for Miniature printing.)
I went down that rabbit hole when I first entered 3D printing and a few years ago, I hope things changed by now perhaps with using Lychee you can (as they combined FDM and Resin into one). But, from what I found the only way to pre-support an FDM was to make supports while modeling it. So, say you have a bridge with a large overhang, you could add a thin hex-mesh under the overhang that can be removed with clippers. Which is how I did it before tree supports came out.
I'm not a miniatures guy, but one thing to look into, if you have a multimaterial printer, is using dissimilar materials as support. In particular PETG and PLA do not stick to each other well when cooled, but work well enough while warm. This means you can use zero clearance support that will remove cleanly without marring the surface, although material cross-contamination in the nozzle can sometimes reduce the strength of resulting print unless you have a toolchanger or IDEX (Independent Dual EXtruder) and it can be more wasteful of material. The traditional way of doing this would be dissolvable supports, but that's messy and expensive and this works almost as cleanly in most cases.
I think they look great. As a dedicated painting project I'm not sure I'd use FDM but anything else I'd use. Especially ttrpg where you need loads of models that your players won't see often. But you've done a great job
I’m not a miniatures person but I do print functional parts using all sorts of materials. I did spend maybe too much money on a large multi head printer. And what has really helped with supports is using materials that “break away” from the particular material I am printing on a dense and thick “interfacing” at zero distance from the parts. I also have dissolvable filament but haven’t tried it yet. I started with a resin printer years ago and honestly gave up on it because of the mess, stink, reliability issues, and fragility. I know resin printing has improved over that time but for Christmas I took a model of a character my daughter loves, split it into three parts with pins to make assembly easier and added a hidden void inside large enough to hide the wrapped cellphone that was the real gift all done in different colors and types of filaments to make a large (500mm tall or so) full color statue with the break away stuff supporting it which considering how a number of the areas had huge overhangs on glossy parts the break away resulted in surfaces that while I could see a small difference in the surface nobody else did. That mixing of filament properties in the same print I think is going to be the area where FDM is going to rule over resin.
industrial resin printing has always been superior and still is superior to FDM printing, for a hobbyist who wants to make toys and cosmetics at a scale and reliability they cant obtain from Resin printing at a comparable price. Resin can be an absolute hassle to deal with but the amount of versatility it has makes it superior to FDM if you willing to pay more and do more. their are resin printers that can even print ceramic but just the resin cost more than a gaming PC.
I've literally used resin supports on my A1 and had 100% success with the standard nozzle and they came off easy too I still print my minis in resin but the terrain my A1 has been pumping out is outstanding and yeah, shout out TTT
Just moved into a one bedroom 1st floor apt and trying to figure out a resin printing setup that won’t kill me or my wallet (it’s long dead but still) is so bleak but seeing fdm getting this good has me thinking maybe this is the path
Perhaps the traffic on 3D Printing content will pick up. I know it's anecdotal, but at my local Micro Center the filament aisle was filled with enough people that I couldn't comfortably browse and several people in the checkout line were each buying several spools of filament. I'd not seen that before.
great video as always, I'd be so curious to see you trying to recreate eldar using fdm, them and dark eldar seem like the final boss for fdm so i'd be massively curious to see some elf models. maybe do a "guess the fdm/resin" from 2 metres, 1 metre, 30cm and 5cm away with them? (on a shelf, otherside of the board, regular tabletop distance, actually looking close) my experience with friends is until the last 2 and often the last 1 you really can't tell on most models.
I am enjoying seeing the progress made on fdm printing for miniatures, i still feel like Resin is the best for them, its just the issue of mess and toxicity making it not an option right now for me
@odisy64 Thing is, any kind of sanding you should be taking care of ventilation and any proper protections when sanding any kind of materials, be that wood, plastics, metals or glass. The issue with resins is the steps of toxicity of using resin in the first place, then having to use isopropyl alcohol as a cleaning agent, both of which creating their own fumes in the production of the model. Ideally you shouldn't be using a resin printer indoors due to the toxic nature of the fumes, at least with an fdm printer you only need a well ventilated workspace when sanding and proper way of disposing of those micro plastics.
@CaptBaker i found it way easier to deal with fumes than particulants. With TVOC like ISO being dealth with simple ventilation. You can only really do 3d printing indoors since temperature and the sun can mess with it. The issue with dust is that ventilation and filteation is not enough, those particles settle down on to surfaces and when disturbed get aerosoled into the air again. The plastic dust has to be physically removed while fumes want to mix with their air around them which makes it easy to purge the air in a small room. You have a vent blowing air into your room and one vent blowing out a window and you can effectively replace all the air in the room in half an hour, this keeps VOCs loe but i still have to vacuum all the dust i make.
So, I have both kinds of printers and I've tried minis on both. I have had resin since the OG photon so I'm already well versed in that and I got a Bambu P1S a year ago. I've gotten the 0.2mm nozzle, I've worked up all the settings. FDM can make a mini that's good enough to play a game with. For me, I'm mostly interested in painting, so resin is my preference but if you're only interested in getting something on the table and it's good enough, you can do it with FDM. There will be a learning curve, there will be failures. I think resin is easier.
Great video showing how usable FDM printed miniatures have become. I would love if you could do a video on acetone smoothed FDM printed miniatures. I haven't seen much on this and I think it might be something interesting to try out. As far as I can tell you need to print the miniature in ABS or ASA and then either let it sit in acetone vapour which gently melts the surface, or brush down the miniature with acetone using a q-tip/cotton bud, or something similar. This should eliminate the layer lines you can sometimes still see on FDM prints but I think you might lose some details. It might be an interesting area to test.
I think one myth that needs to be addressed is durability. Both resin and FDM have a wide range of plastics available to them varying in properties. So far resin has come out on top of durability compared to FDM but the resins required to do this are expensive and require special procedures to get the right strength. The high strength FDM plastics can also be difficult to print if you dont have all the right equipment to deal with heating and moisture.
I love your videos, mate! Have you had any luck with printing minis with interface materials (e.g. PLA & PETG interface)? Reckon that could, if you nail the settings, cut out a lot of grief from the support removal process!
Bambu A1 Mini w/ 0.2mm nozzle and I'm getting pretty good print of One Page Rules' new Human Defense Force STLs. The HDF are 'what if Imperial Guard, but also Helldiver?' in aesthetic, and the ones I've printed o far have been aweome. Face detail isnt' that great, but most of the models can be printed with full helmets anyway and the face detail is enough to tell the male head fromt he female ones.
A1’s can print down to .04 layer lines and if you use the classic wall generator, you can turn “detect thin walls” on and set outer walls to 0.15 line width. Enjoy the maximum accuracy arachne would have given you, without the weird surface artifacts it produces over gentle curved surfaces Prints take a while… like 3-4 hours for a guardsmen 5-7 for a marine… but they look really damn good, and the printer makes more marines than I can paint in a week… and if it couldn’t… a second a1 would definetly drown even the most efficient batch painter in models to play with.
I have the same printer, but at the 4min mark did not recognize the program you was using as your slicer? mine came with flashprint 5 what are you using with all those profiles?
Most people I play with show up with unpainted minis anyway this is an upgrade from that. Not for me from an painting point of view but would gladly play against this. It is good enough to keep the immersion and when I play I don't get that close to the minis.
I actually think these look significantly better than things like space marines in fdm. Space marines are large smooth surfaces. The way these have so much changing texture, greebling and things like the folding fabric makes the striated, layering look you get with fdm less noticeable once its painted. Darker colour scheme with the grimy wash definitely helps too. I expect these would suffer by comparison with bright, vibrant one.
As I play and print mostly 10mm to 15mm Miniatures: Do you think its possible to do that with fdm? These STL have less details anyway, and they are small, so print time shouldnt bee too high...
They look by no means bad, but I don't think the quality is there for me yet because I am quite frankly an insane perfectionist. I'm a miniature painter who paints everything to the highest quality I can, and then puts them up on display with a parade board because I also like building and painting terrain. I print everything at 20um layer height, and still sand away any layer lines I spot before priming the models. All imperfections will bother me, just like mould lines did back when I used plastic models and I spent ages scraping and sanding those off as well. However, in like 5 or so years the quality very well might match my stupid expectations, at which point I'll buy an FDM printer. We've hit the point where resin printers produce perfect replicas of even the most detailed STL files (Archvillain games is a good example), and all the new printers focus more in quality of life stuff as selling points, so FDM printers can just focus on catching up in terms of quality.
Hey Six Side a video idea for you. Testing the actual Voc levels and more importantly the smell of resins. I have used (only) sunlu for 13 months and have very recently tried jayo (yes I do understand they are probably almost the exact same thing...emphasis on almost as jayo splits within 3 days lol) and cannot detect any real 'smell' from them while printing, and neither can a friend who I recently introduced to resin printing. This would greatly help atleast myself and I'm sure, many more budding 3D'ers out there. I also have a cheap Voc detector and would love some more accurate results.
I glass sand my resin mini's to get rid of layer lines. How do you think I feel about FDM lol. I do love FDM for terrain. I have 6 Bambu Labs. People using FDM for mini's are trying to drive a nail with a crowbar. Wrong tool.
I don't know if it's the camera or my screen, but I legitimately can't tell of difference between these and any other minis. Resin or injection moulded.
your brain does a lot of post processing when you see objects from varying distances, most of the time you wont be able to see the difference unless you get as close as 11:23
😅It's interesting to see that for some miniatures it is almost imperceptible to determine if you're looking at an entry level resin print or an FDM one. Not all of them though as it's clear it's still struggling with fine details but for some it does very well at near resin quality.
He said in the introduction that they actually are Tabletop Time's upcoming Mini campain files ;) Once in a Six Sidw asked the guys at Tabletob Time if he can do an early access of the files for this video, which they obviously (otherwise this video here wouldn't exist XD) granted him and get some early feedback from a fellow RUclipsr out of it in the process ;)
A bunch of people on Makerworld just got the hammer down on them from GW. A bummer for sure. There are still a bunch of great free models (not GW) available. I've been really happy with my 3 Bambu printers. Making mini's everyday.
Thankyou for covering our minis! That was very generous and kind of you we really appreciate it! - As for the results - They look pretty good! Im certainly impressed and its far beyond what I would have thought you could get out of an FDM printer - Would I be happy with these for my minis to paint? Its not quite there yet - But we are painters and hobbyists first, gamers second. And if I was ready to play a game with a friend and these models came out, and they were painted, well that beats my grey plastic! Your hobby is your hobby - Not mine to control. Great look into the process and pitfalls of printing with FDM, no doubt the technology will only continue to improve!
Happy to help and I hope the campaign continues to be a massive success! 🤘
Dude. I probably wouldn't have given FDM a second look if it hadn't been for your videos, so to see one of my minis (the assassin) showcased in this video has absolutely made my day.
That's awesome!
I find it helps a lot when you identify areas where the layer lines will catch people's eyes, and sand and fill them. That way you don't have to sand the entire figure, but only certain parts.
Foreheads, shoulder pads, maybe knees and toes
I got a Bambu Lab A1 Mini a few months ago. It's taken a lot of dialing in and practice. But I am printing guardsmen and using stl files for resin and the ones I have had success with are superb 😁
Post your profiles?
Care to share your biggest things learned or stuff you have changed. I just got an A1 and have had mixed success so far lol
@@jackmaniacki Not sure where I would be able to safely, but happy to do so.
@@LtmuffinmanCA Some models won't print, no matter what I do. But others I've had good success. A lot of the settings I got from RUclips videos and putting together what works for me.
In the printer I changed the retraction: Length 2.75, Z Hop retraction 0, retraction speed 28 and deretraction speed 40. Think these are taken from a Painted 4 combat video. You don't want a Z hop doing delicate miniatures.
The filament I changed the bed temp to 70.
The process settings are complicated.
If i can find a way to share them I will.
@ Thank you I will give that a try for sure. I’ve been having an issue with larger prints warping off the bed so I just turned up my bed temp try and help with that. I will definitely be adjusting the retraction. I think it dragged and smeared a few things.
Tips and ideas: If those pipes/coils snap off, try looking for a 3D printable version of a Green Stuff roller, so you can easily sculpt your won and glue them back on.
Another thing you can do is to use bass guitar strings instead.
I have been happily printing on my A1 mini for a bit now and the details that come out of the printer are almost as good as on the original miniatures, but the damage to them gets done when trying to take those blasted and thrice cursed supports off.
Regarding the missing details on the faces, how about printing the whole model on a FDM printer but only the faces on a resin printer?
Or printing the model on lower settings to speed up the printing process, and then the faces separate on the highest settings?
Keep up the good work!
My general 4ft rule. If the miniature or terrain looks good above the table and while playing, I am playing with them. Then again, I take joy in the building, creating, and playing, not the painting.
I'm happy to see painted minis of any type on the table. These look great - fair play.
For me I like my resin printing, but its great that people have options. Good video
if you have a “multicolor” printer (like Bamboulab's AMS or creality CFS), the trick is to use petg for the supports. Petg and pla don't stick together. They're easy to remove and leave virtually no trace on the pla.
But don't you end up with a lot of fdm "poop" like that? Given that the supports and the miniature itself are usually printed at the same time the printer will have to switch in between the materials on almost every layer.
@@TheRlyNewHide Yes. For some miniature prints, you've got almost more poo than “useful” filament (although in absolute terms, that's not much, given the size of the miniatures). And this considerably lengthens printing times. But this is a recurring problem with all multicolor printing, not just this particular case. (unless you're wealthy enough to own a Prusa XL or handy enough for Ender IDEX)
@@TheRlyNewHide I haven't tried it yet myself, but I read a tip somewhere that there is a setting to make it so that only the interface layer is petg, so the printer only has to switch filaments to print the topmost layer that touches the model. Still a lot of waste from poop, but this tip should reduce it quite a bit!
That FDM printed necron plasmancer really made me drop my jaw. I wouldn't expect that.
This was a terrific video for many reasons. First off, I agree with your point that these minis are absolutely good enough for most people. Secondly, I really enjoy it when you are so obviously happy with the results of something. It’s fun to see that excitement!
I'm using the Fat Dragon Games print profile with the A1 mini and Sunlu PLA Meta... an awesome combination that is closest to resin I've seen and not a single clog yet. Thing is, I'm not a minatures guy, but I love watching these videos to see how far the technology can be pushed. When I did my first ultra detail print, it was like discovering 3d printing all over again... for days I just printed tiny things, it was addictive and by the end of it I had only used a tiny amount of the spool. One thing I've learnt is to orientate the model for layer lines even if it's at a weird angle... I've suspended entire models on a bed of support and support material cost is still only a fraction of 1 gram.
I love this channel, and I love my A1. Been printing minis, storage solutions, knick knacks, all sorts of things!
FDM all the way for
me as well, and really happy with my new A1 combo. I have stopped using my resin printer since I dont have a safe work space for it anymore.
Definitely going support TableTopTimes campaign!! I love the space bears and i wanna see more from them
Just seeing you slapchop paint them made me a believer. Great video as always!
Yes to restoring the Eldar army! 100%!
Those look great! As someone who made the jump from FDM to resin a few years ago, I'm not sure I would have if the FDM prints looked this good back then.
I've done this with a few minis since your last video. The plastic kits normally come with extra heads, arms and weapons. It makes a huge difference adding just spare heads and arms onto 3D printed bodies and legs, probably backpacks and that stuff too, when there are spares.
I get that in this video you wanted to demonstrate what you can do with FDM alone. Definitely you should have a go at mixing in parts from kits though.
One huge downside to FDM printing vs resin if you need to print multiple of the same FDM printing time changes dramatically but does not change at all for resin.
That is indeed the case. But as he also noted, that is only really an issue if you can paint minis faster than the FDM can output them.
I would love to own a Resin printer, but due to other issues I can't get one, for the foreseeable future. However, your video on the A1 sent me into a rabbit hole. Long story short: I am waiting for my A1 to arrive this week and Thank you for making that other video!
Happy printing!
It's funny that you mention that views are down in 3d printing. I just started getting more recommended to me because I'm back on a printing kick which means I'm consuming tons of printing content. Lol
The whole mini paiting community is kinda being suppresed by the algorythm atm, so you really dont get it recommen if your not already with oke foot down the rabbit hole
Very interesting, the scarring from supports is clearly the most challenging part! I tried to do this micro printing stuff 10 years ago. I failed miserably with the FDM printers back then. Even with a .3mm nozzle.
Watching you correctly load a needle into your airbrush made me proud. Try printing at 0.05 layer height on your A1 Mini. It works wonders.
Have you seen Lost In Tech's miniature printing profile video? Highly recommend his settings, for the Bambu printers
F**K YEAH 90'S ELDAR ARMY! do it! I'm trying to learn to sculpt to recreate the 90s models in the larger scale! Used to love that avatar too... though the new giant one seemed more appropriate... 😁😁
I'm a recent adopter of a Bambu A1 and after some searching and testing I'm really happy with the quality of minis it can produce. It especially nice for me to print indivigual bits that I want for exaple just for one model. I think with that my over all quality of miniatures will get little bit worse over just using original plastic kits and resin BUT my fun from the hobby (and 3d printing itself as its offshoot) is compensating that many times over
Happily printing minis on my A1 mini 0.2 nozzle thanks to your initial videos. Results are great, wont be for everyone but as I can't/won't do resin they are fine for me. Thanks for these videos.
If you have the AMS for Bambu 3d printers or a way to use multiple filaments, I recommend using petg as the main filament and pla for supports/interface. Neither material sticks to each other after cooling so my supports have been coming off almost perfectly clean on miniatures and organic shapes.
Saw a printer mod once that lowered a Sharpie to color the tops of supports as a release so layers printed above would remove very cleanly. Be great to see an off-the-shelf printer offer something like that as an option (perhaps with a release agent other than a marker...).
I can’t believe I wasn’t subscribed, really enjoy your videos, I’m more of a 3D printer guy that’s gotten into tabletop, but I really appreciate the way you make your content
In my opinion sculptors and modelers should really put more efforts in supporting FDM printers, I think a lot of users would buy more models if they were easier to print.
I'm wondering if that will start to happen - FDM miniature printing has always been a very small niche, but the Bambu Lab A1 and A1 Mini feels like they might have been the crack in the dam as it were, to it becoming accessible enough to attract a bigger user base. Hopefully that might in turn mean more of a market for designers to have it in mind....
I am old enough to say that I was around in the days of pewter casting minis for roleplaying games. We had very good rpg gaming with those minis and they were awful compared to even bad fdm prints today. And the level of painting you would not believe it. We pretty much just painted them in one layer of glossy paint for the whole mini, then painted boots and gloves in black or brown. Face in yellow and maybe added a dot of black where we guess the eyes should be in the featureless ball for a head. So yes it WAS possible to play with bad printed minis. But I am not so sure if it IS possible today. It is very hard to go back to a lower standard once you have access to something better. I guess this is going to be a fight as hard as if it is legit to play warhammer with none genuine GW minis.
I've definitely seen a paint job or two like you've described 😅
The miniatures hobby is light-years ahead in so many ways these days it's great
Thank you very much for this video and the previous one you have done. I have lung damage from chemical exposure many years ago and we just do not have a space in our home to set up proper forced ventilation for resin printing. And I have worked in chemical production for some time prior, so handling is a non-issue and it's really something I want to do but I have to put health first. So to simply enjoy the hobby my wife and I are forced to use FDM at this time (and even then I still can't be around it very long while it's running). From your original video it got me to look closely at settings and how to achieve tabletop quality with our mostly stock Ender 3 S1 Pro. Now with only a 0.2mm nozzle change, we get models that with minor cleanup look just as good as if they came off a plastic sprue. I recently got some Stedi glass files which are largely used in Gundam model building alongside a foam nail polish file for smoothing large flat surfaces and it's been a joy to print off the models I've gotten from Pipermakes.
And I have to second and really highlight the point you make in this video about print times. Yes resin is faster for printing multiple pieces, and if you are running a print farm that throughput really matters. But for the average hobbyist who works full time, if it will take me an evening to build an paint a model on average then that means I can afford 24h print time per model. I don't care at that point if resin can print it in 2h vs a 12h 0.08mm height 0.2mm nozzle print. It will still be ready in time for when I'm ready for it.
Looking forward to exploring the 3d printing hobby further. Keep up the great work!
Wooo! More FDM!
I still mostly paint those old metal models, since I bought too many to do quickly back in the day and I am slowly working through them. Their quality level improved a lot from the 70s to the 90s.
Awesome! Definitely more & more tempted to get an FDM printer alongside my resin one, if I can make a square foot or two of space. The mess is such a pain. XD
And thank you for featuring the TTT campaign!
The _sculpts_ may be nicer than ancient models, but the print quality of FDM certainly isn't better than the lead/pewter/early resin/plastic molded casts. None of those technologies have changed significantly (i guess arguably for small unit casting the silicones for molds and variety of options are much better now). Not that FDM is bad if you're ok with the layer lines, but even with a 0.2mm nozzle they're still visible to the eye, and we're often people who care about mold lines, let alone a line every .2mm ;)
I've been using an Anycubic Kobra 2 Neo for about a year now and recently started printing Trench Crusade models from the Kickstarter. I'm super happy with the results and the printer, especially with how easy upkeep and clean up on FDM is compared to a resin printer
All Aus should get a 3D Printer with the scalping GW does LMAO
If you use "smart fill" with painting on those supports you can, with some models, be very specific about what overhang you want supported without having to fudge the paintbrush tool.
As someone who knows both resin and fdm printer, my solution is fairly simple, infantry is printed through resin, vehicles are through FDM and that has been very good for me.
But yeah, removing FDM supports will always be far far far worse than any kind of resin one. Fdm ones can be a true nightmare
I initially got a Ender 3 V3 KE, but after a hellish experience changing nozzle, trying to set up a profile just to fail and seeing how effortless it was to print minis on a A1, I just refunded it and got a A1 Combo. Best choice ever, I'm loving the new printer.
Resin Miniatures often come pre-supported these days - my question is if whether or not there could be FDM profiles with pre-painted supports on them? I think this would be an interesting area to dive deeper into! (as well as some idea of a common "best profile" for Miniature printing.)
I went down that rabbit hole when I first entered 3D printing and a few years ago, I hope things changed by now perhaps with using Lychee you can (as they combined FDM and Resin into one). But, from what I found the only way to pre-support an FDM was to make supports while modeling it.
So, say you have a bridge with a large overhang, you could add a thin hex-mesh under the overhang that can be removed with clippers. Which is how I did it before tree supports came out.
I'm not a miniatures guy, but one thing to look into, if you have a multimaterial printer, is using dissimilar materials as support. In particular PETG and PLA do not stick to each other well when cooled, but work well enough while warm. This means you can use zero clearance support that will remove cleanly without marring the surface, although material cross-contamination in the nozzle can sometimes reduce the strength of resulting print unless you have a toolchanger or IDEX (Independent Dual EXtruder) and it can be more wasteful of material. The traditional way of doing this would be dissolvable supports, but that's messy and expensive and this works almost as cleanly in most cases.
Glad to see you promoting ttt and the kindred of the abyss.
I ordered the Bambu Lab A1 the other day because of your FDM video.
I think they look great. As a dedicated painting project I'm not sure I'd use FDM but anything else I'd use. Especially ttrpg where you need loads of models that your players won't see often. But you've done a great job
I would _love_ to see you recreate your childhood Eldar army.
I’m not a miniatures person but I do print functional parts using all sorts of materials. I did spend maybe too much money on a large multi head printer. And what has really helped with supports is using materials that “break away” from the particular material I am printing on a dense and thick “interfacing” at zero distance from the parts. I also have dissolvable filament but haven’t tried it yet. I started with a resin printer years ago and honestly gave up on it because of the mess, stink, reliability issues, and fragility. I know resin printing has improved over that time but for Christmas I took a model of a character my daughter loves, split it into three parts with pins to make assembly easier and added a hidden void inside large enough to hide the wrapped cellphone that was the real gift all done in different colors and types of filaments to make a large (500mm tall or so) full color statue with the break away stuff supporting it which considering how a number of the areas had huge overhangs on glossy parts the break away resulted in surfaces that while I could see a small difference in the surface nobody else did. That mixing of filament properties in the same print I think is going to be the area where FDM is going to rule over resin.
industrial resin printing has always been superior and still is superior to FDM printing, for a hobbyist who wants to make toys and cosmetics at a scale and reliability they cant obtain from Resin printing at a comparable price. Resin can be an absolute hassle to deal with but the amount of versatility it has makes it superior to FDM if you willing to pay more and do more. their are resin printers that can even print ceramic but just the resin cost more than a gaming PC.
I've literally used resin supports on my A1 and had 100% success
with the standard nozzle and they came off easy too
I still print my minis in resin but the terrain my A1 has been pumping out is outstanding
and yeah, shout out TTT
100% want to see some Eldar printed up!
I knew you could paint on supports but I did not know you could tell it where *not* to support. That's awesome.
Great stuff. Glad to see more FDM mini appreciation.
Just moved into a one bedroom 1st floor apt and trying to figure out a resin printing setup that won’t kill me or my wallet (it’s long dead but still) is so bleak but seeing fdm getting this good has me thinking maybe this is the path
That DivX logo brought back memories
Right?!
Seeing my painted minis in your video is kinda crazy ngl😅
Video suggestion: review the new elegoo satelite slicer. Please sir. I would value your opinion of it.
Great vid as always!
Hope your channel starts doing better, love your videos!
those kindred if you buy filament infused with iron you can use a rust activator to make them look rusted
you can also use a battery and some salt water, but do it outside to avoid chlorine gas.
Perhaps the traffic on 3D Printing content will pick up. I know it's anecdotal, but at my local Micro Center the filament aisle was filled with enough people that I couldn't comfortably browse and several people in the checkout line were each buying several spools of filament. I'd not seen that before.
4:59 Keep them around and paint them up as models entombed in coral?
Very informative and enjoyable
great video as always, I'd be so curious to see you trying to recreate eldar using fdm, them and dark eldar seem like the final boss for fdm so i'd be massively curious to see some elf models. maybe do a "guess the fdm/resin" from 2 metres, 1 metre, 30cm and 5cm away with them? (on a shelf, otherside of the board, regular tabletop distance, actually looking close) my experience with friends is until the last 2 and often the last 1 you really can't tell on most models.
I am enjoying seeing the progress made on fdm printing for miniatures, i still feel like Resin is the best for them, its just the issue of mess and toxicity making it not an option right now for me
FDM can also be very toxic, too many people ignore how much micro plastics sanding FDM produces straight into your breathing air.
@odisy64 Thing is, any kind of sanding you should be taking care of ventilation and any proper protections when sanding any kind of materials, be that wood, plastics, metals or glass. The issue with resins is the steps of toxicity of using resin in the first place, then having to use isopropyl alcohol as a cleaning agent, both of which creating their own fumes in the production of the model. Ideally you shouldn't be using a resin printer indoors due to the toxic nature of the fumes, at least with an fdm printer you only need a well ventilated workspace when sanding and proper way of disposing of those micro plastics.
@CaptBaker i found it way easier to deal with fumes than particulants. With TVOC like ISO being dealth with simple ventilation. You can only really do 3d printing indoors since temperature and the sun can mess with it.
The issue with dust is that ventilation and filteation is not enough, those particles settle down on to surfaces and when disturbed get aerosoled into the air again. The plastic dust has to be physically removed while fumes want to mix with their air around them which makes it easy to purge the air in a small room. You have a vent blowing air into your room and one vent blowing out a window and you can effectively replace all the air in the room in half an hour, this keeps VOCs loe but i still have to vacuum all the dust i make.
these models would go great as chaos cultist/chaos imperial guard for Mezgike's dredge death guard models
So, I have both kinds of printers and I've tried minis on both. I have had resin since the OG photon so I'm already well versed in that and I got a Bambu P1S a year ago. I've gotten the 0.2mm nozzle, I've worked up all the settings.
FDM can make a mini that's good enough to play a game with. For me, I'm mostly interested in painting, so resin is my preference but if you're only interested in getting something on the table and it's good enough, you can do it with FDM. There will be a learning curve, there will be failures. I think resin is easier.
Alright, I got the Scuba Diver marines.
You missed the opportunity to say "That's one mini step for man"
Damn 😂
I would love to see that eldar army too
As always. Love the content!
Came here for FDM printing, staying for cute rabbits
Great video showing how usable FDM printed miniatures have become.
I would love if you could do a video on acetone smoothed FDM printed miniatures. I haven't seen much on this and I think it might be something interesting to try out. As far as I can tell you need to print the miniature in ABS or ASA and then either let it sit in acetone vapour which gently melts the surface, or brush down the miniature with acetone using a q-tip/cotton bud, or something similar. This should eliminate the layer lines you can sometimes still see on FDM prints but I think you might lose some details. It might be an interesting area to test.
As a new A1 owner, if I’m already venting things well enough to print ABS, then smothering it in acetone…I could probably just print in resin.
I think one myth that needs to be addressed is durability. Both resin and FDM have a wide range of plastics available to them varying in properties. So far resin has come out on top of durability compared to FDM but the resins required to do this are expensive and require special procedures to get the right strength. The high strength FDM plastics can also be difficult to print if you dont have all the right equipment to deal with heating and moisture.
Companies can purchase beneficial shelf space in stores, like eye level for example. Can they purchase beneficial spots in the algorithm?
Absolutely, they also directly send stuff to content makers who are just happy to make a monetized video.
I love your videos, mate! Have you had any luck with printing minis with interface materials (e.g. PLA & PETG interface)? Reckon that could, if you nail the settings, cut out a lot of grief from the support removal process!
What's with aussies and doing undersea versions of armies. Mezgike is in aus as well, and they do the dredge marines.
How do you know where to paint blockers and paint supports?
Bambu A1 Mini w/ 0.2mm nozzle and I'm getting pretty good print of One Page Rules' new Human Defense Force STLs. The HDF are 'what if Imperial Guard, but also Helldiver?' in aesthetic, and the ones I've printed o far have been aweome. Face detail isnt' that great, but most of the models can be printed with full helmets anyway and the face detail is enough to tell the male head fromt he female ones.
A1’s can print down to .04 layer lines
and if you use the classic wall generator, you can turn “detect thin walls” on and set outer walls to 0.15 line width. Enjoy the maximum accuracy arachne would have given you, without the weird surface artifacts it produces over gentle curved surfaces
Prints take a while… like 3-4 hours for a guardsmen 5-7 for a marine…
but they look really damn good, and the printer makes more marines than I can paint in a week… and if it couldn’t… a second a1 would definetly drown even the most efficient batch painter in models to play with.
WOOO! Tabletop Time!!!
Seems i have to buy a 0.2 nozzle for my A1 Mini and try printing miniatures
THis model quality is good enough for me. If anything ill touch up details withs a bit of greenstuff
I have the same printer, but at the 4min mark did not recognize the program you was using as your slicer? mine came with flashprint 5 what are you using with all those profiles?
RUclips! Recommend this man!
any recommendations for minis for Trench Crusade - Principality of New Antioch?
Most people I play with show up with unpainted minis anyway this is an upgrade from that. Not for me from an painting point of view but would gladly play against this. It is good enough to keep the immersion and when I play I don't get that close to the minis.
I actually think these look significantly better than things like space marines in fdm. Space marines are large smooth surfaces. The way these have so much changing texture, greebling and things like the folding fabric makes the striated, layering look you get with fdm less noticeable once its painted. Darker colour scheme with the grimy wash definitely helps too. I expect these would suffer by comparison with bright, vibrant one.
filler primer might help a bit, but those minis are totally playable.
Nice video, mate :)
As I play and print mostly 10mm to 15mm Miniatures:
Do you think its possible to do that with fdm? These STL have less details anyway, and they are small, so print time shouldnt bee too high...
They look by no means bad, but I don't think the quality is there for me yet because I am quite frankly an insane perfectionist. I'm a miniature painter who paints everything to the highest quality I can, and then puts them up on display with a parade board because I also like building and painting terrain. I print everything at 20um layer height, and still sand away any layer lines I spot before priming the models. All imperfections will bother me, just like mould lines did back when I used plastic models and I spent ages scraping and sanding those off as well.
However, in like 5 or so years the quality very well might match my stupid expectations, at which point I'll buy an FDM printer. We've hit the point where resin printers produce perfect replicas of even the most detailed STL files (Archvillain games is a good example), and all the new printers focus more in quality of life stuff as selling points, so FDM printers can just focus on catching up in terms of quality.
Nice rabbits
Hey Six Side a video idea for you. Testing the actual Voc levels and more importantly the smell of resins. I have used (only) sunlu for 13 months and have very recently tried jayo (yes I do understand they are probably almost the exact same thing...emphasis on almost as jayo splits within 3 days lol) and cannot detect any real 'smell' from them while printing, and neither can a friend who I recently introduced to resin printing. This would greatly help atleast myself and I'm sure, many more budding 3D'ers out there. I also have a cheap Voc detector and would love some more accurate results.
Try to print onde page rules minis o think they are ideal for FDM.
I glass sand my resin mini's to get rid of layer lines. How do you think I feel about FDM lol. I do love FDM for terrain. I have 6 Bambu Labs. People using FDM for mini's are trying to drive a nail with a crowbar. Wrong tool.
I don't know if it's the camera or my screen, but I legitimately can't tell of difference between these and any other minis. Resin or injection moulded.
your brain does a lot of post processing when you see objects from varying distances, most of the time you wont be able to see the difference unless you get as close as 11:23
😅It's interesting to see that for some miniatures it is almost imperceptible to determine if you're looking at an entry level resin print or an FDM one. Not all of them though as it's clear it's still struggling with fine details but for some it does very well at near resin quality.
Mini in thumbnail looks like one from the Table Top Time backerkit that’s going on right now.
He said in the introduction that they actually are Tabletop Time's upcoming Mini campain files ;) Once in a Six Sidw asked the guys at Tabletob Time if he can do an early access of the files for this video, which they obviously (otherwise this video here wouldn't exist XD) granted him and get some early feedback from a fellow RUclipsr out of it in the process ;)
A bunch of people on Makerworld just got the hammer down on them from GW. A bummer for sure. There are still a bunch of great free models (not GW) available. I've been really happy with my 3 Bambu printers. Making mini's everyday.