To summarize, you could spend 300-350ish on a 3D printer and get dozens of minis or you could spend the same amount and get 6 space marines and maybe a goblin if it’s on discount
Plus cost of resin, plus cost of cure station, plus cost of wash bucket, plus cost of IPA, plus cost of vapor mitigation and PPE, plus temperature management (depending on local environment). My estimates for a newbie getting into the hobby are currently around $650ish for a full resin setup if you are getting a printer around $300ish. Don't get me wrong, it's still an immense long term savings compared to buying storebought models, but it's far more than just the printer itself when dealing with resin.
@@khanayudash2475 often cure & wash stations get bundled with printers - see Elegoo and Anycubic bundles, ~$400; could be the consumables make up the difference, but even $600 might be an overestimate for getting started.
I got an elegoo mars 3 used for 70 bucks got water washable resin and cure my minis with my girlfriend nail curing light. I also put reflective tape on the inside of a bucket and set my minis on a spinning display thing I already had so I got my stuff going for about 100 bucks.
@@khanayudash2475 I got my mono 4k and wash station bundled on sale for 320 buckaroos and 4 gallons of 99% ipa for 50. But i already have a studio. If you live in the arctic or have to put your printer in your room, your going to spend more on ventilation and heating.
To summarize, 3D printing has a High upfront cost, but a low long term cost. Which makes it very good for someone who doesn't have the kind of money it takes to buy a lot miniatures for painting and playing with. After the upfront cost of getting setup is done, the prints themselves cost very little per model compared to similar quality and sized miniatures you can buy.
To Be real, you could buy pretty high stack of miniatures with 500 pounds. Just to give some ballpark, necromunda box of 10 from gw in element games is 22.50. if we imagine you get great deal and everything you need printing whitoutresins is 500 thats 222,22 miniatures. If your cost for every miniature is 1 pound, your saving is 1.25 per miniature,and you are at brake even after 413 gw 28mm models (you use more money on resin as you print so with that money you could buy more figures and That is the reason break even is not at 222 figures) Not counting any of your time used. Yeah 3d printing is not yet here as money saving device.
Okay, but what about printing terrain? What about multiple armies? What if you want to switch to a different game and need new models? There's loads of ways to save money with 3D printing in the tabletop hobby that you're glossing over. Not to mention you'll have far more options for the look of the models you want to play with if you opt into printing. Personally I think it's well worth it if you have the space, but yeah if you're just looking to start playing one game with one army then yes, technically buying wholesale from GW is a bit cheaper.
@@kj869 You are right. But there are some buts in the real scenario. If you would build your army for playing the official tournaments, there is only small point in 3D printing. Only in conversions. But then again, if you are playing only friendly games, you can get a lot of models that are much nicer that anything GW put out in last decade or two (eg. tyranids or eldars). So to say, 3D printing is, lets say even with official models. But you can have a lot of variety, wich is nice in my books. Plus you can get learn another skill. As I look at the situation, it seems to me vast majority of players can profit from 3D prints, one way or another. There is only fraction of players, who are hurt by 3D prints. And I would argue, those are paid for their opinions.
@@kj869 bro that's in pounds a box of 10 cost 60 dollars here in canada and my 3d printer costed me about 220$-250$. so 40 models is pretty close to the cost of just the printer. resin is 25$-50$ depending on size and brand and that one bottle could print most of an army for the cost of 10 infantry models. it is here and the ability to make your own models is there as well. don't need to buy bases, terrain pieces could just be printed there's a guy at the gameshop that plays custodies so for him he didn't even have to spend alot of time printing. titanic models also become alot for feasible. and if you just wanted to get those models that are always out of stock now we can just print them. wanted to start AoS can just print before you buy anything its so cheap just takes some time.
@@cwaldacwaldovic4572 i agree has this guy even seen puppets war bugs they look sick. only a few reasons to buy gw models is for tournaments hosted by them, they happen to put out a nice model, bits. or if you just really like the model they made and cant find/make your own. not like its bad too support them but man 60$ CA for 10 models is just a nope for me. now that 3d printing is openly available
As a dnd player, what also draws me to it is the customisability. Designing a character in heroforge or similar and then being able to print that exact character is so much better than buying a premade mini that only loosely resembles your character.
That is absolutely insane cost wise. I can't even imagine how awesome the hobby (and others - custom larger scale models etc) will be 5-10 years from now. The resolution NOW is nuts.
It’s exciting to have the insight to know that we are in the stone-age of at home printing and already creating such amazing work. The next 5-10years will be truly exciting.
The dwarves hair and beard is what killed me seriously. This is fucking insane how good the resolution is. If I had a tablet with zbrush or blender and some skills in 3D modeling I'd make my own stuff paint it and then sell it. This is so freaking good.
I'm amazed by how far 3D printing has come just in the past few years. It wasn't too long ago that resin printers were crazy expensive and not at all feasible for the average person to own. Now, a decent resin printer is actually a reasonable purchase for a hobbyist.
@@SuperEagle112 well, printers will be better. But if everyone is homeprinting, then there won't be any compaines to make the designs, rules, lore etc.
With two 2L bottles of resin I printed two full 2k point armies for aos 3.0. One blades khorne with 4 large god like mini's and one OBR army that included a nagash proxy and I still had about a half a bottle left. Those bottles came free with my printer which cost me about 350$ after shipping. I saved over 1600$ Canadian on the GW counterparts.
@@jagttiger447 I don't think GW has ever officially released any stl files. Your best bet might be trying to find a way to import game files from any GW video game into blender or something. I much preffer proxy pieces to official GW minis half of the time.
Please continue the 3D printer content. I have been considering getting one for a while so any guides would be beyond helpful! Please could you expand on the cleaning and curing from last video? Thank you!
Cleaning and curing is super simple when you have a wash and cure station that goes with your printer (e.g. anycubic photon mono and the anycubic wash and cure 2.0). You remove the build plate from your machine, put it in the wash station, start it up, then use the scraper to separate the models from the plate. Use warm water to peel off the supports. Give the models one last dip in isopropal alcohol to clean up any last resin revealed from removing the supports and any flaky bits (i like to run a toothbrush over them at this point), then swap from washing station to curing station. Cure for 3-4 minutes on each side and you are done.
For me I do find it alot cheaper than buying models. The main bonus for me tho is the variety and ease of finding models I like. I can find a set and if I only want 1 model I only print that rather than buying a box full. Also love being to print multiple of the same to test painting etc rather than ruining my expensive GW models
I will definetely get a printer in the future myself. Upfront costs have become bearable for resin printers and the possible quality and aviability of models you could print is unrivalled. There really is just GW stuff in the stores where I live and ordering minis online can get even pricier because of the shipping costs. Don't get me wrong, GW makes some good models, some of which I have, but they are on the expensive side and their stuff is really stylised and focused on their games. I like my generic fantasy for my D&D though. Oh I want it. I NEED IT! Gotta have patience.
no no.. how did you get to 800 pounds ?! it should be around 200 USD or so for a box set for similar items as he shows here what is that 800pounds price ? how did u get it ?
@@minorharmonicscale they always have been but in recent years they are a lot cheaper then whst they used to be... also i dont thinkcthey are over priced..nowdays you can find a set for 25usd or so...considering the matirial quality packaging store import shipping prices.... thats nit bad at all. they were 50-60 usd before that was crazy and obvi if you print like 40,50 or more of them its worth investing in a resin printer..
Your 3D printing videos are my favourite housing investing videos of yours! I think it's also worth mentioning, personally when first starting out I wasted so much resin, cleaning products, cluelessly supports etc; just trying to learn how to use it. The intial cost is great but eventually over time the cost decreases as you become more efficient .
Comparing to Games Workshop: at best (using box sets or start collecting sets) you are paying a minimum of $5 per mini. So that means you save $4 per mini. (taking a very general big-picture overview here). Mars 2 Pro + bottle of resin about $350. Assuming 35 minis printed per bottle, each print yields 35 x $5 = $175 per bottle in minis in GW prices. Each subsequent print run adds $40 to cost (bottle of resin). So bottle two is 350+40=390, and yields $350 in minis. You can see by bottle 3 it has paid for itself, very roughly. I know there are many more factors, like gloves, failed prints, etc, but even so bottle 3 we are up to $525 in GW dollars vs 350+40+40 = $430 invested dollars.
by printing your own you wont run the risk of GW being out of stock . That you only print what you want , and custom mods as well , you save a bit . If your only ever going to have one army then its a moot point but if you want a different army then the printer is the way to go. Then there are all the terrain props you can print , trees , buildings and scrap heaps . If your a D&D player then you can print out all the monsters and pc's you will ever need and there are plenty of designs to choose from, even making over size prints just because you can is a great option especially when your 5 foot elf is the same size as your 7 foot half orc. I havnt brought a printer yet , but when I convince my wife that I, err, we need this it will happen. That and when we get let out of covid lockdown.
@@Fenrasulfr I ve had a hunt around there are free files and , others that cost $5 to $8 and up depending on how big the figure is mostly, some for more. Also its a lot easier than making them out of lead in silicon molds , and they were heavy too. The important thing is that you can choose your figures rather than have exactly the same figure as your opponent . I think it is worth the cost of the files .
I'm not into wargaming or particularly miniatures like these but those Daybreak miniatures look excellent and seeing how much you printed with one bottle of resin was very useful. Nice info mate and 👍👍
A lot of these videos are sponsored by 3D art studios but the cost of the files never gets included in these round ups... The Dwarfs set is $25 for example, so why not add another £2.50 to your figure making the minis more like £3.50 a pop…
@@bartholen Exactly if you're printing larger armies, you may print the same mini several times. That's a cost that is reduced every single time you reprint that mini. Also 2.50 a figure is a little bit on the high side. With most patreons you're paying way less than that per figure.
If he got them through the patreon, he would have gotten all of the vampires for $10, all of the dwarves for $10 (the patreon price). Plus, remember the flexibility. If he were to try and buy the "big" figures, he couldn't. And if he could, they would be extremely costly. Just for comparison, to buy a couple of D&D miniatures at Miniature Market would be about $22 for "Curse of Strahd" unpainted plastic minis... one on foot, one on a horse. Obviously that's at the high end, but in most cases, you're looking at $3-5 per normal figure at a game store with zero ability to customize.
Entry cost is also somewhat cheaper if you want to be thrifty. I got myself a mars 2 for $220 aud on amazon. They are much cheaper and more than detailed enough for figure printing. I use water washable, I dont use IPA to wash just water. I didn't buy a curing station. If you have sunlight, you have UV and can cure. Even if it's overcast or cold raining weather, there's still UV and still cures. I didn't need to buy any additional tools. The printer came with plastic and metal scrapers, clippers, strainers, 5 extra FEP, brushes, gloves and masks. I used an old ice cream container for washing. So my initial cost was 220 + 60 for the resin, 280 AUD all up. And 'made back' the cost of the printer in the first 3 days printing some 'Space Mace 69'
Being in Australia you definitely don't need a curing station but other places do. Still, for the cost of a bucket, some aluminium tape and a cheap UV LED lamp, it's like idk 30 bucks or something. $300 curing station SO not needed.
The per miniature cost should include the support cost as well. yet still be cheaper as the machine is reusable Time is also only wasted if you sit and watch.
Agreed. If the bottle of Resin Costs £30 then those miniatures cost just under £26 of resin to print. Just the weight of resin used is what matters so 862g of resin (if the bottle contains 1kg of resin rather than the full bottle weighing 1kg in total). Printing the big models was stupid, it throws off any accurate calculation of how much a 32mm model will cost on average. If we take them as the equivalent of 3 models then those models would have an average resin cost of £1 per model to print plus running costs of the printer. £1 per model in resin is not bad compared to the cost of resins or plastics from GW, for example. But it does affect how many minis you would need to print to cover the costs of the printer itself.
And you could think of the time spend as putting your order to GW, till they're shipped and then get them from GW store. Then compare to time spent on getting supplies for 3D printer and add that to printing time.
@@FrstSpctr88 I don''t order from GW so I don't know how quick they are but the way I look at it is that as long as it prints them faster than I can paint them then its fast enough.
what i liked about 3d printing the most was how personalized it could be, if you know an artist, or you can hire one, they can sculpt you a model that did not exist right before you print it, it's exactly what you want, how you want it and it looks amazing, and it's unique and yours, really yours, it was pretty amazing, if i still played mini wargaming games i would have liked to 3d print stuff like that too, but ultimately i gave up on it, i keep waiting for whatever got me into it in the first place to kick back in and i'll start up once more, but so far it's been over a year and hasnt happened yet
I'd like to add a little personal experience when it comes to water washable resin. Other than the more than valid points mentioned in the video already, if you actually decide to use water in your wash station, depending on the design of the station, what can happen is that the ball bearings may rust rather quickly. Which does not happen with alcohol. I learned that the hard way... maybe someone finds this helpful. In addition, if you want to cure and then dispose of the resin safely from the liquid after it evaporated outside, alcohol evaporates MUCH quicker.
If you are worried about time, a savvy printer can put all the horses (or whatever tall items) in the same print, and do them together since the number of models doesn't matter. That said, what you did more accurately displays the average user, printing a few things here and there.
i've been able to get an average of around 100-120 28mm human sized infantry models per 1 liter bottle. dont forget printers, never trust the auto supports lol
the auto supports i think would have use less weight in resin the supports he had were super thicc. but the auto ones do add alot of redundant supports. if you had the time and wanted to really save can go through them and remove all the extra stuff
The blue food colouring made me chuckle. I discovered at an early age that people are repelled by blue food when I made a fun blue sponge cake and no-one would eat it. Later when I was a student in a shared house, we had a "fridge pirate" and I would put a drop of blue colour into my milk, it worked like a charm! My milk never went missing.
Has any one thought about duel purpose supports? Could the supports be terrain, spears, bushes.. It would cut down on the waist. Personally I would print trim pieces for converting square sheet basing to GW edges. (My preference for gaming minis)
I had this exact thought -- those supports would make really cool alien/robot trees, or could be separated and used as gribbles on other terrain by acting like pipes and wires, or even cut into chunks and made into piles of rubble or loose stones!
So about a $1.10 per mini, I get close to resin quality prints from my FDM printers for about 17 cents each and you don't need to do anything like wash or cure them, and there is no toxic waste. I just can't see making the investment, if I could afford it I probably would at give it a try. Thanks for the video it was a good learning experience.
Just from your vid(btw. amazing) ive looked up on a way to recycle the supports, have you thought about melting them with alcohol and turn them this way into "resin glue" / material to fill up gaps or just to glue the minis onto the bases? Would basically lower the loss and give you the bonus of not having to use glue for bigger multipart printed minis? not sure how good this works but definitly something to look into. Small warning: the resin glue should be only used outside at best, because the vapors could be toxic as frick. :D
The alcohol, gloves, paper and everything disposable comes out to be about the same price as the resin for the last 5 liters. I have improved my routines so the costs have dropped between the first and last bottle. Also the resin price have plummeted. I used to buy bottles for $60 and now I can get them at $25
So far I have printed, 100 not-guardsmen, 10 not-scions, 2 not-command squads, 3 not-sentinels, 2 not-chimeras and 2 not-heavy weapon squads. Used 1½ bottle. Printer was 250, 2 bottles of resin is 90 ... so I have spent 340 USD, but printed miniatures which at GW would cost me 882 USD ... SO FAR, I have had the printer for 3 months.
In the end it all depends, but I look at the Halot One printer right now, for 169€, a bottle of eco resin for 20€ and it seems juicy. The cost drops significantly the cheaper the resin is, your bottle would be roughly 38€ here, the resin I look at is almost "half" the price, which would halve the cost per miniature as well. Geedubs will be in for a rough awakening.
Calculating just the cost of resin is a bit dishonest. The way I would canculate it is: - take the cost of the consumables (resin, alcohol, electricity, waste disposal) per miniature - Then calculate the cost of a production miniature. - Account for quality difference (for example if GW model looks 10% better with finer details than the print - just discount it's price by 10%) - Add the cost of equipment (printer, curing chamber, whatever) to the 3d printer batch. - Lastly, by increasing the miniature count in both prited and retail piles - calculate how many miniatures you have to 3d print to break even. I suspect that it's actually more miniatures than many of the hobby-ists would likely paint in their entire life, to be honest. But of course there are less obvious benefits to printers - like having basically any miniatures you want. Conclusion - buying a 3d printer to save money on retail miniatures - not worth it. But buying to get access to a broad range of models (especially if you can learn how to tweak the files that you are getting to your liking) - is worth it, if you are that passionate.
While Chitubox is my preferred slicer, it's predictions for how much resin will be used are never even close to the reality - usually under estimated by a good 20%. I always weigh prints (including supports) and keep a record of what each one actually cost.
some of that support stuff could be very useful to people that kit bash and scratch build models and dioramas. the post could be like pipes or cables. the base could be like liquids and melted acid damage.
Wow. I haven't even checked the cost of these printers in a long time. I remember back when it was $2k easy just to get a basic resin printer. And it cost just about $100 to get 1000g of the resin. The only printers back when that you'd be able to get at that price range would be a cruddy filament printer with inconsistent prints and you had to put it together yourself. Amazing to really see how accessible it's become. Didn't actually think it would ever happen.
I would use the sprew's as sprew glue for covering up cracks in models and even in some terrain builds. I would also check and see if it sticks to silicon molds so you can make rocks out of it. This way nothing goes to waste.
To add to the calculus here: I just ordered a Mars 3 Pro to print DnD minis. I make the minis on Hero Forge and if I was to order them printed by Hero Forge themselves they would cost $20-30 each depending on the plastic option, but if I bought the STL from them it only cost $8 (or between $3 and $4 if you buy their pro subscription). Not to mention you only need one STL per model so you could print multiple of the same mode and save even more. So for that alone the savings are pretty obvious if you want to make a ton of them.
I had no idea how much waste is produced. It might be a good side project to recycle some of those supports as terrain. They can be painted and used for impassible swamp trees or something.
I can get a few dozen parts out of a bottle of resin that costs me $30 versus $500 for the parts themselves from a manufacturer. We use the printer at least once a week at work to make parts for animated movie props.
Holy heck! Just picked up that dwarf of the deep with the staff and lantern from my FLGS. First time I've bought a mini someone resin printed. So glad to know what he's from!
Loved the sponsor spot montage, also I think a lot of people miss the hidden cost like the price of the machine, consumable and more importantly your time doing prep and cleanup.
Cheers Mikey , next time my mates ask me to print stuff for them i now have a vid i link to them .... to say it costs me about a quid a go plus all my time power, and grief with failures.
That montage at the beginning really cracked me up good, nice one there, thanks for making me smile! 🤣 I was cringing real hard before and already mentally preparing myself for one of those super tacky sponsor spots or something, with my finger hovering the dislike button, and then the montage started playing and I couldn't help myself but burst out laughter. Good work dude, thanks for the laugh. One thing though, you should have washed figurines after weighing them. Though small, I reckon a significant portion of the 'used up' resin was sticking to the outside of the models before you submerged them, instead of being incorporated in the structure of the model itself. I recommend that next time you're tracking the actual amount of spent resin you weigh the models immediately after releasing them from the build plate instead of weighing them afterwards when you've already washed them. (and preferably, if at all possible, you should use a precision scale capable of weighing in sub-gram gradations/increments 😁
For me it's not about substituting GW stuff. Not at all. I highly respect the work that GW puts into its minis. For me it's about printing minis or parts that I can't buy.
Na, once they fired the Perry brothers they lost me. The comedic body proportions in 40k is a joke too. Took gw 30 years to realise how goofy humans looked
that is absolutley wicked. knowing how much people spend on miniatures at the comic store. 3D printers are a table top players dream. I just learned from your video that the print time of resin printers is not dependent on complexity but solely on height. It seems so obvious now that you have explained it.
bit of a late comment, but a good way to minimize lost cost is looking for supportless miniatures. you might not get as much intricate detail since it's a different way of modelling that makes sure that everything is self supported but there's some very talented people out there that make awesome supportless minis. the best part of this is simply that you can not only save on resin that is used for supports, but it also saves on resin that sticks to the supports so less resin ends up in your cleaning liquid. seeing as how 300grams was used for supports, that's about a third of the bottle you could have saved if these were supportless.
So 67~ grams missing out of around 933 grams to print (combining the supports and minis) is about an 8.5% loss, which considering the surface area of the supports and detailed minis, sounds reasonable that it would almost all be accounted for by the resin you wash off (maybe closer to 6 or 7% considering the resin clinging to the sides of the bottle when you zero'd it and stuck to the filter). Considering supports, it looks like 38% of your resin is used in supports. So supports are where you'd want to target your savings, on top of hollowing your models in general. Being more conservative with supports increases the likelihood of failure, however, so there's experience and discretion that needs to be applied.
Hollowing is pretty hard to do with minis. A lot of them are so delicate that you couldn't make drain holes big enough to actually drain all the resin.
It is unfortunate that so much of the resin ends up in the landfill. Seems to me that is quite a bit, in a time when we are supposed to be thinking ahead about these issues. Is there any research being done on how to utilize some of this material instead of continuing to send things to landfills that are extremely difficult to biodegrade? I realize people need hobbies, and this does look fun, just wondering about some long term effects on the planet.
Those supports look really thick (2.0+?). I've been using 0.2/0.3 supports on the Mars 3 without any issues (-for light bits like antennas. For the rest I mostly use 0.9's/1.0's, with a couple of 1.5 "heavies" to anchor the model). Do you get the Chitu project files when buying mini files, or just the STL's?
I really appreciate that you tell that there are still costs on consumables, but I don't think you got too deep into it. I did an estimate with your pricing for initial investment and consumables (only resin, as I don't have enough information about the ISO or the printer longevity itself) compared to the cheapest price of GW's Intercessors. I found that you only get cheaper after printing around 280 Intercessors, and that is a very optimistic estimate. I do know that you will get much more use out of a 3D printer outside of printing mini's, and that might justify a lot of the costs for most users. But an average Joe, who impulsively buys a resin printer out of GW-spite, might have a very costly regret after a few failed prints. But I have to say, I do like all the custom models that get offered.
Your maths is quite off for a start, £30 for 10 models, so 100 models for the price of the printer, add £50 in resin, and for just £50 more you get 100 models AND a 3d printer. The cost of the printer itself shouldnt even be factored in anyway tbh, if you go and buy an airbrush / compressor combo for 150-250, do you start suddenly factoring that into the cost of painting your miniatures. Even if you include everything including electricity, against GW models 3d print is always going to come out better, other less price gouging companies maybe not.
@@xenoborg007 you forget the curing station, ISO and even replacement parts as the LCD is a consumable. My math is clearly closer to reality. Even if you haven't even seen it.
My total costs of ownership has until now been a little less than €550, from what I can see I spend money on related to printing. Printer, IPA, wipes, filters, a couple of vats for cleansing, a UV lamp. All models I have are free, most are designed by myself. That has gotten me 80 Imperial Guardsmen (€350 on GW website), 3 commanders (€28 for a command squad, I could probably kitbash 3 from it) , 1 heavy weapon squad (€32.5), 5 scions (€32.5), 3 armored sentinels (€84), 3 Leman Russ tanks (€135), two Earthshaker cannons (€204), and an inquisitor (€14.5). And a Brood Lord for a small present (€33). That will be €914. And given that what I have is about half a guard army, and half the investment was the printer itself, I think printing is _very_ cost effective. Especially since I need more characters, scions and support weapons, which are cheap in resin and expensive in the webstore.
3d printers definitely have an interesting future but for me the current tech can't match the detail from gw etc and the amount of waste produced is pretty shocking considering the current environmental focus.
Re the quality, that's true for at least newer stuff but the detail achievable is good. I don't 3d print stuff myself but I have painted a few 3d prints that I got from various small companies making stuff over the past year or so. The detail on those minis is just flatly better today than the detail was on good minis from about 10+ years ago. Now I don't do a lot of GW stuff but it's pretty common knowledge that there are several armies and units and things that suffer from a lack of updates and people are still buying and putting stuff on the table that actually was created 10+ years ago. I will say this - With even a fair amount of skill, you can definitely paint a 3d print to a standard that far exceeds what most people would consider to be reasonably achievable on old pewter sculpts from the 90s-00s when I was coming up. Edit - Oh, and I'll add that a good quality 3d print exceeds the detail standards set by models along the lines of reaper bones and such as they are made today. The biggest problem, in my view, isn't any lack of detail but that sometimes cleaning up where the supports where is a *huge* PITA. Yeah, if the supports where done well you can clean like 98% of those marks off with ease, but it seems to me that there is always some obnoxious bump in some crevice or something that's going to be really damned irritating. I think that as the technology improves, both the irritating support bump issue *and* the waste issue is going to improve substantially as the need for supports will decrease. Honestly, I'm pretty excited to see where things will be in about 5-10 years.
The amount of waste is a pretty big hurdle for me as well, but is it ultimately that much more than GW minis? Just think of all the sprues you throw away after assembling a single squad of 40k minis.
@@richardcahill1234 is it? When I looked into it originally, on the elgoo site, a few 3dprinter websites and a couple of YT reviews after elgoo etc spammed content creators with free printers last year, the only info I found was that any water used to clean the prints had to be left out to cure all remaining traces of the resin as it was a hazardous material and not to be disposed of by pouring down a sink or drain. Any cured resin could be disposed of with household waste or taken to your local waste disposal site, but I couldn't see anything specifically about recycling? If I've missed something I apologize for the incorrect comment but when I read that I took their word for it that it was a potential environmental hazard. I'm sure it's fine when handled correctly but like when any new tech becomes widely, and affordably, available you know that they'll be a percentage of people that see those controls as possible suggestions and will either ignore them completely or let it slide with time. Like I said originally, 3d printing definitely has an interesting future, is an outstanding development for manufacturing and for a lot of people it's a hobby in itself but for me personally it's not worth it to save a bit of cash on miniatures.
Games workshop shill comment. Detail? Mate the quality of sculpts out there blows GW out of the water, you need a microscope to see the layer lines which vanish under paint anyway. You can print and paint a space marine side by side with an official model and I guarantee you that you could not tell the difference. Waste? How about those piles of sprues? When I look at the sprue waste for say, 10 infantry compared to the amount of waste from supports, it's not even close, the sprues are SO much more.
Even considering what naysayers argue, mostly costs of the machine and possibly the sculpts, I reckon my setup has paid for itself within 3 months of owning it. It largely depends on your specific use case. I paid, more often than I‘m comfortable admitting, just shy of 20€ for custom DnD minis from heroforge. Since getting my resin printer, I printed 3 full parties worth of minis for 5€ a piece. That alone covered the cost of the printer. What is much more important to me is the variety I can get into my hobby. I recently got into middle earth sbg. Do you know how many distinct sculpts GW currently sells for moria goblins? 2 bows, 2 swords, 1 spear. Yes, they technically have minute differences in these as well, but even then the ratio goes to 3:2:2. It is not too far fetched to assume you would need 40 or more of these to fill a list. Thanks to free files and a couple of welcome packs on patreon, I can have serious variety now. And even from a single sculpt, you can print at least 4 models before they stand out as repetitive. Just print it twice, then mirror it and print it twice again. This added variety is close to priceless to me. And staying with MESBG, GW has discontinued so many essential minis from the range, that you‘d need to track down somewhere, mostly at ridiculous price points. Warg marauders are a proper highlight of the moria faction. I can find exactly 1 on ebay for almost 300€. I got a patreon set for roughly 10 instead. 2 different sculpts, mirrored them to make it 4 distinct minis. That is just awesome! 3D printing is a hobby in and of itself. But it can be rewarding af. Thank you for sharing this experiment!
So basically: -Buy a really good resin printer for 500 bucks. -print 1000 dollars worth of Warhammer miniatures for 30 bucks worth of resin, electricity and other supplies
I liken 3D printing to homebrewing beer, with all the advantages and disadvantages. Yes, after you have all the equipment you can print or brew anything you want. But if you add up all the cost ( including time, consumables, cost to dispose of used solvents, etc) it works out about the same cost as buying them at the store, especially if you are not printing multiple copies of the same mini and thus having the investment of the STL file as well. That first mini is gonna cost you $900+. The second one will be just the cost of the resin, alcohol, alcohol disposal, gloves, STL file purchase or time to sculpt ( you do have free sculpting software right?) various cleaning products, electricity, and your time to set up the file to print and to handle all the washing and curing. Yeah, sounds like a great deal
I do a lot of Resin printing myself and aside from resin you also need to account for the wear on your screen, FEP, Light and other components as well as electricity cost, A good average for what I listed is $2/hr . Also the time required to clean, cure, remove supports and eventually sanding the remaining bits is also a form of investment. To be clear, Resin 3D print is awesome but the price of a mini is not just the material cost.
Depending on the country you're in there are other costs too, which seem to be small but add up, like electricity (I'm running multiple machines and hell it adds up!) and the wear of your machine which will need repair by some time, although I have no idea how quickly the resin printers wear in comparison to FDM printers that I use, which are always in need of something new :D
To be honest, I was counting at first and comparing with some comercial company minies for comparable model price... But to be honest, once I was at having saved around 3 times the prince of my printer I stopped carring ^^' But it's still good to let know people that are getting into it that their is still a starting investment and some other side cost. As for managing the water washable resine, personally I usually filter it with a piece of cloth while putting it in a grilladged container (to prevent any animals to come and drink from it) and let it evaporate whe the weather is hot enought. Then I clean the cured residu that's left in the container. But I admit, it's not the easiest thing to do either ^^'
What did the consumables cost you for this print, Gloves. Alcohol, paper towel etc. I estimate it costs me ~1$ in supplies every print before I count the resin.
You can pour the contaminated water in a clear container you don't mind eventually discarding, and if you cure it it'll settle out on the bottom. If you pour that through a coffee strainer, the water should be safe to discard in the drain. (Or reused like you would the isopropanol for normal resin.)
To get rid of the cleaning fluids just pour it into a clear plastic container and leave it in the sun for a couple of days most resin will cure. After that pour into a new container and put a strong UV light on top of it that gets rid of the rest. You can use the fluid agin after that and throw away the hardened resin ;)
I have worked out a system for dealing with water. The wash and cure station for the cleanest water, when it gets too cloudy it goes into a small bucket that I use for the intitial rinse and cleaning the build plate and spatula, when that gets too dirty it gets poured off into gallon milk jugs that then get set out in the sun to evaporate off. Is it more tedious than alcohol? Yes. However I find water easier to deal with for cleaning prints that I'm willing to deal with the hassle of disposing of it. If I ever start printing enough that I have larger quantities to dispose of that might change things
This was such a good video. Just started printing myself and can confirm, the hidden cost is gloves and kitchen role! Nice work bud, keep up the good work
Why wouldn't you reuse the older material? Is it ok to leave it over night or more once you start a long project. Like 5 hour one but you don't come back for 20 hours?
To summarize, you could spend 300-350ish on a 3D printer and get dozens of minis or you could spend the same amount and get 6 space marines and maybe a goblin if it’s on discount
Plus cost of resin, plus cost of cure station, plus cost of wash bucket, plus cost of IPA, plus cost of vapor mitigation and PPE, plus temperature management (depending on local environment). My estimates for a newbie getting into the hobby are currently around $650ish for a full resin setup if you are getting a printer around $300ish. Don't get me wrong, it's still an immense long term savings compared to buying storebought models, but it's far more than just the printer itself when dealing with resin.
@@khanayudash2475 often cure & wash stations get bundled with printers - see Elegoo and Anycubic bundles, ~$400; could be the consumables make up the difference, but even $600 might be an overestimate for getting started.
I got an elegoo mars 3 used for 70 bucks got water washable resin and cure my minis with my girlfriend nail curing light. I also put reflective tape on the inside of a bucket and set my minis on a spinning display thing I already had so I got my stuff going for about 100 bucks.
@@Tackett666 I need more of this!
@@khanayudash2475 I got my mono 4k and wash station bundled on sale for 320 buckaroos and 4 gallons of 99% ipa for 50. But i already have a studio. If you live in the arctic or have to put your printer in your room, your going to spend more on ventilation and heating.
To summarize, 3D printing has a High upfront cost, but a low long term cost. Which makes it very good for someone who doesn't have the kind of money it takes to buy a lot miniatures for painting and playing with. After the upfront cost of getting setup is done, the prints themselves cost very little per model compared to similar quality and sized miniatures you can buy.
To Be real, you could buy pretty high stack of miniatures with 500 pounds. Just to give some ballpark, necromunda box of 10 from gw in element games is 22.50. if we imagine you get great deal and everything you need printing whitoutresins is 500 thats 222,22 miniatures. If your cost for every miniature is 1 pound, your saving is 1.25 per miniature,and you are at brake even after 413 gw 28mm models (you use more money on resin as you print so with that money you could buy more figures and That is the reason break even is not at 222 figures) Not counting any of your time used. Yeah 3d printing is not yet here as money saving device.
Okay, but what about printing terrain? What about multiple armies? What if you want to switch to a different game and need new models? There's loads of ways to save money with 3D printing in the tabletop hobby that you're glossing over. Not to mention you'll have far more options for the look of the models you want to play with if you opt into printing. Personally I think it's well worth it if you have the space, but yeah if you're just looking to start playing one game with one army then yes, technically buying wholesale from GW is a bit cheaper.
@@kj869 You are right. But there are some buts in the real scenario. If you would build your army for playing the official tournaments, there is only small point in 3D printing. Only in conversions. But then again, if you are playing only friendly games, you can get a lot of models that are much nicer that anything GW put out in last decade or two (eg. tyranids or eldars). So to say, 3D printing is, lets say even with official models. But you can have a lot of variety, wich is nice in my books. Plus you can get learn another skill. As I look at the situation, it seems to me vast majority of players can profit from 3D prints, one way or another. There is only fraction of players, who are hurt by 3D prints. And I would argue, those are paid for their opinions.
@@kj869 bro that's in pounds a box of 10 cost 60 dollars here in canada and my 3d printer costed me about 220$-250$. so 40 models is pretty close to the cost of just the printer. resin is 25$-50$ depending on size and brand and that one bottle could print most of an army for the cost of 10 infantry models. it is here and the ability to make your own models is there as well. don't need to buy bases, terrain pieces could just be printed there's a guy at the gameshop that plays custodies so for him he didn't even have to spend alot of time printing. titanic models also become alot for feasible. and if you just wanted to get those models that are always out of stock now we can just print them. wanted to start AoS can just print before you buy anything its so cheap just takes some time.
@@cwaldacwaldovic4572 i agree has this guy even seen puppets war bugs they look sick. only a few reasons to buy gw models is for tournaments hosted by them, they happen to put out a nice model, bits. or if you just really like the model they made and cant find/make your own. not like its bad too support them but man 60$ CA for 10 models is just a nope for me. now that 3d printing is openly available
The cost isn't what has drawn me to 3D printing, it's the quality. I've seen so many creators who do better miniatures than even Games Workshop!
As a dnd player, what also draws me to it is the customisability. Designing a character in heroforge or similar and then being able to print that exact character is so much better than buying a premade mini that only loosely resembles your character.
@@Whiskypapafacts! the customization = endless possibilities
Me too. The amazing sculpts put out by many STL creators got me back into miniature wargaming.
While I haven't purchased a printer YET, I'm interested in printing figures for long OOP and unsupported armies.
That is absolutely insane cost wise. I can't even imagine how awesome the hobby (and others - custom larger scale models etc) will be 5-10 years from now. The resolution NOW is nuts.
It’s exciting to have the insight to know that we are in the stone-age of at home printing and already creating such amazing work. The next 5-10years will be truly exciting.
The dwarves hair and beard is what killed me seriously. This is fucking insane how good the resolution is. If I had a tablet with zbrush or blender and some skills in 3D modeling I'd make my own stuff paint it and then sell it. This is so freaking good.
I'm amazed by how far 3D printing has come just in the past few years. It wasn't too long ago that resin printers were crazy expensive and not at all feasible for the average person to own. Now, a decent resin printer is actually a reasonable purchase for a hobbyist.
@@SuperEagle112 well, printers will be better. But if everyone is homeprinting, then there won't be any compaines to make the designs, rules, lore etc.
@@kimholmstroem Well, they can still sell the 3D models like other companies have done.
With two 2L bottles of resin I printed two full 2k point armies for aos 3.0. One blades khorne with 4 large god like mini's and one OBR army that included a nagash proxy and I still had about a half a bottle left. Those bottles came free with my printer which cost me about 350$ after shipping. I saved over 1600$ Canadian on the GW counterparts.
Where did you find the 3d models for your prints?
a friend emialed me a collection of stl files they had purchased.
Do you know any sites who have GW stl files?
desperately want to print some old warhammer fantasy models who are not in production anymore
@@jagttiger447 I don't think GW has ever officially released any stl files. Your best bet might be trying to find a way to import game files from any GW video game into blender or something. I much preffer proxy pieces to official GW minis half of the time.
Lol just sell a third of what you made for the price of the bottles and you're getting them for free.
Please continue the 3D printer content. I have been considering getting one for a while so any guides would be beyond helpful! Please could you expand on the cleaning and curing from last video? Thank you!
That's the plan! NExt video will be just about cleaning and curing and how to do it :D
Cleaning and curing is super simple when you have a wash and cure station that goes with your printer (e.g. anycubic photon mono and the anycubic wash and cure 2.0). You remove the build plate from your machine, put it in the wash station, start it up, then use the scraper to separate the models from the plate. Use warm water to peel off the supports. Give the models one last dip in isopropal alcohol to clean up any last resin revealed from removing the supports and any flaky bits (i like to run a toothbrush over them at this point), then swap from washing station to curing station. Cure for 3-4 minutes on each side and you are done.
For me I do find it alot cheaper than buying models. The main bonus for me tho is the variety and ease of finding models I like. I can find a set and if I only want 1 model I only print that rather than buying a box full. Also love being to print multiple of the same to test painting etc rather than ruining my expensive GW models
IT is defintiely cheaper overall!
That's mainly what I want to do. Print stormsurge and riptide to perfect the paint scheme I want before painting the real thing.
But do you need all the other stuff next to the printer? Or could you wash it yourself? (miniature and light after printing).
Yes but where do you find free hq models?
I will definetely get a printer in the future myself.
Upfront costs have become bearable for resin printers and the possible quality and aviability of models you could print is unrivalled.
There really is just GW stuff in the stores where I live and ordering minis online can get even pricier because of the shipping costs. Don't get me wrong, GW makes some good models, some of which I have, but they are on the expensive side and their stuff is really stylised and focused on their games. I like my generic fantasy for my D&D though.
Oh I want it. I NEED IT! Gotta have patience.
GW price: 800£ for similar model count in aos or 40K 😏
And that’s unpainted too lol.
fuck, that's more than the printer costs
no no.. how did you get to 800 pounds ?!
it should be around 200 USD or so for a box set for similar items as he shows here
what is that 800pounds price ? how did u get it ?
@@ShayVidas the number is not based on anything really.
Just a point that GW-models is just overpriced :)
@@minorharmonicscale they always have been but in recent years they are a lot cheaper then whst they used to be...
also i dont thinkcthey are over priced..nowdays you can find a set for 25usd or so...considering the matirial quality packaging store import shipping prices.... thats nit bad at all.
they were 50-60 usd before that was crazy and obvi if you print like 40,50 or more of them its worth investing in a resin printer..
Your 3D printing videos are my favourite housing investing videos of yours! I think it's also worth mentioning, personally when first starting out I wasted so much resin, cleaning products, cluelessly supports etc; just trying to learn how to use it. The intial cost is great but eventually over time the cost decreases as you become more efficient .
Comparing to Games Workshop: at best (using box sets or start collecting sets) you are paying a minimum of $5 per mini. So that means you save $4 per mini. (taking a very general big-picture overview here). Mars 2 Pro + bottle of resin about $350. Assuming 35 minis printed per bottle, each print yields 35 x $5 = $175 per bottle in minis in GW prices. Each subsequent print run adds $40 to cost (bottle of resin). So bottle two is 350+40=390, and yields $350 in minis. You can see by bottle 3 it has paid for itself, very roughly. I know there are many more factors, like gloves, failed prints, etc, but even so bottle 3 we are up to $525 in GW dollars vs 350+40+40 = $430 invested dollars.
And electricity...
@@TacDyne Variables.
by printing your own you wont run the risk of GW being out of stock . That you only print what you want , and custom mods as well , you save a bit . If your only ever going to have one army then its a moot point but if you want a different army then the printer is the way to go. Then there are all the terrain props you can print , trees , buildings and scrap heaps . If your a D&D player then you can print out all the monsters and pc's you will ever need and there are plenty of designs to choose from, even making over size prints just because you can is a great option especially when your 5 foot elf is the same size as your 7 foot half orc. I havnt brought a printer yet , but when I convince my wife that I, err, we need this it will happen. That and when we get let out of covid lockdown.
@@blackg0076 You forget the price of the model files.
@@Fenrasulfr I ve had a hunt around there are free files and , others that cost $5 to $8 and up depending on how big the figure is mostly, some for more. Also its a lot easier than making them out of lead in silicon molds , and they were heavy too. The important thing is that you can choose your figures rather than have exactly the same figure as your opponent . I think it is worth the cost of the files .
I'm not into wargaming or particularly miniatures like these but those Daybreak miniatures look excellent and seeing how much you printed with
one bottle of resin was very useful. Nice info mate and 👍👍
I am on holiday shade-bathing and yet I’m still watching your video. That is dedication Michael.
That’s why you’re the best!
A lot of these videos are sponsored by 3D art studios but the cost of the files never gets included in these round ups... The Dwarfs set is $25 for example, so why not add another £2.50 to your figure making the minis more like £3.50 a pop…
I think that part is so variable. You can go from completely free to OMG how much?
We have solar power and live in Australia so little to none running costs here
But don't you pay for that only once? If you buy the dwarf set and print let's say 4 of them, you won't have to pay £100 for the files. Right?
@@bartholen Exactly if you're printing larger armies, you may print the same mini several times. That's a cost that is reduced every single time you reprint that mini. Also 2.50 a figure is a little bit on the high side. With most patreons you're paying way less than that per figure.
If he got them through the patreon, he would have gotten all of the vampires for $10, all of the dwarves for $10 (the patreon price).
Plus, remember the flexibility. If he were to try and buy the "big" figures, he couldn't. And if he could, they would be extremely costly.
Just for comparison, to buy a couple of D&D miniatures at Miniature Market would be about $22 for "Curse of Strahd" unpainted plastic minis... one on foot, one on a horse. Obviously that's at the high end, but in most cases, you're looking at $3-5 per normal figure at a game store with zero ability to customize.
Entry cost is also somewhat cheaper if you want to be thrifty.
I got myself a mars 2 for $220 aud on amazon. They are much cheaper and more than detailed enough for figure printing.
I use water washable, I dont use IPA to wash just water.
I didn't buy a curing station. If you have sunlight, you have UV and can cure. Even if it's overcast or cold raining weather, there's still UV and still cures.
I didn't need to buy any additional tools. The printer came with plastic and metal scrapers, clippers, strainers, 5 extra FEP, brushes, gloves and masks. I used an old ice cream container for washing.
So my initial cost was 220 + 60 for the resin, 280 AUD all up. And 'made back' the cost of the printer in the first 3 days printing some 'Space Mace 69'
Being in Australia you definitely don't need a curing station but other places do. Still, for the cost of a bucket, some aluminium tape and a cheap UV LED lamp, it's like idk 30 bucks or something. $300 curing station SO not needed.
The per miniature cost should include the support cost as well. yet still be cheaper as the machine is reusable Time is also only wasted if you sit and watch.
Agreed. If the bottle of Resin Costs £30 then those miniatures cost just under £26 of resin to print. Just the weight of resin used is what matters so 862g of resin (if the bottle contains 1kg of resin rather than the full bottle weighing 1kg in total).
Printing the big models was stupid, it throws off any accurate calculation of how much a 32mm model will cost on average. If we take them as the equivalent of 3 models then those models would have an average resin cost of £1 per model to print plus running costs of the printer.
£1 per model in resin is not bad compared to the cost of resins or plastics from GW, for example. But it does affect how many minis you would need to print to cover the costs of the printer itself.
@@Naeron66 whoa some common sense
And you could think of the time spend as putting your order to GW, till they're shipped and then get them from GW store.
Then compare to time spent on getting supplies for 3D printer and add that to printing time.
@@FrstSpctr88 I don''t order from GW so I don't know how quick they are but the way I look at it is that as long as it prints them faster than I can paint them then its fast enough.
Ive googled a bit and you could"melt" down the supports with alcohol into a kind of resin glue, so you can "reuse" it in some kind of way.
what i liked about 3d printing the most was how personalized it could be, if you know an artist, or you can hire one, they can sculpt you a model that did not exist right before you print it, it's exactly what you want, how you want it and it looks amazing, and it's unique and yours, really yours, it was pretty amazing, if i still played mini wargaming games i would have liked to 3d print stuff like that too, but ultimately i gave up on it, i keep waiting for whatever got me into it in the first place to kick back in and i'll start up once more, but so far it's been over a year and hasnt happened yet
Took 10 years for the bug to kick back in for me!
I'd like to add a little personal experience when it comes to water washable resin. Other than the more than valid points mentioned in the video already, if you actually decide to use water in your wash station, depending on the design of the station, what can happen is that the ball bearings may rust rather quickly. Which does not happen with alcohol. I learned that the hard way... maybe someone finds this helpful. In addition, if you want to cure and then dispose of the resin safely from the liquid after it evaporated outside, alcohol evaporates MUCH quicker.
If you are worried about time, a savvy printer can put all the horses (or whatever tall items) in the same print, and do them together since the number of models doesn't matter.
That said, what you did more accurately displays the average user, printing a few things here and there.
Thanks for having a solid, informative video describing the ups and downs of 3D printing.
i've been able to get an average of around 100-120 28mm human sized infantry models per 1 liter bottle. dont forget printers, never trust the auto supports lol
skeletons are even cheaper!!! Pesky flesh:)!!!!
I’ve actually never had a problem with autosupports, I’ve printed probably 100 minis at this point
the auto supports i think would have use less weight in resin the supports he had were super thicc. but the auto ones do add alot of redundant supports. if you had the time and wanted to really save can go through them and remove all the extra stuff
The blue food colouring made me chuckle. I discovered at an early age that people are repelled by blue food when I made a fun blue sponge cake and no-one would eat it. Later when I was a student in a shared house, we had a "fridge pirate" and I would put a drop of blue colour into my milk, it worked like a charm! My milk never went missing.
Your daybreak minis promo was grand. Love it!
Has any one thought about duel purpose supports? Could the supports be terrain, spears, bushes.. It would cut down on the waist. Personally I would print trim pieces for converting square sheet basing to GW edges. (My preference for gaming minis)
I had this exact thought -- those supports would make really cool alien/robot trees, or could be separated and used as gribbles on other terrain by acting like pipes and wires, or even cut into chunks and made into piles of rubble or loose stones!
The supports are designed to be easy to remove. If you create them into something useful, then removing them would be a nightmare
So about a $1.10 per mini, I get close to resin quality prints from my FDM printers for about 17 cents each and you don't need to do anything like wash or cure them, and there is no toxic waste. I just can't see making the investment, if I could afford it I probably would at give it a try. Thanks for the video it was a good learning experience.
Can you please tell which printer you use bud ??
Just from your vid(btw. amazing) ive looked up on a way to recycle the supports, have you thought about melting them with alcohol and turn them this way into "resin glue" / material to fill up gaps or just to glue the minis onto the bases? Would basically lower the loss and give you the bonus of not having to use glue for bigger multipart printed minis? not sure how good this works but definitly something to look into. Small warning: the resin glue should be only used outside at best, because the vapors could be toxic as frick. :D
not sure this type of plastic melts like that
@@AsbestosMuffins it melts in acetone not alcohol.
Cute idea, but it doesnt work that way. supports are lost resin, unless you use them for terrain or basing.
I love the sequence you did for the "advertising" of daybreak miniatures starting around 2:31 - Absolutely Neon
The alcohol, gloves, paper and everything disposable comes out to be about the same price as the resin for the last 5 liters. I have improved my routines so the costs have dropped between the first and last bottle. Also the resin price have plummeted. I used to buy bottles for $60 and now I can get them at $25
So far I have printed, 100 not-guardsmen, 10 not-scions, 2 not-command squads, 3 not-sentinels, 2 not-chimeras and 2 not-heavy weapon squads. Used 1½ bottle. Printer was 250, 2 bottles of resin is 90 ... so I have spent 340 USD, but printed miniatures which at GW would cost me 882 USD ... SO FAR, I have had the printer for 3 months.
did you need a wash/cure station?
In the end it all depends, but I look at the Halot One printer right now, for 169€, a bottle of eco resin for 20€ and it seems juicy. The cost drops significantly the cheaper the resin is, your bottle would be roughly 38€ here, the resin I look at is almost "half" the price, which would halve the cost per miniature as well. Geedubs will be in for a rough awakening.
Calculating just the cost of resin is a bit dishonest. The way I would canculate it is:
- take the cost of the consumables (resin, alcohol, electricity, waste disposal) per miniature
- Then calculate the cost of a production miniature.
- Account for quality difference (for example if GW model looks 10% better with finer details than the print - just discount it's price by 10%)
- Add the cost of equipment (printer, curing chamber, whatever) to the 3d printer batch.
- Lastly, by increasing the miniature count in both prited and retail piles - calculate how many miniatures you have to 3d print to break even.
I suspect that it's actually more miniatures than many of the hobby-ists would likely paint in their entire life, to be honest. But of course there are less obvious benefits to printers - like having basically any miniatures you want.
Conclusion - buying a 3d printer to save money on retail miniatures - not worth it. But buying to get access to a broad range of models (especially if you can learn how to tweak the files that you are getting to your liking) - is worth it, if you are that passionate.
Hellstorm continues to crank out top tier content. Alogrithms.
Thanks Evan 😍
Ok the Daybreak ad break was spectacular
While Chitubox is my preferred slicer, it's predictions for how much resin will be used are never even close to the reality - usually under estimated by a good 20%. I always weigh prints (including supports) and keep a record of what each one actually cost.
Do you hollow and put a hole in them so that the liquid resin doesn't remain in the model?
I hate the waste in support material, but the way I think of it is that, without it, I couldn't have the models either.
some of that support stuff could be very useful to people that kit bash and scratch build models and dioramas. the post could be like pipes or cables. the base could be like liquids and melted acid damage.
Wow. I haven't even checked the cost of these printers in a long time. I remember back when it was $2k easy just to get a basic resin printer. And it cost just about $100 to get 1000g of the resin. The only printers back when that you'd be able to get at that price range would be a cruddy filament printer with inconsistent prints and you had to put it together yourself. Amazing to really see how accessible it's become. Didn't actually think it would ever happen.
Such a cool idea for a video, awesome work!
Thanks man, appreciate you checking it out!
I would use the sprew's as sprew glue for covering up cracks in models and even in some terrain builds. I would also check and see if it sticks to silicon molds so you can make rocks out of it. This way nothing goes to waste.
Resin doesn't work that way. You can't melt it like ABS or styrene
Heck yeah!!! Doctor strange montage haha love that name
Thanks again for watching bud. Yeah trying out new editing techniques and it reminded me of him haha
To add to the calculus here: I just ordered a Mars 3 Pro to print DnD minis. I make the minis on Hero Forge and if I was to order them printed by Hero Forge themselves they would cost $20-30 each depending on the plastic option, but if I bought the STL from them it only cost $8 (or between $3 and $4 if you buy their pro subscription). Not to mention you only need one STL per model so you could print multiple of the same mode and save even more. So for that alone the savings are pretty obvious if you want to make a ton of them.
I had no idea how much waste is produced. It might be a good side project to recycle some of those supports as terrain. They can be painted and used for impassible swamp trees or something.
I was just saying, all this "waste" makes for perfect rebar, ruins, barred windows and detailing.
I can get a few dozen parts out of a bottle of resin that costs me $30 versus $500 for the parts themselves from a manufacturer. We use the printer at least once a week at work to make parts for animated movie props.
The mario music in the background was insanely nostalgic. subbbbbbeeeed :)
I see you're pushing it to the limit. Dancing on that razors edge.
I remember when you could get 30 space marines in a box for £15 from GW.
Their greedy pricing has led to this by Karma lol
Bullshit
I love that my chitubox is like "yeah this print costs 1.5 dollars" I got maybe 5 of those prints in a 50 dollar bottle of resin
Also missing from your pricing: the STL. Those usually average around 1/model. Sometimes you get more or less, depending on the patreon or sale.
@@Nazgull2k1 yeah that's the real benefit of 3d printing, the more you print the cheaper it is in comparison to buying minis.
Games Workshop stls are free 😏
Holy heck! Just picked up that dwarf of the deep with the staff and lantern from my FLGS. First time I've bought a mini someone resin printed. So glad to know what he's from!
Eyyy!
Loved the sponsor spot montage, also I think a lot of people miss the hidden cost like the price of the machine, consumable and more importantly your time doing prep and cleanup.
Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it. But yeah - everyone is like ‘TANK FOR $5!?’ Not considering every other cost involved
Just about to start printing, this video REALLY helped! Thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
Cheers Mikey , next time my mates ask me to print stuff for them i now have a vid i link to them .... to say it costs me about a quid a go plus all my time power, and grief with failures.
TELL EM
That montage at the beginning really cracked me up good, nice one there, thanks for making me smile! 🤣 I was cringing real hard before and already mentally preparing myself for one of those super tacky sponsor spots or something, with my finger hovering the dislike button, and then the montage started playing and I couldn't help myself but burst out laughter. Good work dude, thanks for the laugh. One thing though, you should have washed figurines after weighing them. Though small, I reckon a significant portion of the 'used up' resin was sticking to the outside of the models before you submerged them, instead of being incorporated in the structure of the model itself. I recommend that next time you're tracking the actual amount of spent resin you weigh the models immediately after releasing them from the build plate instead of weighing them afterwards when you've already washed them. (and preferably, if at all possible, you should use a precision scale capable of weighing in sub-gram gradations/increments 😁
For me it's not about substituting GW stuff. Not at all. I highly respect the work that GW puts into its minis. For me it's about printing minis or parts that I can't buy.
Na, once they fired the Perry brothers they lost me.
The comedic body proportions in 40k is a joke too. Took gw 30 years to realise how goofy humans looked
this, I don't want endanger the community, organizers, and stores
@@maxgerrit the infantry pays for the general's mistakes
that is absolutley wicked. knowing how much people spend on miniatures at the comic store. 3D printers are a table top players dream.
I just learned from your video that the print time of resin printers is not dependent on complexity but solely on height. It seems so obvious now that you have explained it.
Does mikey need a 3D printing intervention?? 🤣 Great vid mate :)
Thansk for watching mate :D
bit of a late comment, but a good way to minimize lost cost is looking for supportless miniatures. you might not get as much intricate detail since it's a different way of modelling that makes sure that everything is self supported but there's some very talented people out there that make awesome supportless minis.
the best part of this is simply that you can not only save on resin that is used for supports, but it also saves on resin that sticks to the supports so less resin ends up in your cleaning liquid.
seeing as how 300grams was used for supports, that's about a third of the bottle you could have saved if these were supportless.
So 67~ grams missing out of around 933 grams to print (combining the supports and minis) is about an 8.5% loss, which considering the surface area of the supports and detailed minis, sounds reasonable that it would almost all be accounted for by the resin you wash off (maybe closer to 6 or 7% considering the resin clinging to the sides of the bottle when you zero'd it and stuck to the filter).
Considering supports, it looks like 38% of your resin is used in supports. So supports are where you'd want to target your savings, on top of hollowing your models in general.
Being more conservative with supports increases the likelihood of failure, however, so there's experience and discretion that needs to be applied.
Hollowing is pretty hard to do with minis. A lot of them are so delicate that you couldn't make drain holes big enough to actually drain all the resin.
I love the variety of your channel, all your video are put together so nicely and are always fun to watch!!
It is unfortunate that so much of the resin ends up in the landfill. Seems to me that is quite a bit, in a time when we are supposed to be thinking ahead about these issues. Is there any research being done on how to utilize some of this material instead of continuing to send things to landfills that are extremely difficult to biodegrade? I realize people need hobbies, and this does look fun, just wondering about some long term effects on the planet.
It's the same with any mini you buy that comes on sprues. Sadly, it's plastic going into landfill :-(
Best review I've seen,ta!
Those supports look really thick (2.0+?). I've been using 0.2/0.3 supports on the Mars 3 without any issues (-for light bits like antennas. For the rest I mostly use 0.9's/1.0's, with a couple of 1.5 "heavies" to anchor the model). Do you get the Chitu project files when buying mini files, or just the STL's?
Incredibly helpful and honest video. The best I've found regarding 3d printing so far ngl.
I really appreciate that you tell that there are still costs on consumables, but I don't think you got too deep into it. I did an estimate with your pricing for initial investment and consumables (only resin, as I don't have enough information about the ISO or the printer longevity itself) compared to the cheapest price of GW's Intercessors. I found that you only get cheaper after printing around 280 Intercessors, and that is a very optimistic estimate.
I do know that you will get much more use out of a 3D printer outside of printing mini's, and that might justify a lot of the costs for most users. But an average Joe, who impulsively buys a resin printer out of GW-spite, might have a very costly regret after a few failed prints.
But I have to say, I do like all the custom models that get offered.
Now crunch those numbers for something like Eliminators that only come with three in the box instead of 10 for the same price.
@@Youdotty that would be two batches, so 70 models in total. Still a lot, and not considering failure and extra costs outside of the resin.
Your maths is quite off for a start, £30 for 10 models, so 100 models for the price of the printer, add £50 in resin, and for just £50 more you get 100 models AND a 3d printer. The cost of the printer itself shouldnt even be factored in anyway tbh, if you go and buy an airbrush / compressor combo for 150-250, do you start suddenly factoring that into the cost of painting your miniatures. Even if you include everything including electricity, against GW models 3d print is always going to come out better, other less price gouging companies maybe not.
@@xenoborg007 you forget the curing station, ISO and even replacement parts as the LCD is a consumable. My math is clearly closer to reality. Even if you haven't even seen it.
My total costs of ownership has until now been a little less than €550, from what I can see I spend money on related to printing. Printer, IPA, wipes, filters, a couple of vats for cleansing, a UV lamp. All models I have are free, most are designed by myself. That has gotten me 80 Imperial Guardsmen (€350 on GW website), 3 commanders (€28 for a command squad, I could probably kitbash 3 from it) , 1 heavy weapon squad (€32.5), 5 scions (€32.5), 3 armored sentinels (€84), 3 Leman Russ tanks (€135), two Earthshaker cannons (€204), and an inquisitor (€14.5). And a Brood Lord for a small present (€33). That will be €914. And given that what I have is about half a guard army, and half the investment was the printer itself, I think printing is _very_ cost effective. Especially since I need more characters, scions and support weapons, which are cheap in resin and expensive in the webstore.
Thanks for this, a very useful video - it's the obvious question most people I think would have but seen anyone else actually address it.
You can pro-rate or amortize the cost of the machines across every model you print so it winds up pretty small when you get past say 300 miniatures.
I mean, it's always going to be worth money so it's not like you need to amortise the cost anyway.
The math I did stated that a resin printer for me, the dm, breaks even in miniatures after 1 main dnd module. So that's why I got my longer orange.
3d printers definitely have an interesting future but for me the current tech can't match the detail from gw etc and the amount of waste produced is pretty shocking considering the current environmental focus.
Re the quality, that's true for at least newer stuff but the detail achievable is good.
I don't 3d print stuff myself but I have painted a few 3d prints that I got from various small companies making stuff over the past year or so. The detail on those minis is just flatly better today than the detail was on good minis from about 10+ years ago.
Now I don't do a lot of GW stuff but it's pretty common knowledge that there are several armies and units and things that suffer from a lack of updates and people are still buying and putting stuff on the table that actually was created 10+ years ago.
I will say this - With even a fair amount of skill, you can definitely paint a 3d print to a standard that far exceeds what most people would consider to be reasonably achievable on old pewter sculpts from the 90s-00s when I was coming up. Edit - Oh, and I'll add that a good quality 3d print exceeds the detail standards set by models along the lines of reaper bones and such as they are made today.
The biggest problem, in my view, isn't any lack of detail but that sometimes cleaning up where the supports where is a *huge* PITA. Yeah, if the supports where done well you can clean like 98% of those marks off with ease, but it seems to me that there is always some obnoxious bump in some crevice or something that's going to be really damned irritating.
I think that as the technology improves, both the irritating support bump issue *and* the waste issue is going to improve substantially as the need for supports will decrease. Honestly, I'm pretty excited to see where things will be in about 5-10 years.
The amount of waste is a pretty big hurdle for me as well, but is it ultimately that much more than GW minis? Just think of all the sprues you throw away after assembling a single squad of 40k minis.
Resin is recyclable.
@@richardcahill1234 is it? When I looked into it originally, on the elgoo site, a few 3dprinter websites and a couple of YT reviews after elgoo etc spammed content creators with free printers last year, the only info I found was that any water used to clean the prints had to be left out to cure all remaining traces of the resin as it was a hazardous material and not to be disposed of by pouring down a sink or drain. Any cured resin could be disposed of with household waste or taken to your local waste disposal site, but I couldn't see anything specifically about recycling?
If I've missed something I apologize for the incorrect comment but when I read that I took their word for it that it was a potential environmental hazard.
I'm sure it's fine when handled correctly but like when any new tech becomes widely, and affordably, available you know that they'll be a percentage of people that see those controls as possible suggestions and will either ignore them completely or let it slide with time.
Like I said originally, 3d printing definitely has an interesting future, is an outstanding development for manufacturing and for a lot of people it's a hobby in itself but for me personally it's not worth it to save a bit of cash on miniatures.
Games workshop shill comment. Detail? Mate the quality of sculpts out there blows GW out of the water, you need a microscope to see the layer lines which vanish under paint anyway. You can print and paint a space marine side by side with an official model and I guarantee you that you could not tell the difference. Waste? How about those piles of sprues? When I look at the sprue waste for say, 10 infantry compared to the amount of waste from supports, it's not even close, the sprues are SO much more.
Even considering what naysayers argue, mostly costs of the machine and possibly the sculpts, I reckon my setup has paid for itself within 3 months of owning it. It largely depends on your specific use case.
I paid, more often than I‘m comfortable admitting, just shy of 20€ for custom DnD minis from heroforge. Since getting my resin printer, I printed 3 full parties worth of minis for 5€ a piece. That alone covered the cost of the printer.
What is much more important to me is the variety I can get into my hobby. I recently got into middle earth sbg. Do you know how many distinct sculpts GW currently sells for moria goblins? 2 bows, 2 swords, 1 spear. Yes, they technically have minute differences in these as well, but even then the ratio goes to 3:2:2. It is not too far fetched to assume you would need 40 or more of these to fill a list.
Thanks to free files and a couple of welcome packs on patreon, I can have serious variety now. And even from a single sculpt, you can print at least 4 models before they stand out as repetitive. Just print it twice, then mirror it and print it twice again. This added variety is close to priceless to me.
And staying with MESBG, GW has discontinued so many essential minis from the range, that you‘d need to track down somewhere, mostly at ridiculous price points. Warg marauders are a proper highlight of the moria faction. I can find exactly 1 on ebay for almost 300€. I got a patreon set for roughly 10 instead. 2 different sculpts, mirrored them to make it 4 distinct minis. That is just awesome!
3D printing is a hobby in and of itself. But it can be rewarding af.
Thank you for sharing this experiment!
So basically:
-Buy a really good resin printer for 500 bucks.
-print 1000 dollars worth of Warhammer miniatures for 30 bucks worth of resin, electricity and other supplies
I liken 3D printing to homebrewing beer, with all the advantages and disadvantages. Yes, after you have all the equipment you can print or brew anything you want. But if you add up all the cost ( including time, consumables, cost to dispose of used solvents, etc) it works out about the same cost as buying them at the store, especially if you are not printing multiple copies of the same mini and thus having the investment of the STL file as well. That first mini is gonna cost you $900+. The second one will be just the cost of the resin, alcohol, alcohol disposal, gloves, STL file purchase or time to sculpt ( you do have free sculpting software right?) various cleaning products, electricity, and your time to set up the file to print and to handle all the washing and curing. Yeah, sounds like a great deal
I do a lot of Resin printing myself and aside from resin you also need to account for the wear on your screen, FEP, Light and other components as well as electricity cost, A good average for what I listed is $2/hr . Also the time required to clean, cure, remove supports and eventually sanding the remaining bits is also a form of investment. To be clear, Resin 3D print is awesome but the price of a mini is not just the material cost.
Depending on the country you're in there are other costs too, which seem to be small but add up, like electricity (I'm running multiple machines and hell it adds up!) and the wear of your machine which will need repair by some time, although I have no idea how quickly the resin printers wear in comparison to FDM printers that I use, which are always in need of something new :D
Nice video mate, thanks for spend the time and shared it!
No problem 👍
To be honest, I was counting at first and comparing with some comercial company minies for comparable model price... But to be honest, once I was at having saved around 3 times the prince of my printer I stopped carring ^^' But it's still good to let know people that are getting into it that their is still a starting investment and some other side cost.
As for managing the water washable resine, personally I usually filter it with a piece of cloth while putting it in a grilladged container (to prevent any animals to come and drink from it) and let it evaporate whe the weather is hot enought. Then I clean the cured residu that's left in the container. But I admit, it's not the easiest thing to do either ^^'
loved the pump part just before the sponsor and like the sponsor too tbh
So what I would say the missing 70 grams of resin is actually fumes being released by the chemical reaction making a new product
This is a good overview of the cost structure to print. Thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Wow they are actually better than the current cap that GW are coming out with they have actually got some character to them
Really good, clean and entertaining video! You got a new subscriber!
Love the sponsor segment!
It’s a great saving if you already have a 3d printer. I didn’t buy mine for this purpose, but I’ll for sure be saving on my minis from now on
lyshee slicer has a add supports feature that is literally a second or two to press a button and its done, great time saver.
Beautiful character designs. Thanks for sharing your assessment.
"...sorry" made me laugh so much 🤣
What did the consumables cost you for this print, Gloves. Alcohol, paper towel etc. I estimate it costs me ~1$ in supplies every print before I count the resin.
You can pour the contaminated water in a clear container you don't mind eventually discarding, and if you cure it it'll settle out on the bottom. If you pour that through a coffee strainer, the water should be safe to discard in the drain. (Or reused like you would the isopropanol for normal resin.)
To get rid of the cleaning fluids just pour it into a clear plastic container and leave it in the sun for a couple of days most resin will cure. After that pour into a new container and put a strong UV light on top of it that gets rid of the rest. You can use the fluid agin after that and throw away the hardened resin ;)
so how many miniatures round about does 1 bottle create? i know size varies that number but on average for normal minis not big ones
Thanks for making this.
I haven't even watched the video and I already subscribed because that intro was just perfect
I have never watched your Videos before, But I subbed just because of the Intro. Thank you for that :P
I have worked out a system for dealing with water. The wash and cure station for the cleanest water, when it gets too cloudy it goes into a small bucket that I use for the intitial rinse and cleaning the build plate and spatula, when that gets too dirty it gets poured off into gallon milk jugs that then get set out in the sun to evaporate off. Is it more tedious than alcohol? Yes. However I find water easier to deal with for cleaning prints that I'm willing to deal with the hassle of disposing of it. If I ever start printing enough that I have larger quantities to dispose of that might change things
This was such a good video. Just started printing myself and can confirm, the hidden cost is gloves and kitchen role! Nice work bud, keep up the good work
Thanks, appreciate it
Why wouldn't you reuse the older material?
Is it ok to leave it over night or more once you start a long project. Like 5 hour one but you don't come back for 20 hours?
That creative intro got that subscribe from me!
And the best thing about 3d printing you can use it for anything not just miniatures so I definitely think it's the way forward to own one
That ad was hilarious!
Correct me if im wrong but you dont particularly need the IPA and wash station/curer for the water based resins
This is GOLD