Cult Initiation

I've always thought of 3d printing as a bit of a cult. Online discussion of prices inevitably drawing out the intoned mantra of, "printer goes brrr," and any skepticism expressed towards the application of printing being the best outcome in every circumstance being set upon by a teeming horde of zealots determined to shout down (and probably burn) the heretic.

And now I'm one of them.

It's clear that printing is on the rise within the hobby and there are some stunning creations appearing. Also, friends of mine were indoctrinated some time ago and I've seen what they've been able to do.

I'm not, and never have been, an early adopter, but my interest was definitely piqued at the possibilities.

However, as mentioned in my previous post, after a fair bit of research and deliberation I ruled out the option of a resin printer. Despite the fact that they are clearly the best choice for printing miniatures, the toxicity of the resin combined with the lack of proper ventilation in my workspace, made getting one a non-starter.

Which led me to looking at whether FDM printers could give me what I wanted, and it turned out that the answer was yes, with caveats.

Slower than resin printers and even the best prints being less clean than their output, the best FDM machines could get close to the quality of resin with a reduced cost and less chance of death.

It also turned out that there is a dedicated community of people online beavering away at getting the best results they could put of FDM, with most of them recommending the Bambu A1 or A1 Mini. Chief amongst these, and well worth a visit is Painted 4 Combat, who has a whole slew of videos full of advice.

After setting up my new printer and successfully getting the Gobsmasha printed, I wanted to test it's capabilities with miniatures. However, for my first test I decided to keep things simple and print something that I could still use if layer lines were visible.

Therefore I printed some troll bodies that I could use with the arms and heads I had spare from building my Mordor Troll. Not only would these be done quickly, but as the focal points would still be plastic, if detail wasn't good, I could still potentially use the models.

Therefore, I popped online to find a free file to use. I should point out the fact that the main site for this is suspiciously called Cults3d.

I told you it was a cult.

The Isengard Troll (on the right in this picture) was done with the standard 0.4mm nozzle I'd used for the Gobsmasha, and you can clearly see the layer lines. Although the plastic bits should do enough of a job to make this model passable, this clearly isn't appropriate for more detailed work.

The drummer (one the left...with the drums) was done with the 0.2mm nozzle I'd bought additional to the printer, and delivers a significantly better result. The main problem with this model is that I've stuck his arms on badly.

Both miniatures were printed with automatic tree supports which came away fairly well but need a bit of tidying up.

I next tried to print a Vault Girl miniature I'd got as part of a Humble Bundle deal of Fallout resources and discovered the limits of FDM printing.

The pose and spindly design of this miniatures caused it to snap in several places as I was removing supports, highlighting that I'd need to be careful in choosing which miniatures would work in FDM. Thin parts and extended extremities would be problematic.

What's more, I wasn't happy with the lack of detail on the Pipboy and hammer and so looked at improving my setting further.

This resulted in me downloading some specific settings for the Bambu A1 Mini from Fat Dragon Games which I tried with a different free STL of a cultist.

I chose this one as its robes gave it a more sturdy construction and it didn't have outstretched limbs. I also figured that of something went wrong with the knife, it would be easy to do a hand or weapon replacement from my bits box.

As you can see this experiment was a success.

And here he is painted up to serve as a Dagon Officiant for my Rashaar in Carnevale, and I'm really pleased with the outcome.

In truth, he's a little bit next to my other Officiant, but as that one is a woman, the size difference is excusable, also, scale in Carnevale is a bit all over the place anyway.

I was really pleased to see that facial features, fingers and even toes were picked out, producing a miniature that was easy to paint up and looks perfectly decent on the tabletop.

In terms of negatives, there are layer lines still visible in the robe, but these are exaggerated by the photograph and are barely visible in real life.

Also, although the knife survived, but in a reduced form, and I may still replace it.

Finally, the rim of the hood and the bottom of the robe are a bit chewed up. This works for the clothing of a Dagonite cultist, but would because problem on a less ragged character. However, this was mainly due to the process of support removal, a job I need to become more prrcise at.

Following this I tried something a bit more advanced and printed a Hellgate Cultist from Arbiter Miniatures, which is a free sample of their Advanced FDM range.

This uses supports more similar to those used for resin and prints the models in smaller parts. This allows for more dynamic poses and doesn't leave the same scarring as the tree supports.

This is a great model whose only flawd include the fact that printing it took much longer than my Dagonite and he's much too tall and chunky in his proportions to use in Carnevale.

Although this miniature is not quite right for me, it dies show the direction FDM miniatures are going in and suggests that significantly better results are possible.

My final experiment was looking into printing base toppers for the 30mm round lipped bases I used for Carnevale as I realised I'd run out whilst painting the Dagonite.

This allowed me to learn about resizing files as the files I found were all fractionally too big. Again, this turned out to be relatively simple thanks to some short tutorial videos made by 3d Print Dood, and although I haven't found a file which looks like the bases I used for my Guild, Rashaar and Vatican forces, the one above will serve admirably for my and hoc Strigoi miniatures, instead of the resin ones I've been buying off eBay.

All in all, my initiation into the world of 3d printing have been a success, and I've learned a lot.

Printing miniatures with FDM is not fast enough to makes printing armies viable, although I view this a a good limit on my backlog, and the quality doesn't match resin. However, the ability to print individual miniatures for a specific purpose, make use of spare sprue bits and save me money on bases are all things that will suit me.

Obviously, vehicles and terrain are also on the agenda, but I'm happy to discover that, with a bit of care in my selection of files, I can produce tabletop quality miniatures at a fraction of the cost of buying new or even second hand.

Acquired: -79

Painted: 123

Lead Mountain: 450