BATHED IN RESIN
It’s a dirty job, but you should probably do it. Maybe...
Is it time to take the plunge with a 3D printer? Jon Sutherland does some investigation.
I’m sure I’m not alone in taking a very close interest in the development of print-it-yourself at home soldiers and terrain. What tipped me over the edge was a £20 resin elephant I bought from some bloke in Germany. It was lovely but what I quickly understood was that he hadn’t created the elephant he’d simply printed it under licence from someone else. I thought: how hard could it be to print my own elephant? And what else was out there that I’d like to print?
There are more opinions on which type of printer to buy than there are opinions about the colours of belt buckles or backpacks on a Napoleonic infantryman. One rabbit hole to avoid is YouTube. There are literally dozens of presentations of ill-considered opinion influenced by free printers and other incentives from the manufacturers. None of the presentations are particularly easy to follow and neither are they particularly relevant to wargaming. Most of them seem to be reading the marketing blurb or installation instructions from an off-screen prompt. After subjecting myself to far too many of these I came to the conclusion that it was all too complicated. Then there was ‘Black Friday’. This is in no way an endorsement of a particular brand (neither have I been ‘bribed’ to say this) but I bought an Anycubic Photon Mono, a wash and cure station and one litre of resin for £300 give or take. I figured that if I didn’t buy everything in one shot I would be prevaricating for a number of months before I made any kind of decision. I also figured that I probably needed to “sell” my purchase to my wife and ensure that the system was neat and tidy and not a small factory...
What follows is really a set of questions that I would have liked to have had the answers to: I hope they can guide you if you are remotely interested in buying a printer for yourself.
RESIN OR PLASTIC?
So the first question should really be: “Should I buy a resin or plastic printer?”. The simple answer is that – if you want to print terrain and soldiers – you probably need both. A budget resin printer is perfectly capable of printing good quality soldiers. A budget FDM (or ‘plastic extruding’) printer is not. A budget FDM printer is okay for terrain and it helps to understand the difference. Both types of printer print in broadly the same way in as much as they print several hundred – if not thousands – of thin layers to create your print. One of the most obvious differences is the material. Think of the FDM printer as basically being an intelligent type of hot glue gun; it builds up layers from the bottom and the quality of what you get at the end depends on how good the nozzle is, in effect the resolution that the printer can manage. No doubt many of you have seen horrific looking FDM printed tanks that look like they’ve been constructed by arranging successive layers of cardboard on one another to make a broad ‘tank type’ shape. They have a very weird external look to them and need quite a lot of work to make them look reasonable. If you were to spend a little more on an FDM printer then the quality of the print would improve: it might be possible to make half decent vehicles and terrain pieces but it is hard to replicate the print quality of a resin printer when you are talking about printing soldiers.
With a resin printer, the printing process is slightly different. The object you are printing consists of several thousand layers, each of which is exposed to an LED array which partially cures the resin. Because the resin is more expensive to buy than the spools of plastic there is a tipping point at which it becomes uneconomical to make large objects with resin when you should be making them in plastic.
HOW DOES IT ALL WORK?
There are several websites to hunt for suitable (and sometimes free files) which you can convert using specialised software into a file format that your printer recognises (these are called stl or obj files and the print-ready format is pwm). I was fortunate in as much as my resin printer comes with its own software and all you need to do is to import a file into the software and carry out a series of manipulations before saving it in a format that the printer understands. There are many home-print hobbyists that swear by Chitubox, a free piece of software that does everything the Anycubic one does and a lot more.
Just like normal figure manufacturers, designers offer their products in a variety of different ways. Some follow the Patreon or Kickstarter model and you have to buy into the vision in order to obtain the files of their creations. Others simply sell individual designs, bundles or whole sets including figures, terrain and animals. Some use searchable websites and offer you the opportunity to try one or two of their designs before committing yourself to their full range of products.
You should expect to pay around the same price as a fairly expensive 28mm war games figure for each design. But you’re not buying just one. When you buy the file you could, if you were mad enough, print several thousand of the same pose. Therein lays the essential difference between a physical wargame product and a virtual wargame product. Think of it in the same way as buying a pdf of a set of rules: there are no limitations as to how many you can print off, but the same copyright implications apply as you generally aren’t permitted to print them off to sell them without a license. I do wonder what the implied limitations are if you sell on your collection of resin figures in the future. I also wonder about distributing figures around a games club at “cost price”.
Buying the download for a single figure and then only printing one of them is an expensive way of going about things. If you only want one, it is probably not worth the hassle of getting all the kit and doing it yourself. Search eBay or other online sales sites and find someone who prints them under license. I think that printing out rank and file in bulk is probably the most economic approach and justifies the initial expense and ongoing costs.
WHAT ABOUT SCALE?
As wargamers we are all too aware of the shifting patterns of figure size, bulk and pose. We’ve all made dreadful mistakes in buying figures that simply look out of place. At least at a wargame show you can peer into a cabinet and make a value judgement about whether the figures will match what you’ve already got but buying virtually is a bit of a lottery. The good news is that you can re-scale before you print, so if something is too small or too big, the editing software allows you to shrink or enlarge until it’s just right. Just like traditional figure manufacturers the designers will proclaim that something is a particular scale but in reality the descriptions are pretty vague. I’ve printed out 20 horses in expectation that they would fit my metal riders only to discover that they are probably 10-15% too big. Similarly I printed off some goblins only to realise that they are more 20mm than 28mm.
WHAT CAN I BUY?
For historical wargamers 3D printing is a little bit disappointing in terms of choice at the moment. If you are into World War Two there are plenty of tanks and vehicles that you can print in multiple scales saving you a fortune
compared to buying readymade resin or metal. In terms of figures themselves the choices are much more limited. You can buy Romans, Renaissance Spaniards, Vikings and plenty of proxy figures hidden in fantasy ranges. In fact my elephant, as it turned out, came from a range of fantasy Arabian Nights figures and terrain. What I do like – even though there are limited choices for historical figures – is the transparency of being able to see precisely what you are buying. Many of the sites allow you to manipulate 3D images of the files so that you can examine them from every conceivable angle. It does give you a chance to really have a good look at it and see if it is what you really want.
WHAT ARE THE PRACTICALITIES?
A Brazilian wargaming friend of mine was delighted to hear that I had plunged into the resin printing game. He bombarded me with a series of questions and sadly I had to put him straight on several things. He had harboured hopes of being able to watch resin soldiers come off the production line as he got on with his work in his office. I wouldn’t recommend it... I’m sure that hot plastic smells: my hot glue gun certainly does after it’s been in action for a little while. I can assure you however that the resin really smells and is very messy. I opted for what I thought would be a fairly neat arrangement with two machines doing complementary jobs and all neatly enclosed in see through orange hoods. It still makes a dreadful mess. I’m sure the resin is not quite as carcinogenic as some people like to make out but be careful, wear a mask and have decent disposable gloves. You’ll also need a lot of rubbing alcohol also known as IPA (isopropyl alcohol). You will need plenty of paper towels, cloths and scrapers to clean up after yourself.
Assume we’ve got to the bit where your file is on a thumb drive and you have inserted it into the side of the printer. The first thing we do is to fill the vat with resin. There are cleverly positioned marks to show you how much you should put in. The last thing you want is for the resin to seep out and cover your printer. In my case I have to replace the lid before my printer will do anything – but once I’ve done this – I just simply tell it which file to print and it tells me how long that will take. It does pay to fill your printing plate with this much stuff as you can. If for example a particular figure has 1400 layers it will probably take up to three hours to see the fruits of your labour. It takes exactly the same amount of time to print one figure as it does to print a plateful of figures. The print time is all about the number of layers rather than the size of those layers.
When the figure is finally printed it will be wet with resin. The first thing you need to do is to dunk it in isopropyl alcohol. This removes the tackiness and allows you to tackle the tedious problem of removing all of the supporting sprues. That probably needs a little bit of explanation. If your figure has anything sticking out – a gun, an arm or even a nose – and there is nothing immediately below it to hold it up, it will not print. So each little thing that sticks out has to have a sprue or support to hold it up. You don’t need to worry too much about this because your printer software should do it all for you.
But what it does mean is that you have to remove all of these sprues before going any further. I reasonably assumed that my new resin creation was too fragile to handle before I cured it. This was a big mistake. Straight out of the printer and cleaned, the resin supports can be snipped off. What had not occurred to me was that – what appeared to be a base underneath the figure – was in fact part of the supports. You can see this clearly when you look at the 3D images of the figure: they don’t have bases (or at least most of them don’t).
SNIP, SNIP, SNIP...
So: time to lose the supports. Hold the figure in your gloved hand and snip them away. I found that dunking the figure in clean water at this stage was a good optional process. It removed any little shards of resin that were loose on the figure and took away any last drips of IPA. You need quite a bit of patience and a decent pair of side-clippers to get rid of the supports. You will have casualties (my finger tips for one) as the resin is not very forgiving and will sheer off or snap if you don’t pay attention. A drop of superglue should do the trick to refit severed limbs. I was supplied with clear resin: no problem I thought, I’ll be painting the models anyway. The downside of clear resin is that it is difficult to see where the model finishes and the support begins: no wonder the default choice for most people is grey resin.
You now have a clean 3D print. If you are fortunate enough to live in sunny climes then you just need to leave the prints outside to catch the rays. Living in the UK a curing station was the only option and for little more than £100 it was worth the expense. You drop the figures into what looks like a chip frying basket and submerge it into the alcohol. The machine has a clever little propeller at the bottom of the container and whizzes around creating a vortex and washes the residual wet resin off the figure. Next up you remove the container from the machine, dry off the figures and then place them on a plinth. This plinth rotates and the LED array cures and hardens the resin. As a probably unnecessary step I left the prints on the window sill for a day or two and it certainly did help to continue the curing process.
ONGOING COSTS & COMMITMENTS
Although you will be paying a fraction of the costs of metal figure or a commercially cast or printed resin figure, there are ongoing costs that you will need to factor into your purchasing
decisions. For day to day printing you will need PPE (those gloves, mask and protective glasses I mentioned). I’ve splashed the resin all over my hands and (so far) I have not had any ill-effects. You will also need to routinely replace your IPA. After a few major printing sessions the alcohol will begin to look cloudy. I took this to mean that my alcohol needed to be replaced. One thing I stopped doing was to clean the printing plate in my container of IPA. It is much more efficient – and cleaner – to dunk a cloth in the alcohol and wipe it clean. I would suggest buying the IPA in large five litre containers and always have a reserve on hand. It will also pay you to buy a funnel and filter to use when you pour the unused resin from the vat back into the resin bottle. Pouring it without a funnel is the quickest way to cover your work surface in resin...
There are potentially some longer term costs. At some point the LED printer array underneath the VAT will burn out or fail. I’m not sure how long or how many prints you will get before this happens. It may well be that it is cheaper to purchase a new printer than buy the necessary components to replace the array yourself. Another element of the printer that will need replacing at some point is the clear plastic sheet at the bottom of the vat; no doubt it will eventually cloud over and reduce the effectiveness of the LED display beneath it.
CONCLUSIONS & LESSONS LEARNED
If you have a suitable place to put a 3D printer then potentially the purchase will add a new dimension to your wargaming experience. It should free you from some of the financial constraints of starting a brand new project. I do suspect (and I include myself in this) that the 3D printer will give me carte blanche to print off far too many figures and create a new resin mountain to add to my existing plastic and metal ones. There is an enormous sense of achievement (even though you’ve not necessarily done very much yourself) in seeing a 3D printed figure coming off the production line.
To some extent you have to be in the mood to set the printer running: it’s a bit like being constantly aware of a baby monitor or an imminent delivery: you can’t really just walk away and forget it. There is a lot of faffing about, mess and smell to contend with and with three hours or more for each print project to complete, you will need something else to keep you occupied. I have got into the habit of printing all day so I only have to clean everything once after a long print session.
Another thing to bear in mind is that resin is extremely unforgiving. If you drop a resin figure onto a hard surface it will shatter. A metal figure might bend and a plastic figure might snap, but both of these can be mended. A shattered resin figure will be lost for good.
NEXT STEPS
Join a Facebook group such as 3D Printing Miniatures and Terrain and see what other people are doing and buying and how they handle problems with their printers. Have a good look at what is available, much of it for free from, cults3d.com, thingiverse. com, cgtrader.com, myminifactory.com and stlfinder.com. Check out Patreon ( patreon. com) and look for designers in the RPG, Board and Tabletop Games section. Each of the designers will show you what they have created and give you advice about the sort of machine you will need to print their figures and terrain.
Just like taking the plunge to finally buying a new desktop computer, laptop, or mobile phone deciding which 3D printer to buy and when to do so is never going to be an exact science. 3D printer technology will constantly be on the move, but it’s worth dipping at least your foot into this side of the hobby. It is very different from any other part of wargaming. Those of you that may have dabbled in the past with drop cast lead soldiers, Hirst Arts or Linka moulds, smart plastic moulds for Green Stuff Castings or even slapping liquid rubber over a terrain piece to make your own plaster moulds will see parallels in 3D printing. Some aspects might require a little skill and patience and it is certainly as messy.
Mercifully some aspects that might have presented too steep a learning curve have been curtailed by decent software. The Photon software was quite intuitive, it took me two failed attempts to realise I had to “slice” the model for the printer to understand what it needed to do. This simply means re-saving the model in a different file format. The software can also handle support creation too, but many of the paid-for models come ready supported. Seek out Anycubic’s Youtube channel: I did.
As to whether the resin printer will end up unplugged, unused and in a cardboard box in the garage in a year... who knows? I am pleased that I opted for a resin printer as my first foray into 3D printing; I suspect that it won’t be long before it is joined by an FDM one. ■