So I got a resin 3D printer too

Before a few weeks ago I had two 3D printers, both of the FDM type. I mostly print terrain items on them but have recently used the printers to test print some figures (the dwarves in this post). This did not turn out particularly well, as I needed to replace most of the weapons with plastic ones from my bits box because they broke off by just looking at them.

The general consensus on 3D printing for actual miniatures is to use a resin printer (i.e. an SLA one). So, when an ad popped up for a discounted Anycubic Photon S printer, I decided to take the plunge and expand my 3D printing factory with this printer.

Without further ado, because that's what most readers will be interested in, here's the first results out of it:

 

There's two versions of Ferdy Hogglefoot, my character for a possible Adventures in Middle Earth RPG campaign, and a print of one of the same dwarves that featured in the earlier post. The left most figure is printed in a new resin I just bought (a water washable one, to avoid having to dick around with various alcohols), the other two are printed in the standard resin that comes with the printer. The leftmost figure is generated on Heroforge, the central one is one I bought of a designer on MyMiniFactory and the dwarf is from a free pack by Kyoushuneko Miniatures. And yes, the leftmost figure appears to be overexposed (evidenced by the 'mushy' level of detail) - I'm still dialing in settings for the new resin :)

So, what are my first impressions of printing with a resin printer?

• They're less fiddly than an FDM printer. My experience is that prints either fail completely or succeed, and the number of slicer settings you have to tweak to get from failing to successful print is mercifully less than on an FDM printer
• They are messier than an FDM printer. Getting the excess resin of the figures (whether with alcohol or water) and draining the resin tank is just messy.
• The resin is a lot less toxic than I had thought before reading the internet. Yes, it smells, and yes, they give you gloves, but the resin bottles do not have a single hazard icon (the flammable or toxic icons) nor any P-sentence (like 'Dangerous if ingested') so they are a lot more benign than I thought. I'm not going to be drinking the resin, but I don't need to be paranoid about handling it
• The results are sturdier than an FDM printed figure. This depends a bit on your settings and orientation when printing using an FDM printer, but the axe hafts of the dwarf are a lot stronger than his FDM printed cousin (though probably not as strong as said cousin's plastic weapons)

I look forward to printing a lot more figures on (although 'in' is a more appropriate preposition) this printer. Or at least, spending a lot more money on STL Kickstarters and Patreons :D .