I bought an Anycubic Mono X 6k and never looked back.. great quality, great value particularly compared to what I used to spend on GW.. it's not idiot proof and you need to dedicate a nice bit of time learning the machine, how to calibrate it, getting a work flow going, and understanding how resin and it's different types work but it's mostly smooth sailing from there. I'll never look back, 3d printing has really been the best investment I've made in my hobby in years.
Yeah once you spend some time getting all those things sorted and you learn them, it’s a very rewarding process. For me, I’ve expanded what I paint because there are so many incredible sets that are so accessible and I love it.
I got mines a few months ago and I'm starting to learn how to use it..but I wasn't sure how much to buy for printing. I'm nervous but excited to make things
I found a got about 100 regular sized minis out of my first bottle. I don't worry about the supports, they're as much a part of getting a quality model as the resin used in the sculpt itself. You start trying to skimp there and you'll get lesser results, and just one failed mini's worth of resin can make a lot of supports.
Yeah they are super important. There have been a few things I’ve looked at and considered not adding as many supports, but like you said, a failed print ends up wasting so much resin anyway it’s just not worth it.
I've never kept track lol, I buy 10x 1000mg Bottles and replenish stock when I get down to two. I'm a novice and only print table top miniatures. Don't really print anything else on the printer but this video does help on knowing potential limits. Great vid.
It really depends on the resin you use. When I started I used the standard Elegoo resin and I would often over cure the models which made them really brittle and fragile. However I’ve switched to Elegoo ABS resin which is much more flexible and my minis are no longer stupidly fragile. They’ve survived drops and my children messing about with them.
My absolute fav at the moment is Elegoo ABS Like Resin. I've been using it for months now and found that I get a good amount of flex and durability, even on the more fragile minis. Previously, I only printed more chunky minis because the others would often snap, but now I'm not having those issues. I do need to try mixing it up with other resins to see if I can get even more durability, but right now it's great out of the bottle.
I normally always use supports, even on things that are relatively flat. If nothing else it lifts it from the build plate so you’re not damaging it as you pry it off.
Out of two botles of 1kg each with some supports and a fair bit remmaining i printed 20 dwarf pirate slayers 21 dwarf ranges 28 dwarf hammerers 24 greatswrodsmen 15 normal slayers 5 empire minis but on individual bits (takes more than one chunk model but its basically like a plastic set of bits) 12 empire knigths (same as above they where in bits) 30 dwarf warriors 11 dwarf miners 10 dwarf crossbowmen 1 anvil of doom 3 dwarf characters 1 human character 2 warchamines with crew All i can say is that dwarfs are extremelly good in 3d printing they take less time they cost less presin per mini and theyr armies tend to be low model count so is you print small-meidum things you can safely sit at around 90-100 minis per bottle
Thanks for making this! I'm just looking at getting into 3D printing, and these kind of videos are super helpful! Do you find the cure-station to be a worthwhile investment too?
@DashingSwordsman I have 2 wash and cure machines, an Anycubic Wash and Cure 2.0 amd the Wash and Cure plus.. I think they are indispensable in so far as they make 3d printing so much cleaner and faster.. less mess, less headache. I wouldn't even think about printing without it. I bought my first machine a few years back and hated it due to the clean up and curing process before these machines were available cheaply.. I don't hate the process anymore with them.
Still really like it. I've gone through about 3-4 bottles now and had no issues and the smell isn't actually too noticeable after a while. They durability is a massive win and I've printed off a lot of small/delicate models and had no issues.
I've wondered the same thing, especially when printing large amounts it can seem like a lot goes to waste. Maybe a quarter at an absolute guess. Next time I open a fresh bottle I'll keep all the supports to and weigh it to get a better idea!
Not an expert here but it’s one of the reasons I tend to cover creators who are making their own thing. There are a lot of places out there that make almost identical stuff from the big brands, but I enjoy finding places that put their own spin on it. It’s definitely a bit of a minefield though!
My brother charged me $5 for a grey knights strike squad and $6 for a brotherhood Terminator squad and then included the cost for the heads from a different set the Horus heresy space wolves cyber wolf helmet upgrade sprue But I had to move the flash drive into the printer I had to remove them from the print bed I had to wash them and then I had to cure them myself using his stuff but well worth it 😊 17 bucks for three more five man squads a purifier squad another Terminator squad and interceptor squad Although my brother only spends like 40/50 bucks on a bottle of resin and yes I realize I'm basically spending a buck a mini but compared to GW prices I will gladly pay that price and then when I get my new job I'm going to get a cheap laptop about 200 USD and a 8K printer Anna cure station and I'm going to start printing my own and have an entire 2000 point army of grey knights sisters of battle iron warriors that are designed to look like loyalists and tyranids and after that I'll see about start working on custom gundam model parts using a simple 3D modeling software
It drives me nuts when I see this type of video and get a figure based on the volume of resin you used. Points to you for noting additional costs like cleaning material and electricity but you still skipped two particular costs in this process. One, those bases and trays did not just magically appear and they were not printed so you had to buy them. Nor did the files that you loaded into the printer, or did you create those files yourself? You also forgot that there are two other machines that are involved in the process, or at least every other resin printer said they used a machine with UV light to cure the minis and a machine that was involved in cleaning the resin. How much was the collective cost for those machines? What is their life span and will there be software upgrades to be paid for. Storage space and cleaning and fails. So in my estimate there will be daylight between your 40p and the actual cost.
Fair enough, I see where you’re coming from, but this isn’t about cost, it was just a rough idea of how many models you can get from a single bottle. Plus as I said during the video there are other costs to be considered. You make a lot of fair points that all should be taken into consideration by people looking at these things.
When working out the cost of manufacturing anything there are two types of cost to consider. There are the variable costs which is the cost accountant's way of saying the incremental cost of producing each miniature. So, this would include the cost of resin, the cost of electricity, the cost of solvents to clean, the cost of labour (to do the actual manufacturing), the cost of the bases, the cost of paint, the cost of anything else that might be consumed (packaging, storage, and other costs you probably do not need to consider. You probably should at least acknowledge the cost of your time; this is an opportunity cost at the very least as you could be doing something else that could earn you some money. The next thing are the tricky ones you have not done such a good job of tracking. Although you do not need to by a mould like GW you do need to obtain a file this is an example of a fixed cost in other words it is the same if you mould lots or none - that is why it is fixed. So, the intellectual property, the moulding machine, wash station, UV curing station and the place you use (I guess not a building, but you could use that room for something else I guess). Again, you will not have some of the costs of GW, like all the costs of sales, advertising, research and development, etc. Oh, and finally there is the efficiency of your process. Those scrap figures are also costing something as is all the waste sprues and the resin that gets wasted in other ways like washed off, mopped up or simply ending up as a gunk at the bottom of the bottle. Yes, you can guess that I did some business management in a previous life. I think however, people need to bear in mind all these factors before thinking how cheap 3D moulding is. The worst thing of course is buying the kit and then never using it - that means each figure is infinitely expensive! For what it is worth I think the best way to work out how much is made from 1kg of resin is to weigh the figures and work out the efficiency, which with scrap, sprues, etc is probably around 70%? Then you can say this model weighs 10g so that is 10/0.7 = ~14g @3.2p /g = 46p for each 10g moulding just for resin. I know you are limiting the scope to just how much we can make from one bottle of resin, but my fear is focusing only on the resin and getting people to think it is the only cost is rather misleading. Still it obviously was a good video or I would not have taken the time to write all this with the probability that it will be ignored or vilified.
