An A1 Mini requires a smaller nozzle, a customized profile, specific filament, and quite a bit of work in Blender and the slicer to successfully print 32mm figures (approx. 1/56 scale). Even those larger figures aren't anywhere as good as the quality of injection molding you get from a Games Workshop, Archon Studio, Wargames Atlantic or Bandai kit. You typically need an SLA printer for that - which requires PPE and ventilation due to the hazardous materials.
I don't think my A1 Mini would have success trying to print at 1/72 at the same detail as an injection molding process. I've done 28mm figures on it, but it was a lot of work and had a high failure rate.
A bit besides the point, but an FDM printer is definitely not good enough to reproduce these somewhat convincingly. That being said, a cheap-ish resin printer will probably do the job, and they are generally in the same price range.
Please don't resin print at home, especially if you have kids, unless you really know what you are doing. And by that I mean professional experience handling hazardous materials and provisioning a work environment for them.
The internet is rife with influencer content that makes these look OK and "not that dangerous", along with people who want to believe that rather than face buyer's remorse.
It's more dangerous than you think. It's messier than you think. The process steps are more ennui than you think. If you don't respect it you will make unsafe mistakes out of lack of knowledge, or impatience, or lazyness.
This shouldn't really be consumer gear. You can also fuck up on health and safety with FDM printers, but the default beginner lane (printing PLA in common colors) is a lot less risky on zero knowledge entry.
I agree. Kids or animals. Specially dogs that are mindless brutes.
I've been 3d printing with resin for a long time before I had my dog. Now I don't do it, unless I can be sure that I can have the dog out my printing room for several days straight, for the water-washable resin to solidify on the sun after usage, and all the different after-print steps that have to be taken care of.
It's also annoying to clean the plate, and deal with the resin bottles when you stop using them. There's no easily accessible infrastructure to dispose of the waste from the printing process so if you become lazy, you end up creating toxic hazards for anyone in the community. Not a good outcome at all.
Still, safe 3d printing brings me a lot of joy, specially to prepare board games sessions with friends and neighbours. Printing, painting, etc. You just have to be responsible and civic and do the right thing.
There's a safe way to handle this stuff, but you have to be very disciplined about it. Animals and kids complicate that big time.
For hardcore army man enthusiasts, FDM printing will never satisfy their standards.
For my kids, swapping a 0.2mm nozzle into the printer, setting layer height to sub-0.1mm, and reducing print speed to 50% produces surprisingly good results.
Well said. I’m often nonplussed at these calculations of some fairly high hourly rate that we seemingly all should be able to command at will at anytime in unlimited supply. Well, I can’t.
If you would otherwise be doing anything with positive expected utility in that time, the opportunity cost is >$0.
The fact that the analysis can be carried out in monetary units (because we don't have a good direct measure of utility) doesn't mean that receiving money itself is the only source of utility that needs to be considered.
Most of the time my time spend operating my A1 Mini is... maybe 2-3 minutes per plate? Drag and drop into Bambu Studio, run the slicer, send the job to the printer, come back in 4 hours and grab my prints. I might need to break off the supports and clean them up - but with an injection molded kit I'd be snipping the sprues, cleaning up mold lines with a knife and gluing the models together anyway.
The commericial overhead rate for an SLA printer is about $5 a plate - the washing and curing steps can be largely automated, or even if they are done manually, it's not that much work.
People who 3D print as a hobby often derive enjoyment from time spent on the printing process. It’s another layer of hobby on top of the hobbies you’re printing
Yeah a lot of my friends legitimately enjoy the art of making or modifying models in Blender, and the science of testing different print profiles, materials and processes.
Well you can get a roll of PLA for 10€, which is 1kg. I'm not sure how big these sets are but the material cost per unit is basically zero for things this small.
Valid question if you haven’t been in 3D printing. Also depends heavily on the country.
In the US, it’s common to get quality generic PLA for $15 per kg. Buy several spools at once in a package deal and the price can fall to $11-12 per kg. Wait for a sale and buy a 10-pack and I’ve been getting PLA under $10 per kg. It’s very cheap.
For toys I’d prefer to spend a little more on PLA Pro or Plus, which means it has modifiers added for better impact resistance. This helps a lot with small toys I print for the kids.
At 22mm scale the cost of filament is basically negligible (literally pennies), but yes, you would have to either buy STL files or make them yourself in Blender.
> At 22mm scale the cost of filament is basically negligible (literally pennies)
Even assuming no losses, just by volume, something like $0.10 per figure, and packs of 1/72 scale figures that retail for $20 are often a 20-50 figures.
Most people I know buy STL files from MyMiniFactory because the cost of the STLs is already a tiny fraction of the price of buying models at the local store. We spend more on the paint to paint the figures than we do on the digital files. We also like supporting the artists - they often have cheap subscription based models where you get access new files, plus their back catalog if you stay subscribed for a certain period of time or at certain tiers.
Often the artists are solo artists that you can, like, hang out with on Discord and chat directly with.
The exception might be Russia, there's a big 40K hobby there and they're cut off from buying stuff due to sanctions and the terrible state of the economy.
A plastic soldier set is on the order of $20, and collectors will often purchase dozens.
A Bambu A1 mini (which is sufficient for the level of detail needed for these figurines) is about $200, which breaks even after 10 sets.