3D Printing Wargaming Miniatures - Anycubic Photon

so this here is the any cubic photon and it's a 3d printer it's an SLA printer to be exact which means that rather than heating up a filament to lay down layers on plastic it instead uses UV reactive resin to create a 3d object at the bottom is a reservoir of resin and below that is a UV emitting LCD screen which cures the model in layers and the model or removed upwards after each layer cures to cure the next and I've been using this printer over the last few weeks to create some miniatures miniatures like these ones here which I have printed and painted up and in this video I'll be talking about the steps I took to get to the stage and discussing whether or not I think 3d printing miniatures is worth it so let's go back to the printer again as I said this is an any cubic photon and for full disclosure this was sent to me by any cubic for a review and who am I to turn down the opportunity to print out my own dead animal bits now when it did arrive all I needed to do was to take it out of the box remove the protective packaging attach a handle and the plate and plug the thing in that was it no flat plaque and so no construction however before I could jump in and start printing I needed to level the plate which is that metallic blue upside-down trapezoid thing at the top the leveling ensures of the plates it's parallel against the see-through bottom of the reservoir and that the first and most important layer cures properly getting this right is a very important first step now I had a hard time using the printer paper method that the any cubic photon instructions recommend entire found the Flint read leveling method which involves leveling with the reservoir in place now I'm not sure what any cubics opinion on this particular leveling process is but I find it the most helpful and easiest for myself and that is a thought shared by many people who use this now I'm going to detail on what that entails but I will include links to some videos that do outline the steps to take and those in the description below so now your plate is leveled and you're ready to get the resin but before you do you'll need PPE which means a mask gloves and some eye protection now the set does come with a mask itself buts you will need to provide your own gloves and eye protection I'll just use my own mask here now this is because uncured resin is pretty nasty stuff and you don't want to be breathing it in getting on your hands or in your eyes or even on your clothes so we're set of cautions and work in well-ventilated areas with the rather than protection and also stay out of direct sunlight because that will prematurely cure your resin now you also notice I've sat my photon in a cardboard box this isn't entirely necessary but it will just protect the surface I'm working on should I spill the resin or should something go horribly horribly wrong once you're set you can go ahead and pour in your resin to the reservoir the photon comes with 500 milliliters of clear green resin which is what I'm using here but there are a whole bunch of other colors and types available now if I wonder Mill might not seem like loads but miniatures require only a very small amount so one bottle will go a lot further than you expect so when you're filling that reservoir you only need to fill your VAT up to about a third of the way now this is important because overfilling will cause a resin to spill out when the plate is submerged don't go crazy here unless you want a nasty mess to clean up so once you've filled you can go ahead and close your cover and remove your PPE now that our printer is ready to go we just need some miniatures to print now there are a whole ton of files outlet print but I'm mainly going to be focusing on miniature wargaming related items so the first port of call is Thingiverse which has a whole bunch of familiar looking items of course if you know the right search terms these are all freely available but if there are particular craters out there you like it's always good to support your favorite creators however the best and most comprehensive range of models that I found does come with a price tag albeit a relatively small one there are a whole bunch of patrons out there which will provide you with a pack of files monthly in exchange for a fee just like amble industries Digital Forge which I've used one of the models are alternatively you have creators like to make a call to have both patrons and individual files available to purchase as well now these files are downloaded as dot STL file types which I'll cover in a minute and once you have these files you can print with them as many times as you want I mean imagine if buying a model kit I'll allow just go back to the shop and pick up another one for free at any time that's essentially what 3d printing allows for now once you've acquired an STL you will need to do a couple of things with it before you can begin printing first you will need to add supports because your model is printed from the bottom up you need to make sure that any overhangs are supported otherwise you're finished miniature will have bits missing this is an extremely important step now some pilot files do come pre support it which is great but others don't which means you need to add your own now the any cubic photon comes with some software that allows you to support and slice your models but personally I've been using software like Prusa slicer here I can import my STL's into the software and use its auto orientation and auto support features which best work out what needs support and adds the supports accordingly this has worked really well for me so far and I'd highly recommend checking it out now once your model has support you can save it as an STL once again but Estelle's themselves can't be printed on your printer you need to slice them first again any cubic has software for this but I've been using cheetah box instead here you import your supported STL's you set up the relevant settings for your printer the any cubic photon in my case and adjust the print settings based on the quality and the type of resin you're using now this can be a bit overwhelming and this is often where failed prints are caused however there is a great resource for working out the right settings which are lighted option below and that caused loads of different printer types and loads of different resin types as well no so what you have your file set you can then slice your model this is done by the software and it basically converts the model into a series of layers do your printer could endure stand it will also give you the estimated print time cost of the resin and a dot photon file which is what your printer will read all you need to do then is to copy the slice file a dot photon file onto a thumb drive and stick it into the USB slot of your printer and with that all you need to do then is to select print and choose the file you want to print out from here you can step back and come back in eight hours seriously these things take a long time and these are only fairly small prints as well so once your print is complete and provided it hasn't failed which often can you should be left with an upside down models stuck to your plate dripping uncured resin so don your PPE once again and remove the plate but keep plenty of paper towels to hand for this bit as it can get very messy you will need to chip your resin off your plates for this next bit the photon does come with a small plastic scraper but a sharp metal one like this will give you a much finer edge and make it easy to remove them keep the scraper as flat against the plate as possible and with a short shop push the model should pop off these miniatures still have uncured resin on them which will need to be cleaned off you can use isopropyl alcohol or IPA for this fill a top like the one I have here and drop your models in it let them sit for a while to allow the resin to wash off now this particular table is pretty cool because of this little tray insert that you can just pull up to get the models out without having to dip your fingers into the alcohol now once removed allow the alcohol on the models to evaporate so currently the resin of your models still won't be fully cured which means it will still be slightly soft and can potentially be damaged because the resin is UV sensitive you can either the the model out in the Sun for a few minutes or if you live in England you can use one of these UV nail lights that you can pick up on Amazon this will hard in the model and allow us to work with it so now we have a model that has been cleaned and cured but still has the supports attached to it now most of these supports are fairly loosely attached that can be removed your fingers but using some clippers will give you some finer control with these removed you might need to do a filing down of some surfaces where the supports are attached or why the ridges might have formed because of the printing process again do you wear a mask for this because resin dust is pretty bad for you if you're familiar with working with resin miniatures then all this kind of process won't be at all unfamiliar to you and you can pretty much use the same tools and techniques then once you're prepped you can prime and paint your models as normal which should leave you with something that looks like this now this miniature is a ranger captain from the anvil industry digital Forge patreon as you can see the quality is fantastic and it's something that really did surprise me about 3d printing I kind of had in my heart mind that it was a little bit soft as a little bit layered it didn't have quite the same kind of quality as regular miniatures but this kind of detail is definitely something you would easily expect to see on resin miniatures purchase from proper miniature manufacturers now there's also something extremely satisfying about printing your own minis and knowing that you start off with a bottle of liquid resin and end up with something physical and tangible it's kind of addictive you want to keep printing and improving the quality of little tweaks and changes and you just kind of keep going at it and keep trying to print off more and more elaborate stuff now the make sure you saw me print on the printer is this one here from the makers Court as you can see even the slightly smaller miniatures with finer details come out looking good - but 3d printing isn't all sunshine and daisies let's talk about some of the drawbacks so first of all I had a whole bunch of failed prints before I got my head around what the problem was often you don't realize your printers failed until it's completed and you've wasted several hour you then need to clean out your resin and start all over again not being entirely sure that you solve the problem until your next print finishes now this can be extremely frustrating I did come very close to giving up with it but when your first print finally succeeds it feels great and it'll just spur you want to do more and more now there is the other elephant in the room and that is the time which for the most part is fine because you could just set one of these off overnight and in the morning you've got yourself a few brand new models but the printer isn't entirely silent which means unless you have an outside building or a particularly dense walls you will be able to hear the printer running in the next room which can cause problems with neighbours or your partners so is 3d printing miniatures worth it most definitely it's an upfront investment guessing yourself kitted out with the printer the extra bits and the files will require a good investment of cash and time to start off with but once you're up and running you can be printing off entire armies at your own pace there are of course limits resin is still trickier to work with them plastic and there is also still a lot of prep required to get your niches ready for painting but the selection of miniatures available as STL's is growing day by day and the quality of these is improving too so if you're looking to add some cool designs to your collection or build completely new collections and 3d printing is definitely worth getting on board with as I mentioned earlier the printer I used here is the any cubic photon and whilst I didn't really review this in particular this is the first 3d printer I'll ever use so it's very hard to compare it with anything else but to be honest I've actually found it really easy to work with the the problems that I had weren't really down to the printer itself but more just 3d printing in general so if you want to kind of get started with 3d printing it's actually a really good one to get started with it was very set up and the price point is really quite reasonable as well and you can find a link to it in the description below I also include all the useful resources settings and videos that I came across when getting to grips with 3d printing and do expect to see much more 3d printing content in the future so all surfaces thanks for watching and good bye

Channel: Pete The Wargamer

Views: 98,377

Keywords: Wargaming, Miniatures, Warhammer, Games Workshop, Tabletop, Tutorial, Guide, How To, 3D Printed Warhamer, 3D Printing, Anycubic Photon, Anvil Industry, Makers Cult, 3D Printing Wargaming, 3D Printing Warhammer, 3D Printing Miniatures, Chitubox, Prusa Slicer, 3D Printed Space Marines, SLA Printing, Resin Printing

Id: rAUCfU-i0yI

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020