Ultimate Guide to 3D printing

as 3D printing becomes a bigger part of the miniature and wargaming hobby more and more people are interested in the tool this video will be the ultimate guide to get you started with 3D printing what type of printer should you get what other tools do you need how do you print your first miniature what softwares are used to slice your Miniatures and what even is slicing well don't worry we got your cover the first thing you need to figure out what am I printing there is a couple of different types of 3D printers the two most common in the miniature hobby is fdm printers and resin printers they are both great but at very different things the fdm printer is your go-to printer if you are printing larger items as the fdm printer tends to have a much larger build volume this might be things like large terrain pieces measurement gouches command Point counters or card boxes for your board games but they're also great for printing larger cosplay items the printer Works similarly to a hot glue gun the machine has a hot head that melts these spools of plastic as the head or the build plate moves around printing your item layer by layer until it's built up exactly what the print software has been told to print in our office we got the quiddy xmax and mainly use to print with pla plastic as it's in our opinion the easiest plastic to print with the printer is getting a few years old but it's still holding up really really well we've used it for a ton of terrain card holders and other cool stuff the main thing to consider with this type of printer is that you are going to get visible layers no matter how well you calibrate the settings this is a factor to your prints so it will never be amazing for really small prints such as Miniatures you can reduce these of of course by using calibrating tools and mastering the slicing software for your printer and the filament you're using or if you have a ton of time you can use sanding and fillers no no don't do it but if you're watching this video the main thing you're interested in is probably resin 3D printers because these are amazing at fine detailed prints so for Miniatures this is obviously the way without getting too technical you have a vat at the bottom of the printer that you fill with a UV durable resin that the machine then turns into hard plastic by shining UV light into the resin and most of these machine are designed in that way that the light comes from below and you have a build plate slowly rising and with that then printing layer by layer until you have a finished miniature and after 3D printing for over 4 years this still feels like magic to me and because this is what most of you are interested in this is what the main focus of the video is going to be from here on and one thing to note whichever 3D printer you you end up buying whether it's the fdm printer or the resin printer 3D printing is its own hobby that requires a lot of time and knowledge probably as much time as you have to spend to learn your new warhamer codec or learn how to paint a different technique and even if these printers have over the past 3 years improved a ton become easier to use and fail less prepare yourself for a ton of frustration when you finally have something wrong with your printer or you have a failed print the first and obvious one is a 3D printer most 3D printers sold today come with pretty much all the tools you need to get started outside of resin maybe when you buy an fdm printer you get all the tools the glues the oils and the wrenches you need to get started but you're going to have to buy filament to be able to print the things you want to print and the same thing goes for resin printers you get all the tools the filters you need to clean the rest in an FP gloves and a mask usually it's just a getting started kit so you might have to pick up more of the protective gear but you have everything you need to start rolling there is however more to the story because once the print is finished the miniature itself isn't ready to be painted directly you're going to need some form of cleaning station curing station and those require their own topic and we're going to cover that in just a bit you're also going to need space and how much space you need totally depends on which printer and what type of printer you're getting one thing they both have in common is that they work best under control controlled temperatures and this has a bigger impact on quality than you think the fdm printers often require it to be a bit warmer in the room than say normal room temperature which is why a lot of the modern more expensive printers come with their own sort of printing Booth already built into the machine to keep the temperature warm at all times and having a resin printer in below room temperature is going to cause a lot of trouble you're going to have failed prints the prints are going to fall off your build plates and that is just to mention a few things so having a resin printer in say a poorly isolated Garage in the winter is not going to do you any favors it is also important to note that both these printers work with plastic one melts plastic to build up your miniature and the other one UV hardens a liquid plastic and in the process creating all kinds of toxins and from what I know there are no long running studies from having 3D printers in your home and I would really recommend you to have a 3D printer in a dedicated room that is really well ventilated because you do not want to risk your health for a couple of 3D printed Miniatures you've only got two lungs and microplastics are probably not good for you if you want to learn more about vocc levels from different types of resins Electro sync did a great video where he covers it in a way more scientifical matter than I could ever do so check out that video but in general just be careful and have a good filter mask and whenever you're handling the resin or the resin printers make sure you have gloves on so you don't get any of this on your hands because resin can cause Burns and reactions to your skin and hopefully I don't have to say this keep it away from your kids and pets please for the love of God don't go onto Amazon and search for a 3D printer and buy the one with the highest reviews because many of these printers are years old and whatever technology was best 4 years ago is definitely not what is best today instead if you want to buy a 3D printer and you watch this video say a year from now I would go to a 3D printing group that is dedicated to the stuff that I want to print so maybe it's the Facebook group 3D printing with 3D printing Pro or 3D printing Miniatures and terrain or maybe go to a local group like 3D printing Sweden and ask experienced printers based on what you're going to use your printer for which one is the best within your budget there are many experienced makers that will happily help you get the print that perfectly fits your needs [Music] today we'll be showing you how we set up the hay gears 3D printing system and their printer reflex is perfect for people that are looking for a reliable highquality printer especially if you're doing small batch production of Miniatures with as little issues as possible or if you're a beginner that just want an easy setup but maybe you're on a budget and in that case maybe the Frozen 8K Mini S is the ultimate option but again 6 months from now that might not be the case so please keep yourself updated and ask around do your own research and you'll find the perfect printer for yourself you also need to figure out which resin will work best for you one thing to keep in mind is generally with resin you get what you pay for a better more expensive resin will definitely get you a much much more better result but expensive isn't everything because some 3D printable resins are perfectly adjusted to the wavelength of the UV light at the 3D printer emits meaning that you'll have higher quality print if you use the same resin brand as you use 3D printer brand some resins are also more expensive because they have a very Niche use like poopol nylon tough that is made to withstand more stress and is more flexible but the detail quality will not be the same as the haar resin with the haar printer or the Frozen 8K resin on the Frozen printer and some resins that are more expensive like the water washable ones are more brittle meaning that even if it's a decent resin might not be the perfect one for a beginner there are truly all sorts of resins but keep that in mind when you start looking for a printer and then resing for that [Music] printer another thing to keep in mind is they all come in different resolutions and resolutions is far from everything for one if you have two completely different 3D printers with the exact same resolution 8K but one has a a much larger build plate and the other one has a much smaller build plate the pixel density of the smaller build plate will be much much higher but there's also the quality of light and printer stability the less the printer shakes and the higher quality the light is the more sharpness you will have on your minis so today I wouldn't recommend to focus too much on the resolution of the printers because most of them have a high enough resolution I would rather instead check on the print quality that it outputs and the build quality that the printer has [Music] you also need some form of cleaning setup and a curing setup the most common cleaning solution is this isopropyl alcohol from here on it will be known as ISO you also need some protective gears mainly nital gloves but you can't go wrong with the filter mask and if you've ever wondered why Lucas is so weird it's because he never used this when he was 3D printing and if you can protect yourself even further making sure that they there's no way you get spillage on your arms or face it is never wrong to look like Walter White when you're printing with resing you can easily make a sheep homemade cleaning station by using pickling yards or different glass jars and adding IPA to those and then cleaning them in different steps but your life will be much easier if you can afford a cleaning station I really honestly hate the dress in 3D printing until I got a resting cleaning station it removed probably about 50% of my hate for the 3D printing Hobby but if you can't afford that buying two or three pickled jars or glass jars filling each one of those with IPA making one of these jars the dirty jar and one the middle clean jar and then the last one for the absolute cleanest removal of resin on your meanie the reason why you want to have two or more pickle jars is because ISO is expensive and if you use one of the jars when your Miniatures are really dirty with resin you will not have to replace the dirty alcohol as often as you do if you do everything in just one big jar but make make sure to save the empty plastic containers when you've emptied it because these will be invaluable to store your toxic waste from your 3D printing and as with all of our videos whenever we talk about these items and tools and printers we try to link everything down in the video description or on our website squidmar do.com mostly to Amazon affiliate links so we get a kickback whenever you buy something at no extra cost for you so if there's anything that you wonder about just check the video description or our website and hopefully you'll find it there so to show you guys how easy it is to set up and start with a printer today we just got a printer from hey gears this week's sponsor and I've never used their brand before so it's going to be really interesting to show you guys how easy it actually is to set up a printer and get good prints from the get-go with a new printer as a [Applause] beginner hey St [Music] vacuum sealed build [Music] plate so whenever you're getting a new printer the first thing you do is always read the instructions I think I've opened eight new printers and every time instructions are slightly different so for your own sake so you don't break an expensive machine please read the instructions first this is the vat that goes into the bottom of the 3D printer and on this one we have something called an Fe that is the transparent film that is at the bottom of the printer and this obviously is the part that stops anest him from leaking out anywhere else in the printer or in your house but sometimes these break if you've left some resin bits or anything in here you can potentially have a crack or a hole in the bottom of the FP so whenever we set up our printers we have these shoe protection boxes from Ikea that we have underneath the printer and for bigger printers these might be a little bit too small so you might have to buy like a bigger plastic bin or something but I do not recommend you to have a printer indoors without having that underneath for that once in 10 years when the f heat braks you don't want resing leaking out everywhere in your home so please have something underneath the printer to make sure that you don't have too much res in [Music] we so we've reached a point where we need to level this to the place where it's going to be yeah I've got a heated garage and that's where I keep all the printers so yeah let's just bring it out so normally this garage is quite warm usually it's warmer than we have inside of the studio but since it's one of the coldest days of the year today we have about 17° in here and it's about 5° too cold it's best if you can have around 22 23° C so to fix this problem I've put in a heater in the garage this should bring up the room temperature to about 23 in maybe an hour or two if you don't have a heater like this um you're probably going to have to wait a few days until it gets hotter to get the best possible print [Music] quality [Music] previously I've mentioned that you need a tempered room that is hot enough to print in but I just noticed that this print printer has self-heating which means it is going to increase the temperature inside of this casing and the temperature of the resin to make sure that we can get the best possible print quality I didn't know this printer had that so I'm kind of impressed to be honest okay we have our printer set up we have our setup safe and we are now ready to start printing you are going to need a 3D printable file to get started and there are hundreds of thousands of amazing looking 3D printable files out there ferse is a great website if if you want to have free Miniatures and items and Rain pieces but if you want something more specific or maybe even higher quality I would look around on my mini Factory even if the website is quite horrible with a lot of ads there's a ton of great designers that have their Minis and the signs up on my mini Factory and once you have that 3D print file downloaded you are going to need to slice the miniature for your printer for fdm printing ultimaker Cura is the most popular one but the two most popular for resin printing is is luchy and ch2 box but then we have some printers like the quidd x max that we use or the haar one that we just packed up in this video that have their own software that is designed to work perfectly with their printer but ones that I just mentioned earlier can all be downloaded for free but if you want to have a ton of extra functions and maybe even better supporting systems you can pay a little bit money every month and have an even better slicer so how do we go about making the file printable in for example ly well the first thing we need to do is to find our own printer if we go to the top we can find an icon that says printer we can click there and then just add the printer we're using in this office when we're not using the hear printer we're using the Frozen printers so I'm going to add the Frozen 8K Mini S for this we then want to add the resin we're using and which layer height we're going to use and most printer brands have a preset that you can start working from when you get started and that works perfectly fine this is a great starting point to test print your first model because it gives you a good Baseline on base layers lift speeds and curing time if you want to get nerdy and get into the nitt gritt there's a ton of great exposure tests that you can try out and most of these Benchmark tests are kind of Overkill but they are great especially if you're using cheaper resins or if you're using a resin that isn't made by the same brand as the 3D printer but I wouldn't use these as my first print I would do that after I had gotten comfortable printing a few different minis with a base settings that is included in luchy and as always we got the links to The Benchmark tests down in the video description you now want to drive your 3D printable file into the base plate of the software and this is the first step when you're actually going to have to buckle up and learn a few things for your item to print at all it needs to be in some way connected to the base plate because when the build plate lifts your miniature needs something to adhere to the most common practice is not to place your miniature directly on the build plate instead what you tend to do is to suspend your miniature in midair maybe angled a bit backwards and then add supports to the miniature as well as a base that's connected to the base plate of the printer because if you add the miniature directly on the build plate when you remove it it is super simple to break the miniature so it's better to have the supports connected to the build plate and then the miniature connected to the supports this is also fantastic in that sense that all of the supports that's connected to the miniature will be on the back of the miniature meaning that if you get some marks left over after removing the supports in The Next Step they're not going to be as visible as if they are on the face or the front of your manager thankfully many files that are sold today come pre- supported that makes it super simple for us as consumers and again maybe that removed 25% more of my hate for 3D printing most of these printing softwares are great at Auto supporting your prints however always when you add supports yourself or automatically with software make sure that you don't have any Islands or overhangs these are areas of the miniature that would start printing midair it could be a hand angle downwards that isn't connected to the body in any way or maybe a sword that isn't angled upwards if this part that starts printing midair has no connection or support connected to the base it will just not print at all leaving you with resin stuck to the bottom of your FP if you want to become a master using slicing softwares 3D printing pro has made an amazing series showing you everything you need to know about 3D printing in the software phase again links down below go check it out if you want to get better at that but as I mentioned there are exceptions of these softwares and printer brands that don't utilize slicers in the same ways and one of those is this week's sponsor hey gears they have focused on making a 3D printable ecosystem that works on its own not forced to rely on anything third part is softwares Hardware or resins so instead of putting it on you to research which resin works best with the printer which settings are best with the resin and doing a dozen different printing tests to make sure that it's optimized it's all been done to a crazy high level in their Factory the printers have their own resin that is specially optimized for the UV light that their resin printers have their slicing software does all the hard work for you with supporting and placing it on the printer meaning that you can save time on printing to focus more time on the things that you love in this hobby playing games and painting meis and hayar isn't a new brand they've been around for years making printers mainly focus on the dental and high-end engineering areas and finally started doing printers for us consumers and they really haven't taken any shortcuts when it comes to quality of material to make sure that you have a printing system that is going to last you for a very long time with industrial grade parts so if you buy into their system it's really a h hasslefree process on top of that the quality of the prints is superb we've got the link to their printers down in the video description now let's go on to talking more about how you can make the most from your first prints okay we got our Miniatures in the slicer we have it supported it is now time to export it many new printers are packed with functions such as Wi-Fi so you can digitally transfer the file without having to go to the other room to print your file if it doesn't you can just use a USB State and add it to your printer if you've selected the right printer in the slicing software it will automatically make the file into the exact right file format and it will give you an estimation on how much resin is required to print this file and how long time it's going to take once the print is done it should come out looking something like this unless you've had a failed print in that case your miniature and failed print since goo is probably stuck at the bottom of your printer and you're going to have to clean the vat but that is its own topic that we're going to cover later in this video depending on which cleaning solution you've selected meaning if you have a cleaning station or if you've made your own homemade one you have two different options now if you've got a printer and a cleaning station that is compatible with one another you can just put the build plate into the cleaning station and it's going to clean the Miniatures directly once that is done you can remove the miniature from the build plate using the spatula that was included in the printer purchase from our experience some Miniatures that are printed on some printers and some build plates get stuck like so you might have to use a lot of force to get the miniature loosened from your build plate if you don't have a cleaning station you remove your miniature from the build plate directly after the print is done and then add them to the cleaning buckets as we mentioned earlier if your minis are stuck really hard on the build fate you can use a spray bottle with IPA sometimes that makes it easier to remove the mini from the build plate it is always important to remember that the resin and the clean alcohol can be toxic so always wear gloves when you're cleaning this and if you can use a filter mask and also make sure that after every time you've printed something and cleaned it up that your workstation is clean you can use some IPA to remove any resin that's been on the table or any of the surrounding areas because if the resin hardens with some UV light hitting it you're up for a really bad day and sometimes it's it's nearly impossible to get it removed from a table or the tools you're using when 3D printing we've got more of these Ikea shoe protections spread out on our 3D printing area and try to fill them with magazine papers or just papers to make sure that they stay as clean as possible because it's way easier to replace a magazine paper and to replace all the tools we're used and the cleaning area we've got once the miniature has been cleaned and removed from the build plate it is time for curing but there is two things we need to do before we cure it remove removing the supports from the mini as well as making sure that it's completely dried because if you cure your miniature with the supports still on the miniature it is very likely that you're going to have big marks after you've removed the supports and if you have some liquids or IPA Leftovers on the mini when you cure it you're going to have some glossy areas that is going to remove some of the details of the minis instead the best thing that we do is we boil some water in a water kettle add it to a bin where we then put our Miniatures for a few seconds when you've done this and remove the minis from the hot water you can pretty much peel the supports of the mini it is like magic if you have a really thick support on your mini you might have to use Clippers to remove them but mostly for small minis we don't and now you can either use some paper towels or just let time dry your meanies before you put them in your curing system there are budget ways of creating curing stations like buying a UV torch an Ikea garbage bin and fill that with pin foil however I don't know how many times I forgot my mean is in this with the light on for days and a wash and curing station can be f for as little as $100 and if you're interested in 3D printing and already invested a few hundred adding that extra $100 to your budget in my opinion is one of the most worthwhile things you can do saving yourself a lot of mess and time in your curing station your miniature spins around and the light hits it from all angles and if you got a good curing station your meeting normally just need a few minutes of extra curing if you've got a homemade curing station just make sure that you spin the mini around manually and don't look into the light because it can be harmful for your eyes and with that you should have a finished miniature ready to paint or glue together depending on what mod youve [Music] seled but you might have had a failed print and if you did these are the steps you need to take if you're print failed you need to clean your vat because you are going to have some leftover resin bits in your vat that could potentially not only ruin the next print but also your entire printer because if that build plate pushes down with full force and you have a big piece of hardened resin resting on your print bed if you're lucky this might only cause a failed print but it can also break the screen of your 3D printer or break the Fe causing resin to seep out and cause all kinds of Havoc I've had this happen to friends that had to replace the entire printer so the absolutely easiest way of cleaning your fvp and your resin vat is to add these leftover resin spru to the bottom of your vat and then run the cleaning program that 90% of 3D printers have today the cleaning Works quite geniusly the printer activates all the light at the bottom of the printer encasing all of the leftover wring stuff that has been trapped at the bottom of the printer and if you've added these supports that you had from previously you now have a handle so that you can easily remove that film from the bottom of the 3D printer so you've got a clean thatat however if you've got a ton of resin bits floating around in your resin this might not be enough you might firstly have to scrape at the bottom of the vat with a silicone tool making sure that you don't have anything stuck to the bottom of the vat and then maybe you'll have to filter your res in before you use it again most resin printers come with one of these filters that you can use but personally I've picked up one of these sives and I then add a filter in that making sure that I have double protection so that no big or microscopic Parts seeps into the resin that we're going to reuse later and once it's filtered you can just slap it back into the printer if you're one of those that unluckily have to scrape the bottom of your vat make sure that you don't do it with metal tools because this will destroy your Fe Instead try to find a silicon scraping tool it makes all the difference in the world and it's much safer for your f by following these steps hopefully now you have a greater understanding of how 3D printing Works which 3D printer you should buy and what you should do to keep yourself and your family safe from any toxins that might come from the resing printers massive thanks to hey gears for sponsoring this video we've had a ton of fun using your printer also of course our patrons you guys are legends with that said have a great day bye-bye

Channel: Squidmar Miniatures

Views: 128,985

Keywords: warhammer, miniature painting, painting warhammer, age of sigmar, squidmar, warhammer 40k, dungeons & dragons, d&d, how to paint warhammer, space marines, squidmar miniatures, emil nyström, airbrush, vallejo, citadel color

Id: v9SfPiBp864

Length: 28min 22sec (1702 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024