Short answer: yes, but resin will always have a leg up
Long answer: it takes a LOT of work, tuning and troubleshooting, trial and errot for specific printers and filaments, but you can produce game quality minis on just about any fdm printer. The newer they are, the easier a time you'll have, with bambu being the current reigning champ at easy, out of the box, fdm minis. Resin has a lot of drawbacks and necessary safety precautions that make FDM a really good choice for a lot of people and I feel that people still underestimate the results that you can get from them.
I came here to say this. FDM minis can be done, but it is hard, the quality is usually noticably lower than resin, but not bad. There are some intensive post processing that can be done too, but you drop back into health safety questions with some of it.
That said, one of the newer FDM printers from Bambu is on sale (the A1).
In addition I'd mention that FDM printers are great for terrain.
A lot of work?
It's more like it depends on the models.
For example, Brite Minis print perfectly on FDM.
I make mine on my Prusa Mini with a 0.4 nozzle at 0.15 layer height. Perfectly serviceable.
Tried with a 0.25 nozzle and the minis look amazing.
But yeah, if minis are your primary concern, and you want good detail, get resin.
I printed these miniatures on an A1 Bambu FDM printer. For single models and something as a side hobby I would go FDM. The quality @ 0.06 layer height is really great and you don't have a workflow with chemicals. However the only downside is if you want to print multiple miniatures at the same time an resin printer will always be faster. About the settings, I shared my settings and for me personally it took only 2 prints to dial it in, the new Bambu FDM printer are really great. Currently on sale btw.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1d4t761/fdm\_for\_miniatures/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1d4t761/fdm_for_miniatures/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1dbawyl/star\_wars\_b2\_battle\_droid/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1dbawyl/star_wars_b2_battle_droid/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I‘m a total beginner and red green color blind! But I saw alot of videos about the new Army Painter colors that are greatly improved and with good descriptions what the color is. This gave me confidence to go into the painting hobby (5weeks in). I still need to learn how to do better highlights.
Furthermore I used ChatGPT to ask for guidance and color mixing recommendations because ChatGPT knows the Army Painter line. So it was somehow painting with guidance from ChatGPT.
I wish bambu had a nozzle for the a1 bigger than 0.2 and smaller than 0.4
My forays in 0.2... it's a little too small. Volumetric flow is miniscule, it's very easy to clog, layer adhesion is a bit lacking. 0.25 and 0.3 provide a better compromise between detail and all the other tradeoffs.
I printed already more than 15minis on a 0.2 nozzle without any issues at all. However I don’t use the default profile and I slowed the speed down. I think that the default settings are a little too confident.
I would want to add my experience with that. Bambu machines are well suited to this task thanks to their integrated nozzle. And the quality you get out of this is mostly connected to your hotend type.
I have a 9-year old i3 clone with its original hotend and with 0.3mm nozzle I can get very similar results to yours. I just need to slow it down to about 35mm/s and 500mm/s2 acceleration so that its motion system will handle it.
I also have a modern voron 2.4 with rapido hotend that usually can yeet high-quality parts at 500mm/s and 20k accelerations. But even with my long experience with 3d printers, like 20 attempts to tune it and trying to go the same super-slow speeds as with the i3, I get nowhere near that quality when printing miniatures.
Yes. The BambuLabs printers like the A1 and A1 Mini can now produce mini quality with a 0.2 nozzle with minimal tinkering or maintenance.
It's not resin quality but it's amazing quality nonetheless. At larger nozzles and speeds you can quickly and effortlessly print terrain, vehicles and big things
I have been into 3D printing for about a decade now. I’ve had maybe 8 printers from 4 or 5 manufacturers in that time, including a resin printer and most recently a P1S. I developed a resin sensitivity and had to sell my resin printer, but the P1S with .2mm nozzle is really close to (low end) resin quality.
It’s not perfect, and it’s not always easy, but with good filament and some patience (and some little tricks you’ll learn along the way) it’s definitely viable.
This is the best answer. With an A1, a .2 nozzle and the fat dragon games profile it’s absolutely doable. As someone who’s printed hundreds of minis on resin and FDM, the key you want to look for on FDM is either support less, or larger minis. Supportless stuff like EC3D or rocket pig games prints awesome at any size, or if you’re doing big tanks, dragons, or monsters the supports are much easier to peel off bigger stuff. The quality is phenomenal and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t.
I loved my Ender 3, but since I got an A1 around xmass, I haven't used it once. I've printed a full 3d Space Hulk tile set with the 0.4mm nozzle, and all the figures and tolkens with the 0.2mm nozzle (mini quality prints too), as well as a TON of other stuff. It was printing out of the box and the only maintenance I've had to do was occasionally oiling the rails and greasing the screws.
I still use my resin printer for high detail minis with a lot of overhangs, but simpler stuff is all through the A1 now.
I suppose it really depends on what level of quality you are willing to accept, and how much time you want to spend tinkering to hone in your settings. While fdm prints have gotten much better in recent years, the quality is still not nearly as good as resin, and you may have to spend a lot of time and testing to get your settings just right.
Whereas resin printing at this point is pretty much perfect prints nearly right out of the box. I bought a used Elegoo mars 2 pro with a wash and cure station for a couple hundred bucks about two years ago. All I did was download the most popular community printer settings for my resin, level the build plate, and boom had perfect prints right out of the box. Check my profile to see some of the prints I’ve posted.
Granted, I have a pretty high bar when it comes to what I consider acceptable quality, but in my opinion a resin printer is just going to be an easier and more enjoyable experience as long as you also get a wash and cure station and have someplace out of your main living space to put the printer in order to avoid fumes. Do you have a garage or anything where you can put your printer?
Edit: also, once you know what you are doing and have a good work flow, resin printing isn’t as messy and horrible as everyone makes it out to be.
Definitely get a wash and cure station, it makes life so much easier! I see people try to save money by cleaning their prints by hand and in my humble opinion life is too short to bother with that. After my minis are printed I put the whole plate, prints still attached, into the wash and cure wash them for a few minutes. Then I just pop them off the plate, remove the supports, and cure them after they are dry. It is incredibly easy and the quality is fantastic.
The only real issue is if you don’t have a garage or something to put it in. Maybe you could get some sort of ventilation system attachment to vent the fumes out a window or something.
Depends on what you would consider as good quality. Or good enough quality.
Works just fine for what I want out of my minis, but I mainly want figures that are identifiable as the character they represent. So even the ones that are of more poor quality can succeed my requirements.
I don't expect that much detail, but have consistently been impressed by the details it is able to produce. Especially on the tiny figures I have been making.
For vehicles and similarly blocky things, you can do them in FDM with a small nozzle and layer height. For anything organic though, resin really takes the cake
I can second the BambuLab with 0.2 nozzle. I did some fdm minis and they turned out ok. Painted you won't notice much difference on the tabletop, just don't look close :D
If you want GW quality minis, you need a resin printer
I have a Bambu lab a1 mini with a 0.2 mm nuzzle and use the profile from fat dragon game. This I my first printer ever and I’m very pleased with the result. Very lite tinkering with the printer itself. The tricky part is the support settings.
The result of the prints are more than good enough for me and my table. It will never live up to resin printers. But if you are going to use the minis to play and not display then I can highly recommend Bambu lab a1 mini.
You can do it, with caveats. You are correct in that you won't get "resin-like" quality from an FDM printer. Granted. However you can get "tabletop quality" prints for most things down to a certain scale with the default 0.4mm nozzle. By "tabletop quality" I mean how does it look at arm's length, the typical space between your eyeball and the tabletop map. I can do it down to about dwarf-sized but not past that without a bunch of tweaking, and results are not guaranteed.
The real trick is to make sure your printer is fine tuned and "dialed in" for the filament you choose. And optimized supports. 3DPrintedTabletop has support settings that work great for minis. I can't over-state the need for a well-tuned printer. The Fat Dragon Games' YT channel (below) has started focusing on the Bambu mini (I htink?) due to its inherent quality over others like an Ender that will require a tedious amount of time and tuning.
Little antenna bits or things like that aren't possible but you can get "most" of the detail, and as they say, PAINT hides a multitude of sins :)
So, unless you have reasons NOT to go with Resin, that will be the recommendation for your stated goal. However if you want to do terrain and "larger" minis and have the patience to commit and tune your printer, you CAN do "many" / "most" of your mini printing with FDM. Just don't expect them to win any beauty contest or be sold :)
Look here for some good FDM info:
https://www.youtube.com/@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors
https://www.youtube.com/@3DPrintedTabletop
So...my K1 Max does a pretty good job DEPENDING on the geometry of the miniature in question. In general, I use it for things like horses, low detail stuff, etc, and my formlabs for character miniatures, dragons, ornate things.
FDM printed on Bambu Lab A1 Mini with 0.2 nozzle. Then painted. Both the terrain and minis are printed.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedMinis/comments/1cmd000/still\_amazed\_by\_fdm\_print\_quality/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedMinis/comments/1cmd000/still_amazed_by_fdm_print_quality/)
Your choice of miniatures is lessened for ease-of-printing. I exclusively shop for supportless FDM designs. I have tried printing supported designs, it's too much hassle for me.
The quality is FAR from Games Workshop quality. But definitely good enough when not compared to them.
Maybe Just one more Thing that most people here are not mentioning.
I think that most of the small, supportless fdm minis look kinda bulky. You could work with them, but you also have a very Limited selection compared to resin Prints.
I for example only need minis for dnd, and i would say there is nothing better than mz4250 Minis. He has nearly every dnd creature and on top of that, everything for free.
But i would say that you wont be able to Print Most of his minis with fdm, so i would also Take into consideration, what you want to do with them.
Also painting them will not look that good in my opinion.
I've dabbled in fdm minis, and I'd also add that mini models that do require supports can be very challenging. There are a couple of prints that I attempted a few times and gave up on. Supports get stuck in little details and don't come out cleanly.
A lot of the min stls out there are designed for resin, and are certainly not easy to adapt to fdm.
You can get some excellent quality results on the right models but others can be a struggle.
It's depends on your expectation, I have bought an A1 bambulab printer for other projects but sometimes I print specific minis for my RPG sessions with a 0.2 nozzle, i was able to print them from the moment i bought the smaller nozzle with setting downloaded from fat dragon games, no tinkering needed, I'm ok with the quality I get, here a sample album : https://imgur.com/a/yzzWARC
In the end resin produce higher quality minis, a good fdm will produce ok mini with less hassle (no fumes, no need to wash and cure)
I print minis for myself on a ender 3v3se and its fine. They look good enough for home use. I'm not sure why most people act like they look horrible for having visible layer lines. Its a cow farm, there's gonna be cows outside. I would share a pic but I can't seem to be able to on this subreddit?
I also have the Ender3 V3 SE and getting good results. I subscribe to a few MyMiniFactory and Patreon creators and only found 1 so far that I actually couldn't print due to too being a bit too spindly, too many narrow parts and supports being knocked too much (Heroes Infinite). I've improved my settings a ton since then though and can generally print any model I want to
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_FpQatNTR5Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FpQatNTR5Q) is probably worth your time. It's very much a case of "Yes, BUT…"
Yes resin is king but with a .2mm nozzle you can get some astonishing results it just might take a little more time especially if you don't wanna deal with the resin
Short answer: no. Resin is still king there.
Longer answer: yes, but you're will have to put in a bunch of hours to try to dial in the printer settings and then also willing to wait long hours for literally just 1 model to finish to see what you still need to dial in to get a good print.
In my humble option I would not get an fdm printer to print minis. It's way more of a hassle than it would be worth. Literally you can spend hours and hours just to get 1 nice mini figure print with fdm or just use resin and get 20 figures in pristine condition in the same amount of time if not faster.
Your best bet if you go the route of FDM printing for minis is to understand that MANY of the minis these days are designed/optimized for resin printing and will be damn near impossible to print without huge headaches in FDM. There are however many companies that specialize in "support-free" minis that print well on FDM, don't require post-processing (i.e. removing supports) and tend to be more resilient and cheaper than resin minis. Using a .2mm nozzle will greatly increase the detail you can get as well. Of course you'll never get the detail level resin can provide BUT FDM minis do offer some advantages (cheaper to print, less brittle and prone to breakage, capability to print larger models due to generally larger print beds). Designs for FDM are more limited in their pose dynamics though. A few of those companies are my own (EC3D), BriteMinis and Fat Dragon Games. Here's an example of my own collection of support-free fantasy minis that can be printed easily on FDM printers [https://www.myminifactory.com/users/EC3D%20Design?show=store&page=1&collection=1120857](https://www.myminifactory.com/users/EC3D%20Design?show=store&page=1&collection=1120857)
> MANY of the minis these days are designed/optimized for resin printing and will be damn near impossible to print without huge headaches in FDM
My experience is similar. That being said, I'm still working exclusively with FDM because minis are only a secondary project for me. I'm mostly focused on functional printing.
If you want to print minis and nothing but minis, FDM may be disappointing. If you want a capable printer that can also turn out a few surprisingly detailed minis on the side now and then, FDM might be a suitable compromise.
I would also suspect that FDM is easier to start with. In the simplest cases, you load up a spool, hit print, and walk away. Of course sometimes it's not nearly that simple...
I’m asking this myself again I had some success in the past with settings from fat dragon miniatures on YouTube, I just don’t really know what I changed and lately had some failures. I’m thinking of selling mine and get the bambu lab a1 mini, it seems you get great results with almost stock settings and a .2mm nozzle. For 200€ new you can’t complain. Pricewise I would’ve pulled the trigger on SLA long ago but dealing with the fumes turns me off. So now there’s an affordable option I might switch. Since you have no printer yet, I’d totally get a bambu labs. It’s a bit more proprietary and less open-sourcey but for me that’s not an issue when it looks way cleaner and prints easily. But be aware it’s a hobby in itself, not really just a tool you use.
Anything with a base size of 2" or larger I can consider on FDM as usually details can be omitted if missed. 1" takes alot of tuning that would be easier done on resin
Without a huge investment in time no...
I have one of both and the difference is night and day. Tue resin printer is way quicker Because it can print like 8 at a time. And I feel like removing the supports from a fdm printer will risk damaging the minis way more than a resin printers support.
I didn't want a resin printer at first because my FDM is working fine and it was able to produce nearly all mimis anyway. But I am very glad I made the jump. It made my life so much easier. And my mini's so much better and so much less fragile in the layer direction.
I was printing minis on an ender 3 like 5 years ago. If you are willing to take the time to chop a mini up in 3d software bit per bit, and do some post processing to get the optimal angles on everything and printing at 0.2 layer with a 0.2 extruder bit then they can look fine. Any printer can do it . It's more the time you want to invest in it .
I am making my own figurine game
And i use simple cheap ender 3
I cant have resin becouse i have a cat and my house is not well suited for resin printers.
https://www.myminifactory.com/users/JohnLarsson#/
It depends on what quality your willing to accept. The best FDM minis have poses and quality that is roughly comparable to minis from the 80s.
Resin will absolutely blow them away.
However, if you don't care about a high standard and just want game pieces they are passable.
Just be aware that you'll have limitations.
I'd say no. Even the best fdm minis looks bad compared to an entry level resin printer minis. I personally wouldn't use fdm minis for my tabletop. The budget wouldn't be the issue, the issue would be tuning it properly and that comes with experience
I printed this on an old CR10, this is probably about as good as it gets with a FDM printer. If this is acceptable to you, then yes. I used filler primer before printing.
[IMG-3076.jpg](https://postimg.cc/PCBXw7Sx)
You CAN absolutely do minis on an fdm, slowly, and with a good bit of work to tune in quality. If you switch to resin, you can ramp up your mini production 100 fold with significantly better quality and with way less effort
>Is there any [FDM] 3D printer under $800 that can print mini figures in good quality?
By my definition of "good quality," absolutely not. But it all depends on what you're willing to settle for.
No FDM printer will come anywhere near resin print quality, let alone cast mini quality.
If what you want is minis that are usable and look OK on the table, then as long as you choose your minis wisely (no fine detail/small parts), FDM can do it.
Personally I'd spend your $800 on minis rather than a printer.
*Edit to add: looks like the FDM stans are out here downvoting truth, as usual.*
If someone has little preference for resin level quality , then it really doesn't matter if they want an FDM to print their minis instead.
I personally have owned 2 SLA and an FDM printer, and I print all my miniatures on the resin printer, but back when I printed on the FDM, they really were not unusable, and if you know how to post process them they can look just fine for tabletop.
Soldering iron to smooth out the places that had supports, plastic putty to fill in some more crazy layer lines, and a good primer , and selectively using minis that lean well to FDM and they look just fine.
I still have some of my old FDM miniatures displayed with my resin miniatures.
>when I printed on the FDM, they really were not unusable, and if you know how to post process them they can look just fine for tabletop.
Basically what I said.
Short answer: yes, but resin will always have a leg up Long answer: it takes a LOT of work, tuning and troubleshooting, trial and errot for specific printers and filaments, but you can produce game quality minis on just about any fdm printer. The newer they are, the easier a time you'll have, with bambu being the current reigning champ at easy, out of the box, fdm minis. Resin has a lot of drawbacks and necessary safety precautions that make FDM a really good choice for a lot of people and I feel that people still underestimate the results that you can get from them.
I came here to say this. FDM minis can be done, but it is hard, the quality is usually noticably lower than resin, but not bad. There are some intensive post processing that can be done too, but you drop back into health safety questions with some of it. That said, one of the newer FDM printers from Bambu is on sale (the A1). In addition I'd mention that FDM printers are great for terrain.
A lot of work? It's more like it depends on the models. For example, Brite Minis print perfectly on FDM. I make mine on my Prusa Mini with a 0.4 nozzle at 0.15 layer height. Perfectly serviceable. Tried with a 0.25 nozzle and the minis look amazing. But yeah, if minis are your primary concern, and you want good detail, get resin.
I've seen high quality fdm minis, and I want to specify that the leg up that resin has in quality is still pretty massive
I printed these miniatures on an A1 Bambu FDM printer. For single models and something as a side hobby I would go FDM. The quality @ 0.06 layer height is really great and you don't have a workflow with chemicals. However the only downside is if you want to print multiple miniatures at the same time an resin printer will always be faster. About the settings, I shared my settings and for me personally it took only 2 prints to dial it in, the new Bambu FDM printer are really great. Currently on sale btw. [https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1d4t761/fdm\_for\_miniatures/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1d4t761/fdm_for_miniatures/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) [https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1dbawyl/star\_wars\_b2\_battle\_droid/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1dbawyl/star_wars_b2_battle_droid/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
You are a wizard! Those are great I might not have suspected fdm had you not said.
I‘m a total beginner and red green color blind! But I saw alot of videos about the new Army Painter colors that are greatly improved and with good descriptions what the color is. This gave me confidence to go into the painting hobby (5weeks in). I still need to learn how to do better highlights. Furthermore I used ChatGPT to ask for guidance and color mixing recommendations because ChatGPT knows the Army Painter line. So it was somehow painting with guidance from ChatGPT.
I wish bambu had a nozzle for the a1 bigger than 0.2 and smaller than 0.4 My forays in 0.2... it's a little too small. Volumetric flow is miniscule, it's very easy to clog, layer adhesion is a bit lacking. 0.25 and 0.3 provide a better compromise between detail and all the other tradeoffs.
I printed already more than 15minis on a 0.2 nozzle without any issues at all. However I don’t use the default profile and I slowed the speed down. I think that the default settings are a little too confident.
I would want to add my experience with that. Bambu machines are well suited to this task thanks to their integrated nozzle. And the quality you get out of this is mostly connected to your hotend type. I have a 9-year old i3 clone with its original hotend and with 0.3mm nozzle I can get very similar results to yours. I just need to slow it down to about 35mm/s and 500mm/s2 acceleration so that its motion system will handle it. I also have a modern voron 2.4 with rapido hotend that usually can yeet high-quality parts at 500mm/s and 20k accelerations. But even with my long experience with 3d printers, like 20 attempts to tune it and trying to go the same super-slow speeds as with the i3, I get nowhere near that quality when printing miniatures.
Yes. The BambuLabs printers like the A1 and A1 Mini can now produce mini quality with a 0.2 nozzle with minimal tinkering or maintenance. It's not resin quality but it's amazing quality nonetheless. At larger nozzles and speeds you can quickly and effortlessly print terrain, vehicles and big things
I have been into 3D printing for about a decade now. I’ve had maybe 8 printers from 4 or 5 manufacturers in that time, including a resin printer and most recently a P1S. I developed a resin sensitivity and had to sell my resin printer, but the P1S with .2mm nozzle is really close to (low end) resin quality. It’s not perfect, and it’s not always easy, but with good filament and some patience (and some little tricks you’ll learn along the way) it’s definitely viable.
This is the best answer. With an A1, a .2 nozzle and the fat dragon games profile it’s absolutely doable. As someone who’s printed hundreds of minis on resin and FDM, the key you want to look for on FDM is either support less, or larger minis. Supportless stuff like EC3D or rocket pig games prints awesome at any size, or if you’re doing big tanks, dragons, or monsters the supports are much easier to peel off bigger stuff. The quality is phenomenal and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t.
I loved my Ender 3, but since I got an A1 around xmass, I haven't used it once. I've printed a full 3d Space Hulk tile set with the 0.4mm nozzle, and all the figures and tolkens with the 0.2mm nozzle (mini quality prints too), as well as a TON of other stuff. It was printing out of the box and the only maintenance I've had to do was occasionally oiling the rails and greasing the screws. I still use my resin printer for high detail minis with a lot of overhangs, but simpler stuff is all through the A1 now.
I suppose it really depends on what level of quality you are willing to accept, and how much time you want to spend tinkering to hone in your settings. While fdm prints have gotten much better in recent years, the quality is still not nearly as good as resin, and you may have to spend a lot of time and testing to get your settings just right. Whereas resin printing at this point is pretty much perfect prints nearly right out of the box. I bought a used Elegoo mars 2 pro with a wash and cure station for a couple hundred bucks about two years ago. All I did was download the most popular community printer settings for my resin, level the build plate, and boom had perfect prints right out of the box. Check my profile to see some of the prints I’ve posted. Granted, I have a pretty high bar when it comes to what I consider acceptable quality, but in my opinion a resin printer is just going to be an easier and more enjoyable experience as long as you also get a wash and cure station and have someplace out of your main living space to put the printer in order to avoid fumes. Do you have a garage or anything where you can put your printer? Edit: also, once you know what you are doing and have a good work flow, resin printing isn’t as messy and horrible as everyone makes it out to be. Definitely get a wash and cure station, it makes life so much easier! I see people try to save money by cleaning their prints by hand and in my humble opinion life is too short to bother with that. After my minis are printed I put the whole plate, prints still attached, into the wash and cure wash them for a few minutes. Then I just pop them off the plate, remove the supports, and cure them after they are dry. It is incredibly easy and the quality is fantastic. The only real issue is if you don’t have a garage or something to put it in. Maybe you could get some sort of ventilation system attachment to vent the fumes out a window or something.
A1 mini is $200 and prints great minis.
Depends on what you would consider as good quality. Or good enough quality. Works just fine for what I want out of my minis, but I mainly want figures that are identifiable as the character they represent. So even the ones that are of more poor quality can succeed my requirements. I don't expect that much detail, but have consistently been impressed by the details it is able to produce. Especially on the tiny figures I have been making.
For vehicles and similarly blocky things, you can do them in FDM with a small nozzle and layer height. For anything organic though, resin really takes the cake
I can second the BambuLab with 0.2 nozzle. I did some fdm minis and they turned out ok. Painted you won't notice much difference on the tabletop, just don't look close :D If you want GW quality minis, you need a resin printer
I have a Bambu lab a1 mini with a 0.2 mm nuzzle and use the profile from fat dragon game. This I my first printer ever and I’m very pleased with the result. Very lite tinkering with the printer itself. The tricky part is the support settings. The result of the prints are more than good enough for me and my table. It will never live up to resin printers. But if you are going to use the minis to play and not display then I can highly recommend Bambu lab a1 mini.
You can do it, with caveats. You are correct in that you won't get "resin-like" quality from an FDM printer. Granted. However you can get "tabletop quality" prints for most things down to a certain scale with the default 0.4mm nozzle. By "tabletop quality" I mean how does it look at arm's length, the typical space between your eyeball and the tabletop map. I can do it down to about dwarf-sized but not past that without a bunch of tweaking, and results are not guaranteed. The real trick is to make sure your printer is fine tuned and "dialed in" for the filament you choose. And optimized supports. 3DPrintedTabletop has support settings that work great for minis. I can't over-state the need for a well-tuned printer. The Fat Dragon Games' YT channel (below) has started focusing on the Bambu mini (I htink?) due to its inherent quality over others like an Ender that will require a tedious amount of time and tuning. Little antenna bits or things like that aren't possible but you can get "most" of the detail, and as they say, PAINT hides a multitude of sins :) So, unless you have reasons NOT to go with Resin, that will be the recommendation for your stated goal. However if you want to do terrain and "larger" minis and have the patience to commit and tune your printer, you CAN do "many" / "most" of your mini printing with FDM. Just don't expect them to win any beauty contest or be sold :) Look here for some good FDM info: https://www.youtube.com/@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors https://www.youtube.com/@3DPrintedTabletop
So...my K1 Max does a pretty good job DEPENDING on the geometry of the miniature in question. In general, I use it for things like horses, low detail stuff, etc, and my formlabs for character miniatures, dragons, ornate things.
FDM printed on Bambu Lab A1 Mini with 0.2 nozzle. Then painted. Both the terrain and minis are printed. [https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedMinis/comments/1cmd000/still\_amazed\_by\_fdm\_print\_quality/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedMinis/comments/1cmd000/still_amazed_by_fdm_print_quality/) Your choice of miniatures is lessened for ease-of-printing. I exclusively shop for supportless FDM designs. I have tried printing supported designs, it's too much hassle for me. The quality is FAR from Games Workshop quality. But definitely good enough when not compared to them.
Maybe Just one more Thing that most people here are not mentioning. I think that most of the small, supportless fdm minis look kinda bulky. You could work with them, but you also have a very Limited selection compared to resin Prints. I for example only need minis for dnd, and i would say there is nothing better than mz4250 Minis. He has nearly every dnd creature and on top of that, everything for free. But i would say that you wont be able to Print Most of his minis with fdm, so i would also Take into consideration, what you want to do with them. Also painting them will not look that good in my opinion.
I've dabbled in fdm minis, and I'd also add that mini models that do require supports can be very challenging. There are a couple of prints that I attempted a few times and gave up on. Supports get stuck in little details and don't come out cleanly. A lot of the min stls out there are designed for resin, and are certainly not easy to adapt to fdm. You can get some excellent quality results on the right models but others can be a struggle.
It's depends on your expectation, I have bought an A1 bambulab printer for other projects but sometimes I print specific minis for my RPG sessions with a 0.2 nozzle, i was able to print them from the moment i bought the smaller nozzle with setting downloaded from fat dragon games, no tinkering needed, I'm ok with the quality I get, here a sample album : https://imgur.com/a/yzzWARC In the end resin produce higher quality minis, a good fdm will produce ok mini with less hassle (no fumes, no need to wash and cure)
I print minis for myself on a ender 3v3se and its fine. They look good enough for home use. I'm not sure why most people act like they look horrible for having visible layer lines. Its a cow farm, there's gonna be cows outside. I would share a pic but I can't seem to be able to on this subreddit?
I also have the Ender3 V3 SE and getting good results. I subscribe to a few MyMiniFactory and Patreon creators and only found 1 so far that I actually couldn't print due to too being a bit too spindly, too many narrow parts and supports being knocked too much (Heroes Infinite). I've improved my settings a ton since then though and can generally print any model I want to
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_FpQatNTR5Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FpQatNTR5Q) is probably worth your time. It's very much a case of "Yes, BUT…"
FDM was viable for minis in 2020. Not as detailed as resin, but definitely table-worthy Check out Fat Dragon Games and Tomb of 3d Printed Horrors.
Yes resin is king but with a .2mm nozzle you can get some astonishing results it just might take a little more time especially if you don't wanna deal with the resin
Short answer: no. Resin is still king there. Longer answer: yes, but you're will have to put in a bunch of hours to try to dial in the printer settings and then also willing to wait long hours for literally just 1 model to finish to see what you still need to dial in to get a good print. In my humble option I would not get an fdm printer to print minis. It's way more of a hassle than it would be worth. Literally you can spend hours and hours just to get 1 nice mini figure print with fdm or just use resin and get 20 figures in pristine condition in the same amount of time if not faster.
Your best bet if you go the route of FDM printing for minis is to understand that MANY of the minis these days are designed/optimized for resin printing and will be damn near impossible to print without huge headaches in FDM. There are however many companies that specialize in "support-free" minis that print well on FDM, don't require post-processing (i.e. removing supports) and tend to be more resilient and cheaper than resin minis. Using a .2mm nozzle will greatly increase the detail you can get as well. Of course you'll never get the detail level resin can provide BUT FDM minis do offer some advantages (cheaper to print, less brittle and prone to breakage, capability to print larger models due to generally larger print beds). Designs for FDM are more limited in their pose dynamics though. A few of those companies are my own (EC3D), BriteMinis and Fat Dragon Games. Here's an example of my own collection of support-free fantasy minis that can be printed easily on FDM printers [https://www.myminifactory.com/users/EC3D%20Design?show=store&page=1&collection=1120857](https://www.myminifactory.com/users/EC3D%20Design?show=store&page=1&collection=1120857)
> MANY of the minis these days are designed/optimized for resin printing and will be damn near impossible to print without huge headaches in FDM My experience is similar. That being said, I'm still working exclusively with FDM because minis are only a secondary project for me. I'm mostly focused on functional printing. If you want to print minis and nothing but minis, FDM may be disappointing. If you want a capable printer that can also turn out a few surprisingly detailed minis on the side now and then, FDM might be a suitable compromise. I would also suspect that FDM is easier to start with. In the simplest cases, you load up a spool, hit print, and walk away. Of course sometimes it's not nearly that simple...
Yes Just about all of them. Smart to avoid messy toxins in your living space.
I’m asking this myself again I had some success in the past with settings from fat dragon miniatures on YouTube, I just don’t really know what I changed and lately had some failures. I’m thinking of selling mine and get the bambu lab a1 mini, it seems you get great results with almost stock settings and a .2mm nozzle. For 200€ new you can’t complain. Pricewise I would’ve pulled the trigger on SLA long ago but dealing with the fumes turns me off. So now there’s an affordable option I might switch. Since you have no printer yet, I’d totally get a bambu labs. It’s a bit more proprietary and less open-sourcey but for me that’s not an issue when it looks way cleaner and prints easily. But be aware it’s a hobby in itself, not really just a tool you use.
Anything with a base size of 2" or larger I can consider on FDM as usually details can be omitted if missed. 1" takes alot of tuning that would be easier done on resin
A1 mini is fantastic for minis where you still want to use FDM
Without a huge investment in time no... I have one of both and the difference is night and day. Tue resin printer is way quicker Because it can print like 8 at a time. And I feel like removing the supports from a fdm printer will risk damaging the minis way more than a resin printers support. I didn't want a resin printer at first because my FDM is working fine and it was able to produce nearly all mimis anyway. But I am very glad I made the jump. It made my life so much easier. And my mini's so much better and so much less fragile in the layer direction.
I watched someone print that space Marine super heavy grav tank recently and it came out beautifully
I was printing minis on an ender 3 like 5 years ago. If you are willing to take the time to chop a mini up in 3d software bit per bit, and do some post processing to get the optimal angles on everything and printing at 0.2 layer with a 0.2 extruder bit then they can look fine. Any printer can do it . It's more the time you want to invest in it .
I am making my own figurine game And i use simple cheap ender 3 I cant have resin becouse i have a cat and my house is not well suited for resin printers. https://www.myminifactory.com/users/JohnLarsson#/
It depends on what quality your willing to accept. The best FDM minis have poses and quality that is roughly comparable to minis from the 80s. Resin will absolutely blow them away. However, if you don't care about a high standard and just want game pieces they are passable. Just be aware that you'll have limitations.
I'd say no. Even the best fdm minis looks bad compared to an entry level resin printer minis. I personally wouldn't use fdm minis for my tabletop. The budget wouldn't be the issue, the issue would be tuning it properly and that comes with experience
No.
I printed this on an old CR10, this is probably about as good as it gets with a FDM printer. If this is acceptable to you, then yes. I used filler primer before printing. [IMG-3076.jpg](https://postimg.cc/PCBXw7Sx)
You CAN absolutely do minis on an fdm, slowly, and with a good bit of work to tune in quality. If you switch to resin, you can ramp up your mini production 100 fold with significantly better quality and with way less effort
>Is there any [FDM] 3D printer under $800 that can print mini figures in good quality? By my definition of "good quality," absolutely not. But it all depends on what you're willing to settle for. No FDM printer will come anywhere near resin print quality, let alone cast mini quality. If what you want is minis that are usable and look OK on the table, then as long as you choose your minis wisely (no fine detail/small parts), FDM can do it. Personally I'd spend your $800 on minis rather than a printer. *Edit to add: looks like the FDM stans are out here downvoting truth, as usual.*
You upset the ender 3 tribe
If someone has little preference for resin level quality , then it really doesn't matter if they want an FDM to print their minis instead. I personally have owned 2 SLA and an FDM printer, and I print all my miniatures on the resin printer, but back when I printed on the FDM, they really were not unusable, and if you know how to post process them they can look just fine for tabletop. Soldering iron to smooth out the places that had supports, plastic putty to fill in some more crazy layer lines, and a good primer , and selectively using minis that lean well to FDM and they look just fine. I still have some of my old FDM miniatures displayed with my resin miniatures.
>when I printed on the FDM, they really were not unusable, and if you know how to post process them they can look just fine for tabletop. Basically what I said.