Links
In order to make navigation in the blog easier, I’ve spent some time to organize the links to the blog posts. Starting with the RPG Actual Plays.
Solo Star Wars D6
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Summary
Updates from October, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
giorgis
-
giorgis
Miniatures pt116 – 3d printing in 15mm
3d printers have become much more affordable compared to a few years ago, and I’ve always been intrigued.
As an 15mm scale player living in the EU, availability, shipping costs and customs are a prohibitive factor to acquiring minis. Coupling this with the reduced variety of 15mm scale in comparison, say, to 28mm, and ordering minis for me had become scarce.
For the main themes that I play (sci-fi and fantasy) I had stocked up in batches of orders pre BREXIT and pre IOSS, and also got more than a few orders after shipping into EU was stabilised again.
However, recently shipping has become more expensive and the hunt for the odd mini that I’m missing usually does not excuse it.
If you add terrain into play, which is even more rare for 15mm, except for the regular buildings and houses, 3d printing becomes a very interesting investment.
I went into the rabbit hole of printer reviews, 3d sculpts, resin and FDM. I’m a sucker for table-ready quality, so resin was my first thought.
To my disappointment I had to decide against it. I’ve worked a good 7 years of my life as a scientist in a chemical laboratory, and I know all about dangerous vapours, chemicals, fume hoods, and personal protection measures.
To cut it short, my home office, which doubles as my hobby space, is not a suitable place to set up a resin 3d printer. It’s used also by other members of the family, and being in an apartment, ventilation is inadequate and contamination of nearby bedrooms possible. I don’t want to add to this potential spills, or space for a wash and curing station.
I kind of dropped the 3d printing subject altogether, as to my knowledge, the other alternative, FDM, is a pain. Several years ago, I had gotten an FDM printer which I assembled (i3 geeetech pro B), but no matter how hard i had tried, I never got it to print properly. Several attempts later, I concluded my failures were mostly due to a bent Z axis threaded rod, coupled with the ABS filament that was shipped with, which is much more difficult to work with than say PLA. All this however taught me how hard it is to work with FDM printers. Calibration, hot end temperatures, bed levelling, extrusion flow, printing speeds, fan speeds, just a few settings you have to play with.
The prints which I was seeing online also, all had clear layer lines. People say that for terrain that’s okay, but for minis that’s a big no, especially in 15mm!
Then, I stumbled upon Fat Dragon Games prints. And he listed using a Bambu Labs A1 mini printer. I did some further digging and I found that this little printer ticks all the boxes. Easy to set up, affordable, shipping from EU warehouse (no customs! Yay), easy to use and maintain, and great print quality.
I was sold, and decided to give it a go. After receiving and unpacking, and set up, which was easy as expected, I printed several minis, and some terrain.
I haven’t got the 100% perfect quality yet, but I’ve got the “good enough”. Only a few failures, which I learned why along the way.
A few prints. Terrain aside, I got usable 15mm (to eye level) minis, with some layer lines, and good enough detail. Depending on the model and playing with the settings and supports, I got quite good results. I’d say on average they are on par with okay pewter minis.
As to the printing profile, my basis was Fat Dragon Games Bambu Profile, which I modified with information from this Reddit post, and finally changed the supports settings with info from this Reddit post as it was hard to remove them otherwise. Some of my first minis are deformed or broke due to this.
For my first attempt at painting them, I chose a few of dutchmogul’s designs (Ill Gotten Games) and one of Fat Dragon Games. I rescaled the minis to fit my scale, as the FDG mini is 28mm which I rescaled to 65% (I think? – it seems I overdid it and he’s smaller than what I’d like), whereas the 18mm IGG minis were also larger and I rescaled them to 90%. Painting the minis was a bit tougher than with pewter. My first approach was my regular routine, which wasn’t the best.
As you can see from the Corporate Spy and Spacer A, the layer lines are visible. I must say though that the iPhone camera is much more unforgiving than the human eye, and they look okay in reality.
I then read again the Reddit post I linked above, and saw that I have the same primer for the minis, but this time I decided not to thin it. I used it as is, and also followed up with a layer of black Army Painter paint. I avoided thinning up my paints too much, and instead worked with smaller quantities almost like drybrushing. I think the difference with the rest of the minis is evident, and the layer lines are less discernible.
Some minis have errors due to printing. I either used tougher supports which left anomalies where they were connected, or I used no supports when required and the filament extruded in the air stuck somewhere on the mini.
As to the sculpts, I loved the poses. However I would prefer if the IGG sculpts had more pronounced features. Some faces are almost nonexistent. The FDG fighter was perfect, no supports needed.
Now it’s time to share the minis in close up with the relentless camera, and a group photo in table distance.
Corporate Spy (IGG) 
Spacer A (IGG) 
Ronald Jackson (IGG) 
Femme Fatale (IGG) 
Apocalypster (IGG) 
Wastoid Slinger (IGG) 
Elf Mage (IGG) 
Fighter (FDG) 
Group photo -
Nico
Hello giorgis, i just found your blog. The lecture is a real pleasure, it’s truly fascinating to delve into your process of exploring solo rpg A lot of my interrogations are quite similar. Do you have maybe an index page for your actual plays? Navigating the blog is not very conveniant to find them.
-
giorgis
Thanks!
Wordpress is quite weird in navigating, may ask if you’re on desktop or mobile? I know that on desktop you can find the Actual Play Category with respective Sub Categories for each group on the Sidebar. However they’re listed in newest to oldest. If that doesn’t work, please let me know and I can prepare a list of links for reference!LikeLike
-
-
Nico are discussing. 
Solo, Pen, Paper and Dice 
Reply