So is the resin worth the hassle?
How about for someone who only occasionally prints mins?
The ABS prints on my enclosed mp mini select were turning out short.
Not sure if it is from the ABS shrinking or the printer losing z-steps.
Outside of the enclosure, the z-axis is accurate. I think maybe the z axis stepper was overheating.
I installed a .2mm nozzle thinking I would use it for miniature stuff, but haven't printed anything yet.
if you are only printing a few it may not be worth it.
you need gloves when handling the resin and emptying the vat.
the resin gets everywhere no matter how hard you try not to drip.
I use mr. clean in a sonic cleaner to get the excess resin off my mini's since it's cheaper than isopropyl and so much easier than shaking them in a container.
then i use an old tooth brush to clean the mr clean off them.
i built a curing station that took me 10 mins. to make.
you need a funnel and a paint filter for when you pour the resin back into the container when a print does fail and you need to clean the vat. there could be bits of plastic are floating in it.
i gotta say it was a HUGE pain in the ass for me when i started using the resin printer but now i have a system and it isn't so bad.
I printed a dozen or so mini's for the Dungeon! board game and they came out ok on my mini with a .2mm nozzle.
not a lot of facial detail but you could tell what what class each mini was for the game.
I see people get better fdm prints and it comes down to how long you want to print for and the scale of the mini.
here is a pic of my .2mm fdm prints next to my resin prints.
I've seen people get much better fdm prints but they say print time for one mini is 4hrs.
i'm printing tree's in pet-g now on my mini delta and they are coming out good.
I'll still print larger miniatures like giants on FDM also. the quality is good enough for larger models.
I plan to print more mini's though and you can print 5 or 6 mini's in 3hrs or less on resin.
plus they really do look close to injection molded mini's you buy.
ok, for some reason my pic of my minis doesn't want to upload.
i get a security error.
i'll upload later.