3D Print - Birth of an Army (in 4mm scale)

[Teardrop World]

There was some posts on this forum with 2mm figures. Cheap and effective. But not enough detail. 6mm? too detailed and too long to paint. Sooooo, let's do Heroic 2mm! 

I intend to use this army for King of War, and using strips of 12 figures on 40mm bases. The small units will maybe have something like 2 strips, large units 4 strips and hordes 8 strips. While preparing my next Weird War II game, designing a Mecha in Blender, I tried to quickly design a soldier base, but split it in strips more easily paintable:



First strip printed in 30 minutes, layers of 40 microns. Ugly result. Printer head too hot. Lowered the temperature, better - but an ugly better. Quickly painted in a few minutes, then placed two feet away, the result is acceptable. 15 mm miniature for scale.



Two printers used, a chinese Wanhao i3 modded, and a stock Original Prusa MK2. The back of the strip is better on the i3 (the tiny belt is well printed), but the front is better on the Prusa, more crispy. Printed very slow, at low temperature. Next step: modelling a cavalry....

Best regards

[FifteensAway]

Glad to see someone experimenting in 4 mm.  Keep it up.  I'm hoping someone does a decent Seven Years War in this scale so I can do it big and 'on the cheap' by doing it small.  2 mm, as you say, just too small.

[von Lucky]

They are cute - the detail for that size isn't bad.

[Teardrop World]

Glad to see someone experimenting in 4 mm.  Keep it up.  I'm hoping someone does a decent Seven Years War in this scale so I can do it big and 'on the cheap' by doing it small.  2 mm, as you say, just too small.

Yes, but would be tricorn hat be recognisable at this size? 
If someone was doing those, what sort of units would you need - as I'm not a connoisseur of this period? Musket line should be easy to model and print, pikes are more tricky. If you and other are interested, I plan to acquire a resin printer in a few weeks. Small details should render better than the actual result. I could model the units for moulding....
Following your post, I remembered that Foundry sent me (by error) their beautiful rule book about Napoleon. Maybe it's time to give a 4 mm try to the 17 and 18th centuries?

By the way, last evening was charged: modelling of a cavalry, test print, modelling of a bowman unit.
This morning, less than 3 hour of blob painting and....
Close shot of a cavalry painted



While the brush was putting colors on a hundred of figure, the bowmen were printed...



...then painted



A mass effect, 6-7 hours of print and less 3h to paint (and I'm slow). 96 infantry figures, 28 mounted horses.



Cheers

[jambo1]

Looks interesting, i have been swithering about micro wargames and have purchased some 3mm Napoleonics and they are nice. Yours are pretty decent I must say.

[Teardrop World]

Looks interesting, i have been swithering about micro wargames and have purchased some 3mm Napoleonics and they are nice. Yours are pretty decent I must say.

I never took a look at those 3mm lines. They are astonishing. If I have discovered those before, I'm  not sure to have printed mine.

Redesigned horse and knight, and printed heavy cavalry unit. The result is at the limit of the printer. Not on par with those Odzial Osmy and other, but one printed strip weight 1 gram and cost about 0,026 swiss fr. (nearly the same in $).
By carefully tuning the slicing software, the latest prints are slightly better than the pictures on the previous post.

[FifteensAway]

Tricorn quite recognizable in Irregular's 2 mm Horse and Musket figures so I'd guess it will work just fine in 4 mm - can't speak to how it'd work with a printer, however.

[Teardrop World]

Tricorn quite recognizable in Irregular's 2 mm Horse and Musket figures so I'd guess it will work just fine in 4 mm - can't speak to how it'd work with a printer, however.

I use a Filament printer, with a head melting the plastic. On such tiny objects, the head melt the filament AND the previously printed layer. The actual head has a 0.4mm hole, this week I will make a test with a finer head (0.25mm). Resin printers have a finer detail with nearly invisible layers. Another thing with filament printer is the micro sized 3D model: Basic geometrical shapes prints better than detailed sculpt, so hand sculpted Irregular and Odzial are really better. On the other side, ugly 3D can be mass printed at home at a very low cost.
I made a test model of a firing line, with cartoony big tricorn. Not happy with the result, the horizontal muskets are badly printed. I will rework them this week.

Best regards

[Teardrop World]

Just received a cheap chinese resin printer: D7, with LCD resolution of about 2560x1440 pixels. Some trouble with it, first prints failed using the resin given with the printer. With long exposure time (20 seconds/Layer) the result was fine but disappointing and not very good. Printed the 4mm spearmen.

With FDM printer, the heads and spears are very thin, but massive in resin. After a quick check, the original 3D model is thick, but FDM printers printed it thinnier. A stunning thing with the resin print is the face of the spearmen, clearly visible. I intend to remodel the figures with more details. I hope for a long work with this D7, but after a hour of work the resin begin to strongly smell because of the heat of the UV light. And I'm allergic to thoses emanations. A better acrylate resine is on order, who should not give me sickness, but there was no technical data with the chinese resin.

To be continued......

Cheers