Printing (almost) crisp miniatures in plastic on my Bambu A1 mini

[Malebolgia]

Hey!

About 6 months ago I bought myself a Bambu A1 mini on Black Friday for about €200. So far I’ve been using it to print scenery for my fantasy games and a Star Wars project me and my son are doing. The printer does an awesome job and I love the results a lot. It still feels like magic when you print and then paint something yourself. So far the Bambu A1 mini proved to be one of the best hobby purchases in my 30 years of gaming.

A month ago, I stumbled on a video on YouTube by Painted4Combat. In the video he explained how you can print 3D models made for resin printers on your FDM printer. So printing resin models, using filament wire. Now that had my attention! Here’s the link:



The gest is that resin models use different supports and these are not great for FDM printers. They use long thin sticks that taper to a point where they support the model. A great way as this leaves little “scarring”, the blemishes you get after removing supports. But the sticks and tapered points often are too flimsy for FDM printers and you can easily get a mess of “spaghetti” *.
Painted4Combat (P4C) made a great tool which you can use in the 3D software Blender. I’m a total Blender n00b and even I could work with it. The steps are easy to follow and the results work well. Using P4C’s tool you separate the supports from the model and then thicken the supports so the FDM printer can print them correctly. So I took a “Mounted Sioux Warrior” and placed him and his horse in Blender. I used the tool to thicken the supports, exported the files to new 3d files and then imported these in Bambu’s software. It looks like this in the software:



For printing I used the printer settings Fatdragon Games created, they are simply brilliant for printing miniatures. You get very fine and smooth layer lines and the quality is terrific. Here’s the link to their printer profile:

https://www.fatdragongames.com/fdgfiles/the-fat-dragon-guide-to-printing-fdm-miniatures-fdg0448/

With the files setup and the printer using the right printing profile, I sent it to the A1 mini. About 3 hours later we have a fully printed Sioux Warrior and horse. It looks like this on the print bed:




That looks great already!
Next up is cleaning. For this, we need to be veeeeeeery careful. Although plastic often is a bit stronger than resin, it can still easily break. Especially with thin parts. So using snippers and a knife I cut off the supports, taking my time. On the horse I had some places where the undersides where a bit rough because filament printers not liking overhangs, or because of supports. I used some fine files and sanding paper to clean that off. This left me with this:



The rest is standard stuff for us: glueing, basing, priming and painting! For priming I used a white rattlecan. After painting him, he looks like this:



For a print on a FDM printer I was very happy! So I printed some more, tweaked the settings a bit to get even smoother surfaces (basically lowering the layer height from 0.08mm to 0.06mm) and here are the results:













Conclusion

As you can see the prints are very nice, for gaming. On the gaming table, you really don’t see they are printed in plastic. They look great! Up close you can see some layer lines here and there and you can see some of the detail isn’t as sharp and well defined. So in 28mm it makes them great for gaming, less for showcase models or dioramas and such.

With our hobby now more than suffused with 3D files for whatever game you want and play, this gives so many excellent options to explore and try. And with the Bambu A1 mini it’s not the most expensive solution either. It cost me €200 and all of these models were printed with Sunlu PLA, which cost me €13 for 1kg. So the models cost me about 10-20 cents per model in PLA.

All in all, I think this is a fantastic solution for people who don’t want to hassle with resins, isopropyl alcohol, resin waste, UV lights, etc. My Bambu is in the attic with decent ventilation, so I can print with ease and without worrying about the fumes around me and my loved ones. And the printing process is so easy. Make sure your printing bed is empty and clean, ready the 3D files, press print and done.
And for the plastic waste you’re creating with failed prints and printer poop, there are all kinds of maker labs around that reuse the plastic for other projects. So don’t bin it, but save it and make sure the plastic gets reused

* For those not into 3D printing, this happens when something breaks off the print plate or from the model and the printer cannot adhere the plastic well where it should. The molten plastic is still pushed through the printhead and it will become…spaghetti! In most cases this means a failed print

[Gunbird]

Still baffled you can get these results with a 200 euro plastic printer nowadays, but you showed me and explained (again) the details at last mondays online painting session.....it is driving me to the point of finally buying one for myself tbh.

Great work and lovely paint jobs as always

[mikedemana]

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but to me the real drawback of 3-D printed figures still is how fragile they are. Any mishandling and they snap at the ankles or arm, or whatever. 3-D printed spears or pikes are an absolute joke.

The detail is getting better and better, I admit. They look nice, but will they survive the rigors of the tabletop?

Battening down the hatches, waiting for inevitable shell fire from 3-D enthusiasts...

Mike Demana

[Pattus Magnus]

My experience with 3D prints is limited. That said, I haven’t found that filament prints are fragile. The 10mm buildings I have are at least as durable as hard plastic. Resin is another story, but even then they don’t seem much worse than cast resin. The filament prints the OP shows will probably hold up well to normal gaming. I’m kind of amazed how well they turned out!

[Malebolgia]

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but to me the real drawback of 3-D printed figures still is how fragile they are. Any mishandling and they snap at the ankles or arm, or whatever. 3-D printed spears or pikes are an absolute joke.

The detail is getting better and better, I admit. They look nice, but will they survive the rigors of the tabletop?

Battening down the hatches, waiting for inevitable shell fire from 3-D enthusiasts...

Mike Demana

Although small parts can indeed break, once it's all glued it's quite sturdy. It's sturdier than most 3D printed resins (although the newer resin formulations are also quite strong and durable).
And yes, you need to be a bit careful with them on the table. But honestly, I do this with all of my painted miniatures...whether they are resin, metal, plastic or whatever material

[Tofty]

Very interesting OP, thanks for sharing.
I'll have to watch the video as I'd written this off as a viable technique without really considering it.

[Daeothar]

Great stuff 

Although I'm still quite sensitive to any form of layer lines, I must admit those are also there with my rickety old resin printer though (see the results in my 'Abandoned Paintjobs' thread), and they're really very minimal on your examples

So perhaps the moment has come to branch out and get into filament printing as well. Mind; mostly for terrain elements (at first ), but I do need a dust free space to put it in. Because my resin printer sits on my workbench in the garage at the moment, which works because it has a dust-free cover, but that environment will not be clean enough for an open filament printer...

Anyway; great PJ's as well; they will work wonderfully on the table for sure

[Ragsta]

Thank you for posting this, Malebolgia! Those look like nice results (and nice painting). It looks like a cool mod for FDM printers.

[sundayhero]

Nice minis !

I also printed some FDM abs figures on my old anycubic i3 mega (not as good as the bamboolab). The result is decent I believe.




I'm using unsupported models, and put classic support around them.

[pixelgeek]

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but to me the real drawback of 3-D printed figures still is how fragile they are.

It depends on what type of filament you use. There has been a lot of work done on it (as you can expect) and some of the new formulations they use now are quite robust.

[sundayhero]

personaly I'm using ABS filament. Very sturdy.

[PeteW]

Interesting stuff here, and impressive printing.

I've been considering getting a A1 mini, and am close to pushing the button, but I have a quick question. I'm not very techy so am asking here as rather than somewhere where I may well be overloaded with techy answers.

My PC is old, and so connects to the net via a cable and does not have wifi. Will I still be able to connect the printer to the PC via a cable, and if so any ideas which I will require. (The PC seems to only have standard USB ports)

any help appreciated

thanks

P

[Daeothar]

It has a micro SD card slot, so it stands to reason that it would accept and print designs from there?

My old Elegoo Mars 2 Pro resin printer accepts USB sticks and that's the only way I've printed on it so far...

[Westfalia Chris]

It has a micro SD card slot, so it stands to reason that it would accept and print designs from there?
(...)

That's the option I use. I did not want to put it into my Wi-Fi, so I'm using the MicroSD it came equipped with and another which I swap around. The actual handling on the printer is easy, just select the largest pane in the screen menu and choose the file to print (they're shown latest to oldest with thumbnails).

Be advised, though, that the card must be formatted to FAT32 standard, so you cannot use cards with more storage capacity than 32 GB. That should be more than enough, though, unless you want to use the video camera to film the printing process, that one gobbles up storage with a vengeance. First thing I disabled in the settings.

So in that case,  you'll also need a MicroSD adapter and a card reading device which connects via USB. It is a bit less comfortable when it comes to handling than wi-fi, but that's okay with me.

[PeteW]

Cheers Gents - that's helpful info - button duly pushed

P