(I’ve been informed that I had been told complete BS by the person trying to tell me that resin printing 1:72 wargame minis would be stupidly expensive. As such, my question here is no longer relevant.)

I am considering the option to get back into miniature painting by starting with 3D printing my own custom figures.

Given the price difference, it would have to be plastic (I read PLA is a good option), and for my purposes it would mostly be 1:72 scale figures.

The deciding factor is whether at such a small scale PLA can achieve a level of detail that doesn’t look completely terrible. I’m used to 1:72 injection mold figures, and my previous paint work in the past was always so thick that much of the detail present on those would disappear anyway. So I’m really not looking for much.

But looking for existing images of such prints is very much not search engine friendly and I mostly just come up with Chinese soldier figures made out of some mystery material or figures of unknown scale.

Can anyone help me to find some reference pictures of 1:72 PLA figures so I can take a look if this level of detail is acceptable for me?

  • MatejEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    I have made some figurines 4-5cm in height, with some random PLA, maybe it can serve as example for you… Btw, what do you mean by 1:72?

    • Master YoraOPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      1 length unit on the model is 72 length units on the real object. Figures are about 2cm tall.

      • MatejEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Huh, 2cm in height… I have twice as much height there and it was very difficult and time consuming to remove supports, also the figurines are very fragile, I can imagine that 2cm figurines would be even more difficult. If you have two nozzles on the printer you could use the second to print water soluble support material

      • @benigninterventionEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        You’re going to want to consider layer height. The layer height on FDM printers can be set usually between .12mm to .28mm. You need to look at your models and their actual sizes and see if any features will fall within that range. Depending on the print orientation, those will likely not resolve.

        If you want higher resolution, you probably want a resin printer. They have more fidelity through screen resolution and the layer height can generally be between .025mm and .1mm. But they’re more expensive and the resin is more expensive than just about any filament.

        For 2cm model with a .2mm layer height, you’re looking at like 20 layers with an FDM printer. With a resin printer and 0.5mm layer height, closer to 50 layers.

        With a 2cm tall figure, in my opinion, you’ll have issues getting the resolution you want on any printer. Expect to spend a lot of time troubleshooting and calibrating and troubleshooting and recalibrating.

        I’ll be happy to be proven wrong!