Reply To: Printing one of the Titan Forge Patreon minis with supports already done!

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I think the supports on Titan Forge (as well as Artisan Guild although they’re done by a different person) are basically medium (Chitubox) supports for the most, then reduced to small/thin for the last bit, connecting to the body. It means that if you’ve a 32mm (heroic) mini and you want to scale it down (Artisan Guild recommends scaling down to 86% or something for “true” 28mm scale) you’ll likely lose some of those super-fine supports.

In their favour, if you just “plop and print” (drop it into your slicer and hit go) they clean up really nicely. You can see from the images above, native supports in Chitubox are pretty chunky and leave some serious pit-marks in your model after removal. I’ve seen a few people have problems with failures on pre-supported models and it’s almost always under-exposure (so users often over-compensate and end up with “soapy” looking minis because they’ve whacked the exposure time up – it’s why I was interested in which printer @noyjatat was using because his prints look really crisp).

I’ve found that Prusa slicer supports are a nice compromise between not too chunky and not so thin they’ll fail. Auto placement in Prusa slicer knocks Chitubox into a cocked hat – Chitu places supports in weird places and often misses the lowest point of a model for a couple of layers (in the file validator, there are quite a few islands for a few layers before the shapes connect to the supports a few layers higher up).

@lawnor – I’m getting around 50-60 minis from a litre bottle of resin though I have done quite a bit of terrain too, so it might be getting more (though I still think the cost estimates in Chitubox are way out). I’ve used Anycubic standard grey and Elegoo ABS-like. Both are really good. I haven’t tried plant-based and I’ve no idea whether prints made with them would still be good in a few years time – I’m dubious. @warzan has tried water-washable resin and said it was hopeless so I’ve not tried it.

I used to put about 400ml of IPA into a glass jar and rinse 3-4 minis at a time in it (depending on size). It goes cloudy after a few uses, but can be filtered five or six times before I give up on it completely – I reckon I must have replaced it roughly each litre bottle of resin I used.

I’ve slowed down printing since resin has almost doubled in price in the last month or so. I used to buy off ebay but it’s substantially more expensive than Amazon at the minute. You can get 1L of ABS-like for about £38 on Amazon (though I’ve noticed people selling by weight now, and since resin is quite goopy 1kg < 1L ) and on AliExpress there are a few sellers in the EU (Poland, Czech Rep) shipping Anycubic resin into the UK selling at around £31/L.

I’ve tried DPM – Dipropylene Glycol Methyl Ether – instead of isopropyl alcohol; I use it both as a bath and in an ultrasonic cleaner. It’s ok. But it leaves the minis feeling greasy and I’m not convinced it’s as good as IPA. So I use it for a first wash, then still drop in what’s left of my IPA for a “final rinse”. I’ve yet to try spirits, but I’ve heard that windscreen wash is very good, so I’m going to try that next time I’m out and about (currently about once a week!)

I load up my plate with 6-8 minis (non-hollowed) at a time. I could probably squeeze a few more, but I like to leave 5-10mm around the edges – the UV light is stronger in the middle but I also reckon that staying away from the edges doesn’t over-stress the FEP when peeling each layer off during printing.