Reply To: 3D Printing… Where do I start?

[blinky465 17029xp 1]

If you want to print miniatures (and even fairly decent sized bits of terrain) a resin printer is the way to go. I got my AnyCubic Photon about 18 months ago, and love it. Even in such a short period of time, the technology has come on leaps and bounds (and “better” resins have been developed too).

Sure, it’s a bit messier than FDM, but the results are incomparible. My FDM printer hasn’t been switched on since I got my resin printer. The mono-screen ones aren’t much more expensive than the “original” ones, but if you’re looking to get started the AnyCubic Photon and Elegoo Mars (first gen) were being sold off pretty cheaply over the last few months. If you can stretch to a mono screen, I’d say go for it, but if you can get an “original generation” model at the right price, you won’t go too far wrong either.

For .stl files, Thingiverse is the obvious place to start. Or Yeggi. Check out myminifactory for cheap files, and there are plenty of free/pay-what-you-like minis on there too. Same for Gumroad. And of course, once you’re ready for your wallet to be emptied, there’s always Patreon.