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Project Entry by maledrakh

The Next Generation

October 5, 2020

I have at long last taken the plunge and bought a resin 3D printer. I have been waiting for water washable resin to become available in my country. When I found a supplier a few weeks ago I ordered an Elegoo Mars Pro.

After this arrived, I have been spending far too much time trying to print a selection of minis, most of which have failed in one way or another.

It turns out that most “pre-supported” minis are not really supported enough for me. Many of the minis have ended up being sucked off the supports or with flat bits here and there, such as arms and or legs. These kinds of failures are typically due to insufficient supports, and I am too much of a noob to be able to tweak the settings properly to make them work.

So instead I make my own supports, or beef up what is already there in some cases. I think I have gotten the hang of it, and most of my current prints are not failures. But now I might have too much supports. I spend ages snipping them off, often creating divots and marks here and there.

I would much rather have a few marks than failed prints!

As I learn how all this works, I hope to be able to tweak the settings and rely less on thick support structures.

But anyway, here is one of my first successful prints, all painted up:

This is the Demiliche by Cult Miniatures. Actually a freebie with their now closed Patreon.

I printed it in clear resin which promptly turned distinctly yellow after a spin in the UV-chamber.

A simple paint job, I used Citadel Tesseract Glow on the top and Vallejo Black Green ink on the bottom half, avoiding too much pooling. I tried using different contrast paints on the skull, but they did not work at all over the clear parts. I painted over with several bone colours, some blue and red for the eyes and jewel, and added a light wash of strong quickshade around the edges.

I put it on a 40mm base which itself was 3D printed but on my old FlashForge Finder. This has since been taken out of service due to my purchase of an Ender 3 pro to replace it. The FlashForge Finder was good as long as it lasted, but in the end the too-small print bed and mounting leveling problems spelled it’s doom.