by Kurgan » Sunday July 17th, 2022 9:49am
I've got to say that over the last six months I've had numerous 3d printed (resin) figures that I purchased on etsy break on me. Just so you know, I use my miniatures for playing on the board. I'm the only one who handles them and I'm pretty gentle with them. I store them in a plastic fishing box with foam padding. I subject them to what I would consider "normal use." They seem to fair worse than a plastic (polystyrene?) toy designed for 10 year olds in 1990, which is a disappointment. Looking back on my childhood I'm pretty sure we broke the "flames" off of the candlesticks on purpose one day, and one Skeleton got broken off of its base when it was stepped on by accident. Probably one or two other figures had their swords bent from similar incidents but overall the plastic held up remarkably well for nearly a decade of intense use by three children ages 6 and up. I had hoped to find something similar in 3d prints but we're not quite at that level yet it seems.
At least a half dozen prints have broken, from original 3d prints to re-creations of some of the old HQ minis. Limbs, swords, bits, have broken off or cracked, all within a short space of time. I'm not talking about dropping them off the table and finding them broken, but rather they're broken inside the case, at different times.
Let me reiterate that I'm not one of those guys who just tosses his minis into a box and tosses them around. I don't keep metal minis in there with my (mostly reaper but also some resin minis). I like to think I take good care of them and most of them are not broken (with the exception that I dropped a HeroForge "colored plastic" mini from about waist height onto a linoleum floor and a thin pistol part broke off). I'm sure however if the figures had stayed on a mantelpiece or something, they would probably still be pristine, but that's not what I use miniatures for.
Despite how good printed resin looks (and I've been told there are so many types of resin) I'm going to refrain in the future from buying such prints. I do print my minis but only give them the most basic jobs because I use them on the board (often on camera) as opposed to putting them up for display only. They were great for awhile, but simply don't hold up over time.
For the cost of these figures, it's just not worth it to me. I can easily glue them back together, but they're never the same and these are just too brittle. I'm not just talking about thin, spindly bits on custom designs that are obvious weakpoints, but like legs and arms. The old classic HQ style uses fairly "thick" designs that should be more resilient (other than the obvious "broken off swords" issue that the original plastics often suffered from in the hands of kids).
This may be a common problem, but if you too have gotten prints from Minis3D (one of the more popular sellers on etsy) after a year, have they broken? Sadly I already left him positive reviews. If he's on this forum (which may be the case) please know this isn't an attack on him so much as an attack on the process/material used that doesn't fit my needs.
From now on I'm either printing the stuff myself or having a family member do it for me using non-resin material. Thankfully it's getting easier and easier to do this rather than relying upon sellers on etsy or ebay (or other sites) to provide good looking minis that may or may not hold up. They're certainly not worth paying the prices people are asking for in these small batches for personal gaming... at least not in the resin being used.
I'm sure someone out there is going to come on here and reply that there's a better, stronger (and more expensive) resin that would solve all my problems, and new 3d printers are coming out all the time that are better than the last, etc. I'm open to learning about this, but at the same time, until it's my own printer or I am personally acquainted with the one printing, I'm not set to risk sinking anymore cash into that process.
Last edited by
Kurgan on Monday October 3rd, 2022 9:39pm, edited 4 times in total.