October 2021 – Crazmadsci

October 31, 2021October 31, 2021 crazmadsci Uncategorized

Happy Anniversary: A Year in Review of Resin Printing

October 31, 2021

Last week marks a special milestone for me, One Year of Owning a Resin Printer. I can’t believe that I have only printed on my Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K for only a year because looking back on it, WOW have I accomplished a lot. While I printed my first resin miniature back in 2018, i’ve waited some time to have my own.

Since I have had a resin printer in my home for a year I thought i’d take this opportunity to share some of the questions I answered before jumping into this aspect of the 3D printing hobby and share some of my experiences.

My shiny resin printer ready to be played with right out of the box.

Backstory

Over the last two years, resin printing has absolutely exploded. Printing in your home has become significantly more affordable as well as product variety in both the printers and material.

When I started looking in the 3D printing hobby, entry resin printers started around $500 with average cost of resin $60 for 1 kg of resin. Now people can get into the hobby for less than $200 a printer with resin costing about $30-$40 a kg for average users. On top of that material resin has grown in water washable resin, tough resins, flexible resins, transparent resins and more. These were available in the past but the number of companies offering options and variable price points around the world have grown tremendously along with improvements in formulas.

Not only has the cost of resin printing and availability of products grown over time but the market is absolutely stuffed full of artists and there hasn’t been a better time to find model variety for your tabletop games, display painting, wargaming etc.

My Personal Goals & Criteria for a Resin Printer

Before jumping into resin printing I set rules and answered several questions before buying.

Budget: Around $250
Printing Usage: Primarily miniature figures and bits
Size: Did not matter for me as I already owned a large volume printer with my Prusa Mk3s FDM printer
Goals: To create model figures and things I haven’t been able to do well on my FDM printer. Also learn a new method & technology of 3D printing

Narrowing Down the List

In summer of 2020 when I was researching what resin 3D printer to buy a few major milestones in resin printing development were happening for the 3D community.

Large Format printers were hitting the marketplace for the the everyday hobbyist. These include products like the Elegoo Saturn which is almost 3 times larger in volume than the Elegoo Mars 2. Why is this important?
- Faster printing: Since the build plate is larger. Hobbyists can make more objects at a single time making it capable of producing more miniatures per print in the same amount of time.
- Print Larger Objects: Due to the larger volume in both the print bed but also the Z-axis. People can now print buildings and larger monsters easier with fewer cuts and keys.

Monochrome Screens were being released as a new and improved screen for resin printing. Example model the Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K. Essentially each monochrome screen aimed to project more blue light at 405 mm wavelengths which is the light used in the photochemical reaction of resin printing. This is an improvement over the standard LCD screen with equivalent light sources of Red, Yellow, Blue. Why is this important?
- Faster Printing. Since there is a higher light efficiency projecting from the screen. Print exposure times go significantly down meaning it takes less time to cure each layer of resin and therefore producing a miniature faster.
- Longer Screen Life Spans: since the screen is emitting light more efficiently, it is therefore on for shorter intervals and will last longer. This saves the consumer more money in the long run in having to replace the screen. Marketing of monochrome printers say the lifespan can be 4 times longer than its LCD counterpart but only time will tell if that is true.

Since the evolution of 3D printing would undoubtedly result in faster printing the question still remained. Did I prefer a larger printing volume or higher resolution printer with a longer life span?

You might be asking “what do you mean higher resolution printer?” Glad you asked resin printing is based on the resolution of the pixel density of the screen and not just the resolution of the screen. Therefore if a printer has the same 4K resolution but one has a larger print volume the XY resolution of that printer would less than a 4K resolution small printer. As you might have guessed from reading my blog already I decided upon the Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K which was a 35 micron XY resolution printer vs the Elegoo Saturn with a 50 micron XY resolution.

At that time the Phrozen sonic mini 4K had the best marketed XY resolution ever to hit the hobbyist market. Currently it is matched with the Elegoo Mars 3 at 35 microns and beaten by the Epax X1-4K at 32 microns. Due to it being one of the first of its kind I did go slightly over my budget (approximately $300 early bird special) and jumped on the 1st wave of orders. I was absolutely thrilled to begin this new chapter of my printing journey.

Safety Concerns

One of the largest reasons why I waited so long to get into resin printing was not having a safe space for harmful fumes while printing as well as having a working space for resin away from my small curious and ever growing child. The safety concerns and studies regarding resin printing are vast and too big for discussion today but let me know in the comments if you wish for me to go into it more.

Even though I did spend roughly a month printing out of an old wooden wardrobe. My partner and I built an enclosure to become the future home and current home of both printers, their materials, and tools needed while venting out of the house.

Once I got the printer, the setup, I set to work.

Lessons Learned

Admitting my Stubbornness

Much like the excitement of starting 3D printing, resin printing completely opened a whole new world for me. While i’ll always be an advocate of FDM printing and consider there to still be a place for filament printed miniatures. I admit I absolutely prefer resin printed miniatures over FDM. I am without a doubt someone who will “Fight” others to say you can print tabletop standard in FDM but resin miniatures are leaps and bounds better in quality with less time committed than FDM.

Resin (left) vs FDM (right) of a jaill cell

Troubleshooting & Getting Started

When in doubt relevel your print bed. This is the cause of a significant vast majority of 3D printing issues for resin and unfortunately takes practice.

Also factory settings or even other peoples settings are not the best print settings for your printing environment and printer. Resin printing can be more temperamental than FDM so just sharing of print profiles does not work as easily. use these as recommendations to start from and run many calibrations.

Avoid Being a First Adopter

I now vow to avoid being a first adopter to a printer in the future. As one of the first people to own a Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K I absolutely love my printer BUT it isn’t perfect. What i’ve learned the hard way is that printers come out so quickly in-depth quality assurance is not always the case. Thankfully the model has improved over time for new owners purchasing the mini 4K. I’ve most nortiously struggled with my z-axis and issues associated with it such as banding and locking into place.

For the future i’ll wait a year or so before buying into a printer and let others pioneer the path. Being a mom of young kids I do not have the time anymore for such indepth troubleshooting.

First Prints

To start off printing I jumped right in and printed my absolute favorite monster the Owlbear. This baby owlbear is made by Manuel Boria and is one of the models in his welcome pack for joining his patreon. There are 3 in this set and immediately I was blown away by the detail of the sculpt with the tiny paws, fur texture and even cute eyes. Also looking back i’ve realized that i’ve also significantly improved my miniature photography skills.

Most Failures & Most Expensive Printing

I’ll never forget the hard hard lesson of knowing how much resin you should put into your printing vat. I must have failed about 4 times on the top leaves portion of the Heartwood Treant by Lost Adventures Co. Each failure was around $6 an attempt, ouch. This is by far now the most “expensive” model in my collection to print because of it.

Favorite Model

My absolutely favorite model printed to date was one I least expected the Graveyard Golem. Man does this figure have some incredible character. Much like I describe on the write up for printing this model I did not expect to fall in love with the model like I did. However the render of the figure did not do it justice for all the detail and storytelling found on the figure. I can’t wait to paint this!

Graveyard Golem - Khaldoth the Corpse Keeper

Conclusions

Overall resin printing has not only really enhanced my 3D printing experience but in general has really motivated and inspired me to paint more. I truly do not think I was fully into the hobby as a “miniature painter” but after being able to print incredibly detailed sculpts and bring ideas to life it absolutely has changed me. I still consider myself new as a miniature painter and attempted to grow but have completely jumped into the hobby space.

Over the course of the last year i’ve learned a lot, grown a lot and have even recently joined the ranks of doing professional 3D printing support work. I am working diligently to bring much of my collective knowledge and reference material to life in a brand new “Printing Section” of the website. This section will contain, how to get started, troubleshooting, FAQ, tools and materials and more.

If you are on the fence of jumping into 3D printing i’d say it is absolutely worth it and there couldn’t be a better time to jump in the hobby. Have questions? Don’t hesitate to ask below as I’m always willing to help in your journey.

Are you working on anything special? Do you print miniatures or are thinking about it? Let me know in the comments.

As always Happy Crafting,
Carrie aka crazmadsci the Crazy Mad Scientist.

October 11, 2021October 11, 2021 crazmadsci Games

Frostgrave Part 5: Frostgrave Game Day

October 11, 2021

Now for the seriously overdue conclusion to my Frostgrave series. I truly do not know where to begin, I’ve spent the last few weeks ruminating on how to articulate the experience and journey. In short it has caused some serious writers block.

Its been an absolutely wild ride. I started this project at the end of July with the quest towards an epic day of gaming and playing Frostgrave with my wonderful husband. Over the course of the past two months I’ve been tirelessly planning, printing, and painting as much as I could to truly bring a terrain dense and immersive game day. This was to accomplish two primary goals.

Try to overcome some of the downfalls from truly enjoying the game in our first few games from February which I discuss in Frostgrave Beginnings.

Due to the lack of terrain the game was significantly overpowered towards ranged attacks which reduced the fun of the game for me and really felt tremendously unbalanced as a game. Conclusion Learned: Yes increased terrain does significantly reduce the power of ranged combatants and really make things fun for all warband members.

I really needed a day to bond with my best friend which wasn’t just about our kids.

If those of you do not know we added another member to our crazy family four months ago and of course newborns can take a serious chunk of time out of your schedule. On top of that, due to Covid it has been incredibly difficult to have a date night or get out of the house. So the result was to find a baby sitter to watch the kids and be able to have a day of action filled gaming. As we do not currently have an active Tabletop group I was sorely missing being able to play and is a big piece of things we enjoy doing together. This was something that I could plan in advance and really get hyped about with him.

Overall I think these goals were accomplished. Now before I get into it more lets check out a few of the action shots.

Scenario: The Mausoleum

Our first game consisted of playing one of the very first scenarios you read in the core rule book for Frostgrave the Mausoleum. This scenario requires two things; a mausoleum and skeletons.

The mausoleum is placed in the center of the board and has 4 sides with doors on each side. There are four treasures on each of the corners of the mausoleum and two placed by players within nine inches of the mausoleum. Of course Mr. Crazy had to place a treasure on the very top of the mausoleum to climb and get to while I placed my extra on a stack of barrels which also had to be climbed (or a well aimed Telekinesis spell). The added features about the scenario is the fact that a skeleton will come out of a random door at the end of a turn along with the monster rolls when treasure was picked up and we added the optional monster encounter rules. This of course lead to a growing danger of more and more monsters as you started to dwindle in warband members.

Overall it was a great and very close game. Mr. Crazy shut down my Sigilist really soundless with Curse and Plague of Insects making it almost impossible to cast any spell. My wardog Yippers was the real MVP and killed almost half of his warband in protecting my people trying to get the treasure. In the end I captured 3 treasures while he only captured 2 with one left on the board swarmed by monsters and unable to be retrieved.

Scenario: The Keep

For game number two we played the scenario the Keep. This story sets up with four magical discs which hold treasure but could magically teleport to a random one of the four. When a player tries to pick up the treasure you would teleport. What made this game interesting is the fact that you could potentially teleport into the enemy own disc and suddenly it becomes incredibly difficult to run away.

This game I really loved the set up of the discs and usage of the ruins from Hagglethorn Hollow. However I did find some areas too clustered for good movement. The more open area allowed for significantly more movement and sometimes advantage for team Necromancer and made my Sigilist warband only transverse less than 1/4th of the board. I definitely feel as if I swung to far in density. But you never know until you try right?

Conclusion of a Major Project

While I of course didn’t complete every goal I set out to accomplish in this endeavor, I’m incredibly thrilled in what I have accomplished. Ironically during the course of this project I have been constantly reminded by friends and family that I am incapable of doing anything halfway. So to not even start painting pieces of terrain or even prime in some cases definitely bothered me. However there was an indescribable feeling of satisfaction and excitement sitting down at that table after all that time. Knowing you put in so much time and effort and seeing the fruit of your labor and enjoying it for a game is why I started the hobby in the first place.

Overall project and experience are definitely going to end up being a hobby highlight for the year. I had so much fun, my cheeks hurt from smiling for hours afterwards. It felt incredible to have things to plan for and talk about moving.

The Highs

Printing
Almost every single piece of terrain 3D printed on this map was created in the 2021 year (exception of the Mausoleum in the center). Approximately 80% of the terrain was made in a two month span August – September 2021. Some ruined buildings and pillars were made earlier in the year.

100% of this Battle Mat and our Warbands are 3D Printed! Note some random encounter monsters are manufactured miniatures, mostly reaper.

Battle Mat
Usage of Scatter Terrain was 100% a game changer for me and fantastic. I loved having treasure stacked on top of a bunch of barrels requiring you to climb up to them (Or use telekinesis) along with having figures standing on crates to get a better vantage point for shooting. There is so much versatility in spells and cover and highly recommend putting in the time for a collection of scatter terrain.

Painting
Lastly the largest high is that every single member of our warbands had paint on it. They were not 100% finished to my typical standards but having painted minis on the table was an incredible feeling. In the end I painted a record of 19 models in the two month span and of course took the majority of my painting time.

All painted models for August and September

The feeling of community. During this project I really bonded and shared what I do and what I enjoy with not only my husband but also friends. They cheered me on and even helped in the painting of some terrain and models. The tabletop crafting and miniature painting hobby can sometimes be incredibly lonely and it was an absolute treat to be able to have others apart of my journey. If you have been following along with me on this project I thank you for cheering me on.

The Lows

I of course was disappointed that I did not have the time to paint everything. Yes I know I was being overly ambitious but a girl can dream. At least you can get a glimpse of the colored filament I was trying to use up, I almost always paint what I print (or aspire to) so colored filament doesn’t matter to me.

It also strangely bothered me that I did not have a 3 foot by 3 foot battle mat and I used green construction paper to flush it out. I also do not own a frost or snow themed battle mat (yet) as the 2 foot x 3 foot mat I bought is coming later in the year from a Kickstarter by EC3D Dungeonmats who made the current dungeon mat I am using. I love the double sided mats so much I decided to back their latest kickstarter to get a frost one.

I didn’t fit in all the aspects of map layout design I really wanted to accomplish. I worked hard on a bridge and river to attempt to incorporate water into my board but in the end it did not make sense space wise for the games. I did spend a good deal of time on that and am definitely disappointed it didn’t make it in. This resulted in all the research I did in my map design to be kinda thrown out the window but did turn out to be a fun table in the end regardless.

Hobby burn out. Working so hard on so many things seriously have taken a toll on my hobby printing and painting since game day. It was incredibly difficult to keep up with all the various things I was producing, their hobby status, what I was missing and keeping it all organized. I normally am great with creating pages and print logs for every single thing but in the mad Hussle to get stuff on the table I have yet to compile the data for better searching of what is out there in the community. This is definitely something I plan to fix in the future.

Since the conclusion of this project I haven’t dove seriously into anything yet for personal hobby time but have officially started working professionally in the 3D printing space. Don’t worry i’ll share more in the time to come.

What’s Next in Frostgrave?

The Frostgrave series on the site has truly been something special for me and obviously based on comments and feedback a project others can relate with. So I am opening this up to a group conversation and am curious what you think you would like to see and read.

Would you like to follow on our adventures with Battle Reports of our games?
Would a useful section of the site specific for Frostgrave be useful on images and tools of how some of the rules work? (A birth of a game section for the site)
A quest to paint every miniature in the bestiary?
Reviews of supplements and expansions? What is in them, what they provide
Simplified “what you need to play?” so other new players can join in the fun.

Or perhaps should I start and prep for a different game in the Joseph Mccullough collection such as Ghost of the Archipelago, Ranges of Shadowdeep, Stargrave.

Let me know!

As always happy hobby and have a wonderful day.

Cheers,
Carrie, Crazmadsci the Crazy mad scientist

Frostgrave Series

Part 1: Frostgrave beginnings

Part 2: Map Design

Part 3: Printed Warbands

Part 4: Status Update

Part 5: Game Day

Month: October 2021