Super glad you mentioned 'fun' as a pro. This isn't the first video that's asked 'Is 3D printing worth it?' and it's almost always solely answered in terms of cost. You don't need to feel pressured to print a load of stuff 'to justify the cost'. You just need to print enough to print the stuff you want and are having fun with. You should always consider whether it's something you can afford, for sure, but you should only print what you want and shouldn't feel bad if you only print a handful of things every so often if that's all you want.

Great video...I love my printer and agree with everything you have said. I am actually in the midst of a 'not printing anything' phase until I have painted the backlog of miniatures that are sitting there. I no longer have a pile of shame, I now have a hard drive of shame. I am in three Patreons giving me monthly miniatures. One is for my Geek club I run at my school. The kids love the Goonmaster stuff. I also am with Highland Miniatures, I am still painting Goblins, so you know how far I am behind. Finally I joined Wargames Atlantic... and here is the thing with this one. I am actually not sure why!

What I do to prevent the mess in Resin printing is *always* wash the printed objects while still on the build plate. I just take the build plate off the printer, pre wash it in a container which is big enough, then put the buildplate with the objects still attached into the wash container and let it all run. This way, when I'm removing the objects from the plate, I don't get a potential mess with uncured resin. I don't get uncured resin outside of my resin vat and alcohol containers. I know this takes more time which could be used for printing, but it saves *hugely* on potential mess and safety.

Great video, thanks for sharing. Tip: get a flexplate, so you don't have to take the entire build plate off, which gives less of a mess. I also collect disposable plastic food trays that I use to collect dripping resin when transporting my prints to the wash area.

All good points, no doubt! As a DnD DM my resin printer has been invaluable ever since I bought it. Being able to print not only every custom player character, but also bespoke monsters for any encounter elevated the immersion at my table tremendously. With the experience I got over the past 3 or 4 years, getting a 3D print done has become very much point and click. Now barely any of the cons you mention bother me anymore, failed prints occur only if I mess something up - like not having enough resin in the tank 🙈

I've been 3d printing for a while now, my pros are, with enough time I can potentially print any figure I would want or need for a lot of different gaming systems. I've stuck to printing things for myself and for my play group. If I'm printing something for me, I'm also printing something for my friends, or something new and interesting my play group can go against. My cons for 3d printing would also have to be the mess, there is a lot of prep work for cleaning your area, and miniatures when working with the resin. It has been an amazing investment and still provides me with new and interesting hobby projects to keep me busy for a while.

I have a 8k resin printer and use it to print miniatures for TTRPG's. Sure the printing is a bit messy, but for me at least, this is a minor issues. I buy my miniatures pre-supported from a few good creators, meaning that I almost never have any issues with failures (Once I dialled in my printer it has printed without issues for months. The dial in took only 3-4 calibration prints). I have a wash & cure station as well to reduce the mess even further. My main 'issue' is the painting process. Sure it can take 12 hours to print the item, but that happens unattended. Painting, at least for me, is a lot messier and time consuming than the printing process itself. I am a poor painter :-) Whether a 3d printer is worth it depends on whether you enjoy creating the prints yourself. For me, 3d printing my miniatures is a lot cheaper than buying them, and I feel I have a LOT more prints to chose from. With amount of creators out here these days, I can always find the exact type of print I want/need. And a purchase is almost instant. When buying, I am limited to the style and selection available at the time, plus delivery usually is counted in days. And all in all, yes, the resin printing is a bit messy, but with a bit of self control and planning, the mess can be reduced to a minimum. If you have many failed prints then yes the clean up becomes tiresome, but if you allow yourself the time to properly dial in your printer then you can save a LOT on the clean up of failures. When buying prints online, I usually only buy pre-supported prints. If the print is from a creator I haven't tried before, I usually do a test print of just one of their prints (single purchase) to verify that the creator known how to create printable figures, and knows how to support them. I do not think I have had a single fail print in the last 50 to 60 miniatures I have printed (and I usually prefer miniatures with lots of details and fiddly bits). So for me, 3d printing my miniatures is a no brainer. It is cheaper, and often faster. I can buy the exact miniature I want/need, without having to buy an entire box of 8 miniatures when I only will be using 2 of them. That said however, my Frozen Sonic mini 8ks printer is excellent and works perfectly. The Frozen Sonic Mini 4k printer I had before that, my very first resin printer, I never got to work right. Sure I had some good prints, but I had just as many failures as successes. Never was able to figure out why, and I wasted a lot of time on trying to fix it. Nearly killed any enjoyment I had for 3d printing constantly having to fight and clean the thing at almost every print. Think it must have had some kind of intermittent issue from the factory. Getting rid of it and getting the 8ks instead made everything about 3d printing so much better.

yes. If you get a good unit, it's great. But if you get a "stinker, all of the fun is immediately gone." So. I bought my (original Saturn 2) with the Wash and Cure package al together over $700 back at the end of March of this year. Got it first week of April. Set it up. Set up an entire room in my home to be this things area. Print test piece. Works. Watch some videos. Print first models. Failed. Watch more videos. change settings. Print more models. Some fail. Try again. Others fail in completely different ways. Printer starts failing in really weird ways. Gets half way through jobs and just stops working. Start conversation with Elegoo support. Not helpful. Continue for 2 weeks. some work, most don't. LCD straight up just dies. Well.. that's why it got weird. Wait over a week for a replacement LCD to arrive from China. Now performing major surgery on this thing less than a month into having it. Support from Elegoo is... poor. New LCD in place. Try again. Failed. Repeat multiple times. Most fail some work. Printer won't stay level. The ball joint is trash. Absolute trash. Buy a Wham Bam and install it. Still fails. Join Discord servers and start asking questions. Find the community to be... unhelpful. Go through the "dial in your settings" dance using various gimmick pieces. The flat thing you use. The boxes one. Some other thing that's kind of like a stylized city. OK. Settings "dialed in" after hours, bordering on days of "dialing in". Models still fail. Maybe they don't stick to the plate. Maybe the supports break off. Maybe they just slip part way through the job. Elegoo during this whole time is unhelpful and eventually just stop responding to my emails. Find that when I use the "dialed in" settings, it just won't ever actually successfully print a model. Dial settings back out. Back to it might work or might not. Community on multiple discord servers during this time go from "unhelpful" to "hot garbage" and the one member of the creator class that actually did try to help me eventually gave up with "I dont know, I found my Saturn 2 wouldn't really work at anything under 30 seconds bottom and 3 seconds layer also" after I went through days of the "dial in your settings" dance and ignoring the people that were starting to get angry with "do this or leave the hobby" replies. This continues until... about August when I finally got Elegoo to reply to "hey, wither replace this thing now or I'm reversing the charges on Paypal." They reply with "ok we have a no hassle return policy" which was a complete hassle because I had to return the thing to them in original packaging (which I luckily kept)... and then wait for 2 weeks to get the replacement. During this time I blocked multiple people on Discord that followed me to multiple servers to harass me over it and left pretty much every 3D printer Discord server I was on. Get new device. trash build plate still won't stay level. I kept my Wham Bammed plate and that at least stays level for 4 runs before I have to re-level again. Currently the printer sits idle on a table and I don't plan on trying again with it until spring. I honestly wish I had spent that $700+ on anything else. Friends that also had Saturn 2's said "never had any of those problems with mine." but then when I asked them "ok what settings do you use for the thing?" all answered "I don't remember I got rid of it and got a better printer". So yeah... experience has been poor. Elegoo are poor in every way and the community has managed to be almost as bad as the 40K community. And if/when I try again with the thing, I still won't know if it will work and why it can't just work.

Overall I love having a 3d printer. It opens up a whole new world of models and you can have as many copies as you want. Also I've learned to design my own stls, although I'm still an amateur it is very gratifying to produce your own objects. Cons are it can get stressful when it doesn't work properly and youre just wasting resin on failed print over and over and nothing you try works. There can be a lot of time spent going back and forth doing the washing, drying and curing and setting up the prints on the computer can take a long time if you want to fill the build plate every time. It can get expensive like you say, it all adds up. It is cheaper per mini but you have to keep in mind that you are still spending money on minis. You will increase your backlog, there will be a ton of stuff you print and it just goes into a box with all your other prints never to be seen again. Also since you paid less for them you may not feel like they're as high priority as other minis in your backlog. For newbies I recommend trying a few different resins, its worth the extra effort to find your go to resin for everything. (I recommend Sunlu standard plus). Also buy a printer from the big names like elegoo or anycubic since replacement parts will be easier to find. For resolution, I've found my 4k (6 inch screen) is more than adequate. I wouldn't sweat the resolution stuff too much.

Ideally you just have a friend that's into 3D printing and will do some prints for you. That way you get access to all the models that aren't available in plastic or even metal or cast resin but you don't have to have a separate room, clean up after you spill some resin or the other things that are annoying about printing. Another thing I don't like is the usual business model for 3D files. Mostly it's either subscriptions or models that seem over-priced until there is a 50% sale.

The instant gratification factor of 3d printing is huge for me. I see it, buy it, dl it, print it, clean it, and maybe base coat it all within a day.

Yes.

Disposal of waste is the absolute biggest pain for me. You can not (or absolutely should not) just throw uncured resin away. Curing it is not all that hard when the resin is by itself, but when it is integrated into a napkin in a bag filled with other resin waste can make it hard. To say nothing of curing resin in liquid such as water or IPA.

I have two resin printers and two fdm printers , that's the only thing that keeps me from getting bored, I do print too many army's in my garage all set up in a Ikea enclosed unit with heater for winter printing. Just printing fantasy empire army and thinking of a skeleton army as I've got all the files already through my patreon. Its a bit addictive for me, Just got to find time to paint.

I have a pen&paper background and am a father of three now (8, 5 and 3 years) and I want to do more and discover wargaming with my son and all that cool stuff. I was very excited about Resin printing at first and all the cool designs, but the toxicity and the mess really is a downer. Now I am so (!!) thankful for your experience with your perspective, as it matches so well with mine :) I have one question still that I cant find a satisfying answer to: The toxicity of the liquid resin and the whole process is clear to me (including the pain with the waste and all that), however what about the fully cured figures in comparison to professionally produced ones: Would you let your children play with the final results and are you confident, handling the figures won't release toxins over time after all? (I know there's a lot of unclear, maybe unsafe, toys out there, that you can buy in stores, but it's still different, printing them myself^^) And would you say the material beneath even makes a difference regarding toxicity after the painting is done? And do you use special paints for the stuff, that your children get their hands on, or just the standard acrylic paints? Thank you so much!

battletech life! 3d printing is great, and a pain yes. That being said it is hard to replace the Freedom you feel when can build/print something out. Then the feeling of ownership, I printed that, I painted it, I edited it etc you get a stronger bond with your thingies it hink. Got two STL files from two different creators? Why not grab your favorite guns from one creator and use them on the other? Finding a great community to start should be the literal instruction manual. The 3d print team on OnePageRules discord essentially taught me how to print lol.

Hi, great video. Can you advise me what grown tent you use please and the model of safety mask? do you extract the air from this grow tent? thanks, Ron

I think some of the false appeal is that we see you hobbying all of the time, being so productive, and we think “that could be me.” We don’t see all the work, we don’t feel all the disappointments, and we don’t realize how much time you sink into this because we might forget that for you, it is a business.

What spray box is that? Or did you make yours?

Does the FEP need to be replaced routinely, or only if it gets damaged?

it only gets expensive if you get addicted and buy four more ,>

Talks about fumes and toxic but you keep the top off.