Blog post about it here

In the past couple of months I’ve been 3d printing miniatures in 15mm scale using my Bambu Labs A1 mini with a 0.2mm nozzle and basic PLA filaments. The results so far were good, some better, some worse, but good enough for my (solo) table.

However, continuing my last post about painting these, I could not help but have a slight feeling of frustration fighting against these minor imperfections and layer lines.

So I decided to take a plunge further, and see if I can accomplish even better results on the printing side.

I’ll explain all my process, because I think there’s valuable info, if you don’t want to read it, and just want the print settings, scroll down.

The Basics

My machine is a Bambu Labs A1 mini. I have installed a 0.2mm nozzle. I got a big supply of ELEGOO PLA. It’s really cheap, as I got it at about 10 bucks a roll, final price with shipping, no customs or extra charges. Perhaps some more fancy filament would give better results, but that’s what I have and what I worked with.

Calibration

With Bambu Labs A1 mini I was complacent, reliant on the automated calibration settings, and just using filament manufacturer specs. It became evident to me that if I want to get the best print output I want, I’d have to do manual calibration.

I used Orca Slicer, and run a temperature tower from 190C to 230C. At the temperature of 190, 195 and 200 I had no stringing.

I then did a Flow Rate compensation test. For ELEGOO PLA the manufacturer gives a value of 0.98. After running the calibration, I increased it to 1.029, as I found the +5 had the best surface.

I followed up with the Pressure Advance test. I did, Line, Pattern and Tower. For my 0.2mm nozzle this gave the best results at k 0.2

Just a minor note that I also flow rate calibrated all my 3 opened colours (white, black and space gray) of ELEGOO PLA and got consistent results of 0.2 for my 0.2mm nozzle and 0.02 for my 0.4mm nozzle.

Finally I did a retraction tower calibration and got no stringing at all. So I kept the retraction length at 0.4 as proposed.

The I printed a miniature with temperature at 200C. The improvement was evident, but I could see very fine stringing on the prime tower, so I decided to go lower, at 190C which is within manufacturer specs and also was good at the temperature tower, and what do you know? Stringing disappeared.

The takeaway here is if you want to print minis, spend some time and calibrate your printer. It pays off.

With this out of the way, let’s talk about print settings.

Acknowledgements

First of all I’d like acknowledge /u/HOHansen’s major input into giving valuable guidelines, settings, painting tips and driving the FDMminiatures printing community forwards. Thanks. I doubt all of this would have been possible without a strong foundation to experiment with.

Also many thanks to Fat Dragon Miniatures who have shared their print profiles and show that nice quality minis are possible with FDM.

Settings

I won’t go into many details here, as I have done this thoroughly in the past, but give some highlights and thoughts, as well as as key improvements.

First of all I decided to experiment. I used Orca Slicer and used all their fancy bells and whistles. Scarf joints, Precise Z height, whatever I read that could improve quality and was experimental, I enabled.

I lowered my Layer Height to 0.03mm. Yes. That’s lower than the calculated 20% of nozzle size. I reduced resolution to 0.001 and also the Slice Gap Closing radius value.

I reduced the speeds significantly. Quality takes time. I get 2-3 hours of printing time for a single 15mm miniature. Silly? Not for me.

Kept Arachne, and my Prime Tower.

NOTE: I have not tackled support settings yet. If you need supports you’ll have to plug in your own settings, these do NOT work.

0.03 GA V002.json

Printing

Clean levelled plate, lubricated Axes, Dynamic Flow Calibration Disabled. Good to go.

Then I went ahead and printed a Brite mini with my fingers crossed. And what do you know? It worked, amazingly well if I may add. I then printed another one to ensure I have repeatability, and it wasn’t plain luck, it worked as well. Even my “shield” issue was gone (if you’ve noticed my prints so far, the shields had a warp in the lower left side).

There was no stringing and had to do no post processing with a lighter.

On purpose I chose well detailed miniatures like the space bandit and Greek hero.

Painting

I felt confident and decided to go ahead with my “regular” painting process and do my horizontal slap chop., a single damp coat of paint and varnish.

However as /u/Toprewolf proposed, I decided not to apply my regular water based washes, and experiment with Oil washes. Last time I had tried it, it didn’t work as I had hoped, but this time I studied better. I’m still expecting some quality supplies to arrive, but I still wanted to test it. So I decided to test an oil wash made with my dollar store oils on the Greek hero.

It’s still pending the oils to cure and an oil varnish to secure it. But it’s good enough to showcase.

I’m absolutely thrilled with the results. The layer lines are almost nonexistent and this was evident in all steps. Imperfections have vanished. I could see details in the toes and sandals, that my painting covered.

Once I get my quality oils and varnish the minis, I’ll take new photos but I know people are asking about this, so I wanted to share as early as possible.

Next Steps

I’ve decided to modulate my hobby time so as to have the most fun, so it’s going to be mostly playing on weekends and painting and printing on weekdays.

On the printing front, the next thing I want to address is Supports.

Summary

Printing high quality minis in small scales is possible in FDM. You’ll need a quality printer that is carefully calibrated and well maintained. Filament must be in a good condition. Reducing the layer and resolution means you’ll need to go slow. Going slow, in turn means reducing the temperature to avoid stringing and oozing. A prime tower is important to allow for the small 15mm mini to cool before the next layer.