I’ve been in the 3D printing game for several years now, and I’m realizing that, I as I talk about it more, I’ve just assumed everyone would know what I’m talking about. But like any acquired skill or experience, from airbrushing to driving to emptying a dishwasher, there are always those who are ascending the learning curve behind you.

This isn’t intended to turn anyone into a 3D expert, and those with heavy experience will probably find it quite basic. But that’s the intention. So much of this world gets covered from other angles, but there aren’t a lot of resources that break it down for miniaturists and modelers.

I’m going to start with the first step: designing something that will be 3D printed.

3D Design Software

Just like you use MS Word or Google Docs to create documents, there are a variety of apps out there for designing three-dimensional items. But there are four important things to rememeber:

• None of these applications are designed with modeling in mind. Some are derived from CAD (computer-aided design). Some are more anchored in sculpting. Some are more focused on animation or character design for video games.
• None of these applications is good at everything.
• All of these applications have no-shit learning curves, especially if you don’t have background in them (which I did not!)
• Most of them are not cheap.

And they all work a little bit differently.

Autodesk Fusion is largely a parametric design app. You create 2D sketches and then extrude, revolve and otherwise screw with them to build the 3D shape you want. This is generally great for inorganic shapes – machines and such. But getting it to model curves the way you want can be an ordeal.

ZBrush is more sculpting based and seems to be the preferred tool of figure designers.

Rhino is NURBS-based (admission – I don’t really know what NURBs are or how they’re different from voxels) and its computational sidecar, Grasshopper, is supposed to be amazing for doing cool and complicated math-based modeling. It’s on my list to dig into.

Blender is a voxel-based program and has the massive benefit of being free. It’s also pretty good at a lot of things, including sculpting and rendering. It’s a seriously powerful program, but it’s primary challenge is figuring out how to do a thing in a consistent, repeatable way. Remember Gandalf in the archives of Minas Tirinth? That’s what figuring out Blender tools feels like.

There are so many others – but these are the applications I’m most familiar with. And again, this isn’t meant as an exhaustive thing so much as a starting point.

Types of 3D Printing

Once you’ve designed something in Fusion or Blender or Rhino, you need to print it. But what type of 3D printing should you use?

I’m sure it’ll drive Will Pattison up the wall, but for our purposes here, there are two types of 3D-printing: resin and filament. Yeah yeah, technically there are others, but none that are common for prosumer use. So let’s stick with resin and filament.

Both printers operate off the same basic foundation, in that you take your 3D file, import it into another application called a slicer, and that slicer prepares your file for printing by slicing it into thousands of layers. These printers then print your file one layer at a time.

Filament printers work by feeding filament through a heated extruder that moves on an X/Y axis while the build plate (at least on my Bambu) moves up and down to cover the Z axis. Filament – or FDM – is really useful for printing 1:1 functional things. For example, cupholders for my Defender, or paint organization for my tool cabinets.

Due to the way it prints and the size of the extruder nozzles, filament printers tend to show more pronounced layer lines and struggle with fine detail. So they aren’t really ideal for miniature work – but they can be really useful for printing bases, or for printing structural elements that you can then “skin” in thinner resin prints.

Resin printers work in a similar but totally different way.

With resin printers, you fill a vat with UV-curing liquid resin. The bottom of the vat is a clear film, usually FEP or ACF. Beneath that film is a light source, usually an LCD, that projects a single layer of your file up into the vat. The resin that’s exposed to the light cures, gets lifted slightly away by the build plate, and then you rinse and repeat that process thousands of times.

When planning a print, it’s important to know which you’re going to use, since it makes a huge different in various print considerations, particularly supports.

Because these printers use layers, every layer has to be adequately supported the one preceding it. Otherwise you get what are called “islands” where there’s a change the print won’t take.

For a filament printer, you really want to just stick as much of it flat on the build plate as you can, and minimize the need to support anything at all.

For a resin printer, you have to remember that the print will build upside down. So supports aren’t holding your part up so much as keeping it from falling off of the build plate. This definitely changes consideration on the size and location of supports.

On both types of prints, supports have a nasty habit of totally fucking surfaces and fine details, so ideally you want to orient your print in a way that minimizes the impact of your supports.

A Note on Toxicity

I wouldn’t want to sleep next to either type of printer. Filament printers are literally burning and melting plastic, and resin printers are basically a chemical hell. You don’t want to breathe it in or get it on your skin. And the chemicals you use to process resin prints aren’t much better.

So…ideally set up your printer in a room good ventilation and preferably one where you don’t need to be in its vicinity all the time. And invest in gloves and a respirator for when you’re working with liquid resin. But hell – if you’re airbrushing you should already have the necessary PPE.

File Formats

Every 3D design app has its own file format. Fusion has F3D. Blender has .blend. You get the idea. If you’ve used any kind of specialty application ever, you know how universal this is. Word has .doc. Photoshop has .psd, and so on. Same thing.

To get a file you can print from, you’ll need to export your design. The two preferred options for this are STL and OBJ files. They aren’t the only ones, but they’re far and away the most common, particularly if you’re buying files to print.

STL (Stereolithography) files only contain surface geometry, in the form of a mesh of tons of triangles that describe the shape.

OBJ (Wavefront Object) files contain that geometry plus extra data like vertex positions, UV coordinates and normals, which are more relevant for shading, rendering and animation.

Slicing Software

Slicers are where you import your STL, set up supports, set your print settings, and export everything in a format your 3D printer can read.

For resin, I use Lychee. There are other options out there – like Chitubox – but I’m so accustomed to Lychee at this point.

For filament, I use Bambu Studio. It (usually) makes everything more or less automatic, and I wish all slicing ecosystems were as not-shitty as Bambu.

Getting into all the quirks of slicing software is a way bigger topic than this post though, so…onward!

Resin Printing

Okay, so as covered above, resin printers work by exposing a thin layer of liquid resin to UV light, then raising the build plate to let more resin flow in, and repeating the process.

The main things to keep in mind are weight and suction/friction forces of the build plate pulling cured resin off the FEP. Both can result in failed prints or prints warped all to hell.

Another thing to consider is that print time is entirely dependent on the Z-axis. Doesn’t matter how much shit you stuff onto the build plate. All that matters is the height. A single 5mm cylinder that’s 30mm tall will take 6 times as long to print as 50 5mm cylinders that are 5mm tall.

Resins

There are so many resins to choose from, and just like the old film photography days, people tend to find something they like and stick with it. I know a lot of people who love SirayaTech’s Navy Gray, for example, but for me it’s never been anything but a warp fest, with flat prints turning into tacos overnight.

I tend to stick to known performers – Phrozen Aqua-Grey 8K and Hyperfine resins – but as my printing will be accelerating here, I’m planning to experiment with some of the newer players on the scene, because hey, if you can find equal performance for less…

Processing Prints

Processing resin prints is basically a three step process. You need to clear away the excess, uncured resin. You need to let the print dry. And then you need to cure it with UV light to “bake” it.

My preferred method at the moment is to remove prints from the build plate (quick swipe with a palette knife), then give them a quick rinse with acetone in a squeeze bottle. This knocks off most of the uncured resin without dirtying up a whole container. From there, they get swished around in a container of denatured alcohol, then a container of Sunlu resin detergent, and finally they get a good rinsing under running water for a minute or so.

After letting things dry, it’s into the UV curing setup for 2 minutes. And that’s all there is to it.

Things I Wish Someone Told Me

• Think about some supports as load bearing, and others as detail preserving. A spiderweb of tiny supports can ensure sharp edges, etc, but won’t hold up a beefy print. You need both.
• Use an LCD screen protector if your printer doesn’t come with one. That’s an expensive lesson if you have a FEP failure.
• You’ll probably need to slightly increase exposure time for larger prints.
• If you wait like 24 hours between washing and UV curing your prints, they seem much less prone to warping.
• Acetone is a great resin cleaner and readily available.

Filament Printing

Filament printing has mostly already been covered in terms of how it works. But there are a few extra items worth mentioning.

Nozzle sizes determine print quality. The standard nozzle on my Bambu P1S is a 0.4mm nozzle, but you can swap out to a larger 0.6mm or 0.8mm, or a smaller 0.2mm. The 0.2mm creates ridiculously cleaner prints, but they take so much longer, and the nozzle is more prone to jams.

Likewise, the 0.6mm prints tend to look…not great…but they have the advantage of printing really fucking fast. Perfect for prototyping or for prints where aesthetics won’t matter. They also tend to not be as prone to weird jams.

Another thing is that many printers are capable of printing in multiple colors (usually with add-on hardware like Bambu’s AMS). The appeal of this for me is much more multi-material than multi-color, but it’s a thing you can do.

Filaments

The most common filaments are all quite common plastics – PLA, PETG, and ABS.

For anything touching modeling, PLA should be fine. It’s easily the most predictable and print-friendly option. And any harsh conditions that would degrade it would degrade whatever it’s being used with, too.

If you’re making something that’s functional and needs to take a beating every now and then, go with PETG or ABS.

Things I Wish Someone Told Me

I don’t have many of these yet – but a big one is that heat and humidity can fuck up filament performance. Kind of important when your printer lives in a garage in central Texas!

That’s All…For Now

Like I said, this is more of a broad overview to give a somewhat more solid footing, not a particularly deep or nuanced dive. If you’re looking for things like support strategies or resin comparisons, this isn’t really that post.