(I’ve been informed that I had been told complete BS by the person trying to tell me that resin printing 1:72 wargame minis would be stupidly expensive. As such, my question here is no longer relevant.)
I am considering the option to get back into miniature painting by starting with 3D printing my own custom figures.
Given the price difference, it would have to be plastic (I read PLA is a good option), and for my purposes it would mostly be 1:72 scale figures.
The deciding factor is whether at such a small scale PLA can achieve a level of detail that doesn’t look completely terrible. I’m used to 1:72 injection mold figures, and my previous paint work in the past was always so thick that much of the detail present on those would disappear anyway. So I’m really not looking for much.
But looking for existing images of such prints is very much not search engine friendly and I mostly just come up with Chinese soldier figures made out of some mystery material or figures of unknown scale.
Can anyone help me to find some reference pictures of 1:72 PLA figures so I can take a look if this level of detail is acceptable for me?
For what it’s worth, I would bet finishing an FDM print with paint will be more annoying due to the layer lines before the scale would get in the way with a modern 3d printer as FDM does not produce a smooth surface finish like an injection molded part without further post processing like vapor smoothing which would also eat the details. I don’t have a resin printer though so I could be totally wrong.
1:72 of what? A 5’9” man?
You can get decent detail out of PLA filament printing but if you are talking really small the better option is to use a resin printer.
But resin printers also seem like they are 10 times as expensive. Which is why I am asking if anyone can help me to find out how detailed PLA actually gets at that scale.
