One of the things that always bothered me about plastic minis was the huge number of spare bits that were left over after a build; dozens of heads, arms etc that were heading toward the recycling bin. I held onto the sprues, swearing that they were too useful to cast aside, and for once I was right. I stumbled across a free STL of Middle Ages warriors. by a fine fellow by the moniker of Illhadiel on Cults 3-d. Among the many files were several basic bodies with legs but no heads or arms. In an instant I knew I could use all those spare plastic parts and make my Bambu Mini a fiscally sound decision (retrospectively at least). With each mini using about two grams of FDM and a spool of FDM costing about $13US the price per body was just pennies.
it took a little work to get them the right size
but after that it was off to the races!
just the Dark Ages sprues,
I have a similar box for Lace Wars and Napoleonics
despite rumors to the contrary normal Testors
polystyrene cement seems to work just fine
the plastic bits needed a little trimming to make them fit
but I am a devoted figure modifier so that was no obstacle
in no time (well, actually about twenty minutes) I had these guys ready to go
I print them in batches of twenty-four which takes about eight hours
given my bed size I could probably print eighty or so at a time
but I can't imagine how long that would take
I am using a
Bambu Lab A1 Mini printer with a .02mm hot end and a layer height of .08mm. The filament I am using is from
Micro Center Inland 1.75mm PLA 3D which costs about $13US a kilogram spool. I am intrigued by the fact that normal plastic model cement seems to be working just fine for assembly, I had been told horror stories about trying to glue FDM and had a full bottle of superglue to hand in case. I will subject one of my minis to destructive testing and report back if there are any issues with using normal glue.
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