Making the Bambu Mini pay for itself UPDATED

       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 print 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.

 

 

minis that I have assembled so far 

 

it's probably hard to read but in the gray box you can see that each minis weighs roughly  0.94g 

       With filament costing about $0.13 a gram that mean two figures cost less than three cents, thus the forty-eight figures I printed  came to a a total of around $6.24US. With plastic figures running over a dollar each these days I saved over forty dollars. That means I "only" have to print another couple of hundred minis to be in the black (never mind the hundreds of minis I have already printed) ......Ahhhh, the lovely land of justification! 

          Mind you the link listed above provides files for complete minis, heads, arms, weapons  simply everything, so don't imagine that you need a pile of disused bits to take advantage of this sort of savings. 

       I tore apart several minis doing destructive testing to see how well the glue joints held up. I am happy to report that they failed at the same rate and in the same way that the pure-plastic minis did. The glue I am using is Testors Tube cement which comes in the classic red and white tube with the white cap.