Which 3D Printer to get for printing 1/6 figures Heads and parts??

[parallax1987]

Hello everyone. I am trying to save up to get a 3D printer for myself to make figures of some of my favorite characters and different artistic styles artist have used to draw them. Kind of like a Tim Sale Batman cause you know they will never make that figure. There are so many different 3D printers though and I have no idea about them. I know that a lot people that actually know about this kind of stuff don't like to talk about it and help other people with it for some reason. But I hope within this community that it will be different. Thank you everyone for taking the time to read this and help!

 

[goatchumby]

I used to think FormLabs had a great printer with the Form 2 but after seeing side by side examples at the zBrush summit a few weeks back I was very impressed with Sprintray's MoonRay DLP printer. The print detail was amazing with less maintenance than the Form 2 at the same (albeit high) price.

More affordable, filament based printers such as Makerbot tend to create noticeable stepping in prints that would require a lot of post-print work to recreate details lost in the printing process. I would research the different types of printing technologies out there and see what works for both your models and your budget.

 

[acesh007]

I dont think any home use printers will give you the quality as a commercial grade printer. I have a Lulzbot mini and 1/6th parts would be more work than to clean up than it would be to have something printed from Shapeways or if you have access to a commercial grade printer.

 

[darthviper107]

I used to think FormLabs had a great printer with the Form 2 but after seeing side by side examples at the zBrush summit a few weeks back I was very impressed with Sprintray's MoonRay DLP printer. The print detail was amazing with less maintenance than the Form 2 at the same (albeit high) price.

More affordable, filament based printers such as Makerbot tend to create noticeable stepping in prints that would require a lot of post-print work to recreate details lost in the printing process. I would research the different types of printing technologies out there and see what works for both your models and your budget.

I have the Form2 printer, and it's very good
As to how things compare to the Moonray--
The Moonray printer uses a DLP projector compared to the laser system that the Form2 uses. That makes the Moonray faster, however that also means that the X/Y resolution is tied to the build volume. To make the pixels smaller you have to make the projected image smaller and that decreases the X/Y dimensions. The Form2 on the other hand controls the laser with very fine motors which can move the laser in single-digit micron steps which gives full quality without affecting the print size and you will get no X/Y stepping.
For the Moonray the stepping is also a bit more because the resolution of the projector is only 1280x800.
The Formlabs software is also much more developed and easy to use. The Form2 is also wireless, you can set it up where you want and send files to it over the network and doesn't require a constant connection to the printer. With the Moonray, since it's using a projector it acts as a second monitor to your computer which requires a constant connection to your computer to function.
The biggest thing for me though with the Form2 is that they've done extensive testing to make sure their print settings work well, you can get started right away without having to experiment with settings. I haven't seen any other printer do testing that much and with the Moonray you would still have to mess with settings to try and get the best results.
The only downsides to the Form2 is that their customer service can struggle to deal with issues if you have a real problem (they are very reluctant to have a printer sent in for repair/replacement) and the resin/tanks can be pretty expensive and while you can use other resins with the printer, you can't adjust the settings so there's not a clear alternative to their expensive resin.

 

[volkov]

interesting topic, there should almost be a sticky thread for all 3d printing talk as to me it seems like something that is really going to get huge in the next couple of years

is there somewhere that people are sharing the 3d printable plans for 1/6 heads and stuff?

 

[volkov]

another question, is the quality of the under $500 printers good enough to print the fine details of a 1/6 face to Hot Toys standards?

 

[robbiethepainter]

another question, is the quality of the under $500 printers good enough to print the fine details of a 1/6 face to Hot Toys standards?

Not even close. Even $3000 printers struggle.

 

[goatchumby]

I'm no pro but I would guess to get that level of detail one would need to print, prime your print as needed, cast in wax, add fine details to the wax, recast.