I’m curious why you use Clear Resin for printing figurines. It seems you paint over the print anyway. I also use a Form 4 mainly for my miniature-painting hobby, and I think Grey V5 with the Supports 2.0 Reduced Density alpha profile is the best option. After printing, I put the model in hot water for about 10 seconds, and the supports come off incredibly smoothly and easily. They leave only a few small support nubs and almost no craters, and the nubs are very easy to sand down. I think Precision Model Resin would probably produce the best detail, but there is no Supports 2.0 profile for it yet. (i hope there will be at some point?)
Thanks
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Conversation with somebody over Zoom at Formlabs when buying the entire system. He reccomended the Clear V5 and Tough 1500 after listening to me and everything I was doing and I was very excited about the new clear because —
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You can paint over clear to make it opaque but can’t make Grey V5 clear. I don’t always paint over it and make use of the clear sometimes. Not enough recently. But I do. I did translucent teeth. I did a candle visual. I’m really in to translucent art and have some ideas that use it.
But ofcourse reality is different than the dream. I took the plunge as an experiment and didn’t get other resins also because the 2 I started with are expensive considering they need their own trays and trays are -expensive-!In the process I realized how wacky it can be to not really see quality off the plate. You have to paint them to really see, which is ok. But kinda oddI
In the process I also found that the clear is kinda easy to jack up with fogging and touchpoints and scaring and sanding or whatever else. But its also worked great for some things.
In the process I found out you really have to primer a lot to get it so light doesn’t come through the back. It can be annoying at times.
And now in the process i’m finding out about this clears light bleed which was not told to me in the zoom call and didn’t know about until now.
One thing i’m curious about is if the curing is nicer with clear. It seems like it. I don’t actually know but watching it cook just looks like it is more thourough.
At this point I think I’m good to expand in to other resins and just break the clear out for specific prints.
I’m a little surprised they recommended Clear as the default resin for miniatures. When I was researching resins before buying the printer, I narrowed it down to three main options:
- Grey V5 as the best all-round choice, with a 25-micron profile and support for the new Supports 2.0 settings.
- Precision Model Resin when maximum detail and accuracy matter most, although it still does not support Supports 2.0.
- Tough 2000 V2 when durability is more important, although it is limited to 50- and 100-micron layers.
Never saw anyone recommend anything else tbh.
I considered Tough 1500 V2 as well, but it is also limited to 50 and 100 microns and is much more flexible. That may be useful for functional parts, but thin swords, spears, staffs, and similar miniature parts could bend too easily.
Unless you actually need transparency, I don’t really see any advantages to using Clear for miniatures that will be primed and painted - only drawbacks.
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Yeah not really sure there. Again though I will be using clear. But at this point I need an opaque like V5 Grey. Also btw when I started this I thought I’d be using Tough 1500 a lot more for most things and then in practice that changed. So again this was all new and experimental. I ended up doing the V5 Clear a lot more than the 1500. I did test and the V5 was stronger than I expected (atleast at that time with that print) and the prices i SO much less.
I’m trying to stay away from thin parts like swords in general. If I can help it. I sorta design around those things as much as I can. But yeah at the time the 1500 was super new and recomended and I was just (without in person experience) unable to tell the difference between 1500 and 2000. Also in what I said to him he rec’d 1500 as their “latest resin” that was “going to hold its shape longer”. This was because of how much I wanted that… Resin prints that would last over time. 1500 was tied to that.
It also could be this guy saw the Clear and the 1500 as “brand new” so reccomended. They came out with the ability to do custom colors like 1 week after I bought and set up.
I have (and I may have told him this? I can’t remember??? may be not) considered coloring the clear Red for specific things like turn signals on my classic cars. I have a classic car with 3d prints on them.
At the time I did all this the 4L only supported 100 on 1500 and 50 on V5!!! But within a few months there was an update. the 50 has been good to me actually. Formlabs 50 is a good 50 :). It isn’t the best for some things but I tend to do larger prints etc… On my Form2 I never printed at 25, not even once! I printed in Grey and Grey Pro at 50 for all art and items and it worked out good but also I never did like a miniature detailed orc character. More things like vehicles and usable items (functional?).
I did research and i’m landing on the Grey v5. The precision is tempting but I think V5 is beating it out for me. I’ll keep the Clear in the back pocket for clear stuff and certain uses. I’ll probably just stick with the 1500 for tough parts. I’ve been ecstatic about everything Tough 1500 V2 except for the price of the resin. Would love to see that price come down.
Yep, I love Grey V5. I’ve printed over 150 miniatures with it using a 25 µm layer height and the Supports 2.0 Reduced Density alpha profile. After printing, I put the model in hot water for about 30 seconds, and the supports peel off like butter, usually leaving only tiny nubs and almost no craters.
The print quality is excellent. I’ve compared it with higher-resolution prints from other printers, and once the models are primed and painted, I can’t see any meaningful difference.
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Thanks! and thanks for the pictures. Love the turtle.
How can I be 100% sure I’m using the “Supports 2.0 Reduced Density” profile. Is it automatic? I’m 24um / Clear v5 / 4L. I don’t see any presets. As usual asking AI (gemini) is a hot mess of old vs new and its fumbling all over the place running me around so I’m asking here.
Last it said I “might” be using it automatically.
Any support edits you can suggest or ways to do this stuff helps. As you can see I can get really bad touchpoints and craters.
Hah I just saw the orc with the cats on the pauldons!! Also I use Pro Acryl! I painted years ago using Vallejo and some other paints. then about a year ago I got heavily back in to painting and did research and thought I’d add Pro Acryl and some how it has taken over completely. And some AK-Interactive stuff.
Cool to see a mini painter using Formlabs. My friend is doing some cool stuff with his Phrozen (RPG resin) but he also has major failures and issues all the time. Also like you I’ve found that the formlabs quality and resolution is better than its counterparts.
Here is an image of expensive (I think i calculated about 80 bucks?) full human sized skull print in 1500 v2. 50um. It has some lines in it here and there but wasn’t a real problem in the end. One of the craziest prints I’ve done.
Funny how I made a post about how happy I am with my Form 4, supports, etc., and now I’m sitting here super confused.
I made a topic here: All Supports V2 settings suddenly disappeared
I don’t know what happened, but all Supports 2.0 options are gone for me after restarting PreForm today. Not sure if it’s some bug or if they disabled them.
Supports 2.0 was one of the reasons I decided to buy a Form 4. Before buying it, I saw reviews showing how difficult the standard supports could be to remove on this printer compared with some other printers. Then I saw Formlabs promoting Supports 2.0 as the solution, and it worked extremely well for me.
I have like 50 build plates and 150 models set up with these presets, and if they just disabled them, that’s hours of my work setting everything up wasted.
I think this is when they removed the presets:
3.61.0 build 551
Support presets removed: The support presets dropdown has been removed from the support flyout for Form 4 and Form 4L generation printers. Users who relied on a specific preset can download them at this page.
But I can’t find the presets I was using there - Reduced Density and Smaller Touchpoints 2.0. And what’s confusing is that I was still using these presets until today on versions of PreForm newer than 3.61.0.
Edit:
Ok, just found this: Removal of alternative support presets - #2 by Anna_Gillemot
Usage:
“turned out to be extremely low, and in some cases the presets were contributing to print failures. So we decided to remove them from Preform and move them to a support article.”
Yeah, but Supports 2.0 Reduced Density and Smaller Touchpoints are not there. At least regular Supports 2.0 is available.
But It sounds like they won’t be working on it anymore, or at least it won’t be a priority if the majority of people are happy with these poop V1 supports 
I wish I had bought a HeyGears 
I kind of knew Formlabs’ main audience was people printing drones, car parts and dental stuff rather than miniature painters, but Supports 2.0 made me think they actually cared about improving this side of the experience too. Im prefectly fine to fail prints sometiems if it means i can get cleaner results no supports marks etc. But hey they knwo better what i need
Yeah I was there when Formlabs came flying on the scene and blew up with the Form 2 (which I have) and tons of artists bought them in my (video games) industry. It felt pretty great… and then quickly they were just very very dental and big industry facing as Elegoo came in and took over the figurine arena. But imo there is this massive gap that isn’t filled. I believe Phrozen has sorta done it but not really. My friends talk too much about tinkering and problems.
I remember a top artist I know on God of War quickly sold off his Form 2 while he could and got an Elegoo.
I went to Rapid in Detroit last year and did loads of research and decided to go with the 4L with Phrozen (the big one) being really close. I am considering getting a phrozen still for some things especially considering I have 2 friends who use them that can help me. I really just want 4L to do it all though heh.
Well this support thing is disappointing. Definitely report back what you find in the future. It sounds like, in short, this downloadable one is a sort of “neutered” version of what you were using right? It’s not the same?
Why can’t they just have failure reports from both support types and when you use presets and v2 it throws you a warning. I mean hell they threw me a warning on the 4L that using the camera can cause fails -_- so I’ve never used it. That could be fixed now but when I first tried it literally told me it can cause failures. What the observer quantum 3d printing is that!
EDIT: Never did mention one reason i got this printer is because I’d like to print in Ridgid 10k some day. I don’t know what or when. One of the things I wanted to print I just ended up doing in Paht-CF on my bambu and sanded it. But I am excited about Ridgid 10k. I heard its not the easiest to print with though.