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The best 3d printers for miniatures such as Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and Warhammer are pretty spectacular and several are very reasonably priced when you consider the cost of miniatures in general. A single character will run you $3 to over $100.
We have been using 2 of the printers we cover in this article to print miniatures for over a year now and the results and detail still amaze us with every print. Not only that the selection of miniatures is massive. There are dozens of Kickstarters and Patreons dedicated to miniature file creation that you can support to obtain the .stl files needed to print miniatures on your own 3d printer at home.
There are a large variety of 3D printers out there. Not all are created the same nor do they function the same. Many are rather expensive ranging in the $1000’s range. We will cover several budget friendly printers which we personally use and favor and some more expensive ones that are popular in the community.
What Are The Best 3D Printers For Miniatures?
Creality Ender-3
We love our Ender-3 with the upgraded glass print bed. This is not only a great beginner printer but also a very budget friendly printer. We got ours in 2018 and have been running it without major issue since. The Ender-3 currently runs $189.00 on Amazon.
The first thing we upgraded on our Ender-3 was the build plate. We ordered a 235 x 235 mm tempered glass build plate for the Ender-3. The original magnetic mat warped and we had issues with getting prints off of it. We tore through 3 of the ultra flexible removable magnetic build surfaces before trying the glass plate upgrade. It was a game changer. Since the original Ender-3 several of the newer models have the glass build plate upgrade standard.
The other item we swapped out to upgrade the printer was the extruder drive. It was talked about as a must upgrade item within the 3d printing community. With so many people mentioning it we picked up the upgraded aluminum extruder drive feeder on Amazon for $10.
We also picked up the upgraded mother board. It is suppose to make the printer much quieter. We cannot speak to this since while we did purchase it almost a year ago its still sitting in the box somewhere cause the noise does not really bother us. We have it on our to-do list during August 2020 to make the swap so we can do a write up about the difference.
Now the assembly of the printer is much easier these days as the instructions have improved greatly from when we got ours 2 years ago. We followed an assembly video by Tomb of 3D Printed Horrors which was a great help back in 2018 since the instructions were lacking then. Tom is was also the one we followed the advice on and video’s for the extruder drive upgrade. You are probably looking at about 2 hours to fully assemble the printer. This is actually pretty good, there are many out there that take far longer before they are ready to use.
As you might of guessed this printer is very flexible and easy to use. There is a large community of 3d printers out there that use the Ender-3 and have created numerous mods and add-on’s for it. It is one of the few you can probably find a video on just about everything you would ever want to do with this 3d printer.
Once you fire it up it is ready to print rather quickly. The bed and extruder tip heat up rather quickly. You do need to level the base plate often, we tend to spot check it before each print just to make sure its still good. It only takes like 1-2 minutes to hit the home button then disable the steppers and check that a single sheet of paper is snug when pulled between the print bed and extruder tip at all four corners of the print bed.
The print detail while not as great as a resin printer is not noticeable when your actually playing with the pieces on a tabletop. Once you clean up the prints and get some quality paint on them you will not notice the difference.
Ender-3 Pros
- Affordable
- Very durable
- Light and Portable
- Easy to assemble
- Ready to print within 5 minutes from powering on the printer
- Large community to get help from
- Lots of upgrades and mods
Ender-3 Cons
- The uneven base that makes you experience a slight wobble
- The need for extra adhesions to stabilize
- Base leveling
Final Thoughts
With all this we would vote for the Ender-3 as the one of the best 3d printers for miniatures. It’s affordable, easy to use, and very flexible. Great for landscape and building pieces. But the next printer is our preferred for miniatures.
Anycubic Photon Resin Printer – Best 3D Miniature Printers
We picked up a ANYCUBIC Resin 3D Printer, Photon Mono 4K several years back when they came out and have been using it with great success. The miniatures that come off have amazing detail. The older model we picked up is going for between $200-250. Now they have newer versions. We have not used the newer models as of yet but when you visit the model we use on Amazon you can get it but it refers you to a newer model the ANYCUBIC Resin 3D Printer, Photon Mono X, while newer it is also about $100 more expensive at $350-400.
They also have the newer model Anycubic Photon M3 Plus but it is more than double the previous 2 printers we have talked about coming in at $699+, so is not what we would consider an entry level printer. It is a high quality and fast printer though.
- 9.25″ 6K Screen: The Photon M3 Plus 9.25″ 6K monochrome screen Resin 3D Printer offers 34um accuracy, max build size of 9.6″ x 7.8″ x 4.8″. And adds a screen protector, which effectively prevents scratches and damage to the LCD screen.
- Ultra-fast printing: The Photon M3 Resin 3D printer is equipped with a powerful matrix LED light source, the max printing speed is 3.93 in/h, and it only takes 1.2 hours to print a 12cm model, which saves at least half the time compared to other resin 3D printers, bringing you more efficient printing experience.
- Automatic Feeding: ANYCUBIC Photon M3 Plus has automatic resin feeding function. Never worry about print failures due to lack of resin. And the 3d resin printer laser engraving platform has strong adhesion, which greatly improves the printing success rate.
- High-Precision Printing: The ANYUCBIC Photon M3 Plus 6K LCD screen has a contrast ratio of up to 350:1, which is 75% higher than the competition (200:1), greatly improving print details. High precision ball screw Z-axis linear guides help improve stability and create fine detail models.
- Cloud Transfer&Cloud Print: ANYCUBIC Photon M3 Plus supports “USB-A2.0/LAN/WAN” and “USB-A3.0/LAN/WAN” control methods, file transfer and printing can be operated remotely (Note: ①Cloud service features require firmware update to use. ②M3 Plus 3d printer doesn’t come with a camera, to be purchased separately. ③No camera doesn t affect cloud service, but can’t check the printing progress)