FDM Support - User contributions [en]

Main Page

2026-03-12T16:58:20Z

TimNolte: /* Tools */

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v7

2026-03-12T03:43:30Z

TimNolte:

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fbz-A4jdEFay_BhCykqnTrJJIuXGIYn8?usp=sharing

These settings assume that you are using OrcaSlicer, which is the recommended slicer for printing miniatures. However, since many slicers are forks of one another, you will likely be able to find the same or similar settings in the slicer of your choice.

'''Note''': ''This leverages new changes in [https://github.com/OrcaSlicer/OrcaSlicer/releases/tag/v2.3.2-rc OrcaSlicer 2.3.2] that support an infill on when using Organic Tree supports.''

Changes from previous version:

* Single wall
* Tree infill

If you use these supports and find something that works better, please add something to the notes for the setting in question or to the discussion page.

== Settings ==
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-1.png|left|thumb]]
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-2.png|left|thumb]]
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-3.png|left|thumb]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v7

2026-03-12T03:42:03Z

TimNolte:

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fbz-A4jdEFay_BhCykqnTrJJIuXGIYn8?usp=sharing

These settings assume that you are using OrcaSlicer, which is the recommended slicer for printing miniatures. However, since many slicers are forks of one another, you will likely be able to find the same or similar settings in the slicer of your choice.

'''Note''': ''This leverages new changes in OrcaSlicer 2.3.2 that support an infill on when using Organic Tree supports.''

Changes from previous version:

* Single wall
* Tree infill

If you use these supports and find something that works better, please add something to the notes for the setting in question or to the discussion page.

== Settings ==
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-1.png|left|thumb]]
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-2.png|left|thumb]]
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-3.png|left|thumb]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides

2026-03-12T03:38:04Z

TimNolte: /* Supports Related Questions */

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Printing Tips & Guides}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Printing Tips & Guides}}

General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

== Community Profiles ==

* [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rvrQ-jgHosEnwwv_573iI3wcIclm_2Ct Tim's Presets Shared Drive]
* [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dIMUgX78IHHiet4oWTsu1TI-9KlsKQh9 BlockBadger's Shared Drive]
* [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/536567/fdg-custom-bambu-studio-v2-xx-miniatures-profile Fat Dragon Games Profile]

== Layer Height ==
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

== Model Orientation ==
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

== Supports ==
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:

* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5|timnolte Supports v5]]
* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v6|timnolte Supports v6]] (current)
* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v7|timnolte Supports v7]] (beta)

=== Supports Related Questions ===
* What about the [https://painted4combat.gumroad.com/l/Resin2FdmLite Resin2FDM] tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the [https://www.fatdragongames.com/fdgfiles/bambu-studio-slicer-profiles-a1-mini-3d-printer/ Fat Dragon Games] (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

=== Advice for making your own supports ===
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

== Cooling Towers ==
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

== Printing Multiple Models ==
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).
[[Category:Miniatures]]
__FORCETOC__

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides

2026-03-12T03:37:22Z

TimNolte: /* Supports */

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Printing Tips & Guides}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Printing Tips & Guides}}

General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

== Community Profiles ==

* [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rvrQ-jgHosEnwwv_573iI3wcIclm_2Ct Tim's Presets Shared Drive]
* [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dIMUgX78IHHiet4oWTsu1TI-9KlsKQh9 BlockBadger's Shared Drive]
* [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/536567/fdg-custom-bambu-studio-v2-xx-miniatures-profile Fat Dragon Games Profile]

== Layer Height ==
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

== Model Orientation ==
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

== Supports ==
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:

* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5|timnolte Supports v5]]
* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v6|timnolte Supports v6]] (current)
* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v7|timnolte Supports v7]] (beta)

=== Supports Related Questions ===
* What about the [https://painted4combat.gumroad.com/l/Resin2FdmLite Resin2FDM] tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

=== Advice for making your own supports ===
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

== Cooling Towers ==
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

== Printing Multiple Models ==
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).
[[Category:Miniatures]]
__FORCETOC__

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

2026-03-12T03:33:22Z

TimNolte: Updates original source URL and slicer name typo.

{{DISPLAYTITLE:TimNolte Supports v5}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Timnolte supports v5}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Timnolte supports v5}}

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZZmaiMR41BBAxCskh1Qy4wBGcFGm08Rc

These settings assume that you are using OrcaSlicer, which is the recommended slicer for printing miniatures. However, since many slicers are forks of one another, you will likely be able to find the same or similar settings in the slicer of your choice.

Changes from previous version:

* removed raft

If you use these supports and find something that works better, please add something to the notes for the setting in question or to the discussion page.

== Settings ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Support
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Enable Support
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Type
|Tree (auto)
|dropdown
|
|-
|Style
|Organic
|dropdown
|
|-
|Threshold Angle
|25
|direct entry
|
|-
|Threshold Overlap
|50%
|mm or %
|
|-
|First Layer Density
|90%
|direct entry
|
|-
|First Layer Expansion
|6
|mm
|determines how big of a “brim” each support will have. Can be adjusted based on your printbed adhesion.
|-
|On Build Plate Only
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Remove Small Overhangs
|yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Raft
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Raft Layers
|0
|direct entry
|Set this to a value greater than 0 to enable raft
|-
|
|
|
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Filament for Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Support/Raft Base
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|Support/Raft Inteface
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Advanced
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Top Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Support Wall Loops
|2
|direct entry
|
|-
|Base Pattern
|Hollow
|dropdown
|
|-
|Base Pattern Spacing
|2.5
|mm
|
|-
|Pattern Angle
|0
|direct entry (degrees)
|
|-
|Top Interface Layers
|3
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Layers
|2
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Interface Pattern
|Concentric
|dropdown
|
|-
|Top Interface Spacing
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Spacing
|0.5
|mm
|
|-
|Normal Support Expansion
|0
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object XY Distance
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object First Layer Gap
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Don’t Support Bridges
|No
|checkbox
|
|-
|Independent Support Layer Height
|Yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Tree Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Tip Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Distance
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Density
|25
|%
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Diameter Angle
|2
|degrees
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Angle
|40
|degrees
|
|-
|Preferred Branch Angle
|45
|degrees
|
|}
[[Category:Supports]]
[[Category:Miniatures]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v7

2026-03-12T03:32:36Z

TimNolte: Adds supports v7 beta page

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fbz-A4jdEFay_BhCykqnTrJJIuXGIYn8?usp=sharing

These settings assume that you are using OrcaSlicer, which is the recommended slicer for printing miniatures. However, since many slicers are forks of one another, you will likely be able to find the same or similar settings in the slicer of your choice.

Changes from previous version:

* pending

If you use these supports and find something that works better, please add something to the notes for the setting in question or to the discussion page.

== Settings ==
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-1.png|left|thumb]]
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-2.png|left|thumb]]
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-3.png|left|thumb]]

File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-3.png

2026-03-12T03:32:03Z

TimNolte:

Settings set 3

File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-2.png

2026-03-12T03:31:38Z

TimNolte:

Settings set 2

File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v7-1.png

2026-03-12T03:31:03Z

TimNolte:

Settings set 1

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v6

2026-03-12T03:30:30Z

TimNolte: New v6 supports page

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fbz-A4jdEFay_BhCykqnTrJJIuXGIYn8?usp=sharing

These settings assume that you are using OrcaSlicer, which is the recommended slicer for printing miniatures. However, since many slicers are forks of one another, you will likely be able to find the same or similar settings in the slicer of your choice.

Changes from previous version:

* pending

If you use these supports and find something that works better, please add something to the notes for the setting in question or to the discussion page.

== Settings ==
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v6-1.png|left|thumb]]
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v6-2.png|left|thumb]]
[[File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v6-3.png|left|thumb]]

File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v6-3.png

2026-03-12T03:29:21Z

TimNolte:

Settings set 3

File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v6-2.png

2026-03-12T03:28:47Z

TimNolte:

Setting set 2

File:0.06mm-OrcaSlicer-Supports-Minis-v6-1.png

2026-03-12T03:27:13Z

TimNolte:

Settings set 1

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides

2026-03-12T03:23:45Z

TimNolte: /* Supports */

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Printing Tips & Guides}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Printing Tips & Guides}}

General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

== Community Profiles ==

* [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rvrQ-jgHosEnwwv_573iI3wcIclm_2Ct Tim's Presets Shared Drive]
* [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dIMUgX78IHHiet4oWTsu1TI-9KlsKQh9 BlockBadger's Shared Drive]
* [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/536567/fdg-custom-bambu-studio-v2-xx-miniatures-profile Fat Dragon Games Profile]

== Layer Height ==
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

== Model Orientation ==
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

== Supports ==
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:

* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5|timnolte Supports v5]]
* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v6|timnolte Supports v6]] (current)
* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte Supports v7|timnolte Supports v7]] (beta)

=== Supports Related Questions ===
* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

=== Advice for making your own supports ===
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

== Cooling Towers ==
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

== Printing Multiple Models ==
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).
[[Category:Miniatures]]
__FORCETOC__

Main Page

2026-03-05T14:45:16Z

TimNolte: /* Printing Miniatures */

Main Page

2026-03-05T01:01:10Z

TimNolte: /* Manual Temperature Tower */

Main Page

2026-03-05T01:00:13Z

TimNolte: /* Calibration */

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides

2026-03-05T00:46:16Z

TimNolte:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Printing Tips & Guides}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Printing Tips & Guides}}

General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

== Community Profiles ==

* [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rvrQ-jgHosEnwwv_573iI3wcIclm_2Ct Tim's Presets Shared Drive]
* [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dIMUgX78IHHiet4oWTsu1TI-9KlsKQh9 BlockBadger's Shared Drive]
* [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/536567/fdg-custom-bambu-studio-v2-xx-miniatures-profile Fat Dragon Games Profile]

== Layer Height ==
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

== Model Orientation ==
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

== Supports ==
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:

* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5|timnolte supports v5]] (current)

=== Supports Related Questions ===
* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

=== Advice for making your own supports ===
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

== Cooling Towers ==
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

== Printing Multiple Models ==
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).
[[Category:Miniatures]]
__FORCETOC__

Main Page

2026-03-05T00:42:02Z

TimNolte: /* Welcome to the wiki! */

Main Page

2026-03-05T00:29:48Z

TimNolte:

Main Page

2026-03-05T00:29:19Z

TimNolte: /* Welcome to the wiki! */

Main Page

2026-03-05T00:27:23Z

TimNolte: /* Welcome to the wiki! */

Main Page

2026-03-05T00:26:52Z

TimNolte: /* Printing Miniatures */

Main Page

2026-03-05T00:25:32Z

TimNolte: /* Filaments */

== Welcome to the wiki! ==
This knowledge base is intended to provide support for 3D printing miniatures with FDM printers. This is a community contributed resource of information that will continue to be built and refined as more people provide their own recommendations and experiences. There are also many great resources elsewhere that this site will also link to and reference.

If you are brand new to 3D printing miniatures or to FDM printers, you may want to start with the following resources:
* [[FDM Miniatures FAQ]]
* [[FDM Miniatures Glossary]]
* [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPQ7uPPz-TBOBU2t9Q86S2l6RHZd_uk8u YouTube Videos]

=== Guidelines ===
Due to the rapidly changing 3D printing ecosystem all advise here should be considered editorial based on personal experience and a starting point for anyone wanting to get started 3D printing miniatures with an FDM printer. Some content may be considered best practices and other content may represent advice that has risks and should be used with caution. At any time content on this site may be removed or revised. This site should be considered a family friendly site so things should be kept at a PG rating and questionable content will be removed.

=== FDM 3D Printing Basics ===
General printing guidance that should be considered first steps when getting started with FDM 3D printing or when troubleshooting printing issues.

==== Hardware ====
0.2mm~ nozzle, you need this if your not a god of printing and want detail.

(Optional) A cool plate for your printer. It will save you filament as you won't need brims or as big brims and can avoid failures due to supports breaking. I'd get this and never look back.

==== Filaments ====
Recommended filaments, those to stay away from, and general filament maintenance guidelines.

===== Recommended =====

# eSUN PLA+
#* Pros: Manages small crisp details, has good walls.
#* Cons: Must be dried(but can still struggle with light stringing), struggles with some small overhangs.
# Elegoo PLA+
#* Pros: Works well on overhangs, has good walls, less stringing issues when damp.
#* Cons: Small details not as sharp, slower speeds required.
# Sunlu PLA+ 2.0
#* Pros: Works well on overhangs, has good walls, less stringing issues when damp.
#* Cons: Can be a struggle to calibrate.

==== Calibration ====
How to calibrate FDM printers & filaments.

Calibrate any major change. Different Nozzle? Calibrate. New filament? Calibrate. Same goes for any major settings changes, if you double the speed, or change layer height/line width calibrate again. It will save you pain later.

When I say calibrate I mean, temp tower, flow rate test, and pressure advance test. They don't have to be perfect, but you need to check they are ok, and fine tune from there.

==== Tools ====
General tool recommendations.

=== Printing Miniatures ===
Guides on printing miniatures on FDM printers.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides|Printing Tips & Guides]]

==== Printing Tips & Guides ====
General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

==== Layer Height ====
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

===== Model Orientation =====
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

===== Supports =====
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:
* [[timnolte supports v5]] (current)
* [[timnolte supports v4]]

Common questions:
* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

===== Advice for making your own supports =====
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

===== Bases =====

===== Cooling Towers =====
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

===== Printing Multiple Models =====
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).

==== Model Creators ====

===== FDM Miniatures =====
Recommended model creators specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for printing their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/FDM/Arbiter Miniatures|Arbiter Miniatures]]

===== Non-FDM Miniatures =====
Model creators that are not specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for attempting to print their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/non-FDM/One Page Rules|One Page Rules]]

=== Printing Terrain ===
Guides on printing terrain on FDM printers.

=== Printer Model Tips ===
General guidelines and tips for specific FDM printers.

* Bambu Lab
** [[Bambu Lab A1/A1 Mini]]
** [[Bambu Lab P1S]]
** [[Bambu Lab P2S]]
* Elegoo
** [[Elegoo Centauri Carbon]]
* FlashForge
** [[FlashForge Adventurer 5M/5M Pro]]

=== Model Prints Galleries ===
A gallery of prints done on FDM printers.

* [[Galleries/Miniatures|Miniatures]]
* [[Galleries/Terrain|Terrain]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

2026-03-05T00:15:34Z

TimNolte:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:TimNolte Supports v5}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Timnolte supports v5}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Timnolte supports v5}}

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fbz-A4jdEFay_BhCykqnTrJJIuXGIYn8?usp=sharing

These settings assume that you are using Orcaslicer, which is the recommended slicer for printing miniatures. However since many slicers are forks of one another, you will likely be able to find the same or similar settings in the slicer of your choice.

Changes from previous version:

* removed raft

If you use these supports and find something that works better, please add something to the notes for the setting in question or to the discussion page.

== Settings ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Support
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Enable Support
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Type
|Tree (auto)
|dropdown
|
|-
|Style
|Organic
|dropdown
|
|-
|Threshold Angle
|25
|direct entry
|
|-
|Threshold Overlap
|50%
|mm or %
|
|-
|First Layer Density
|90%
|direct entry
|
|-
|First Layer Expansion
|6
|mm
|determines how big of a “brim” each support will have. Can be adjusted based on your printbed adhesion.
|-
|On Build Plate Only
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Remove Small Overhangs
|yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Raft
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Raft Layers
|0
|direct entry
|Set this to a value greater than 0 to enable raft
|-
|
|
|
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Filament for Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Support/Raft Base
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|Support/Raft Inteface
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Advanced
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Top Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Support Wall Loops
|2
|direct entry
|
|-
|Base Pattern
|Hollow
|dropdown
|
|-
|Base Pattern Spacing
|2.5
|mm
|
|-
|Pattern Angle
|0
|direct entry (degrees)
|
|-
|Top Interface Layers
|3
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Layers
|2
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Interface Pattern
|Concentric
|dropdown
|
|-
|Top Interface Spacing
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Spacing
|0.5
|mm
|
|-
|Normal Support Expansion
|0
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object XY Distance
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object First Layer Gap
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Don’t Support Bridges
|No
|checkbox
|
|-
|Independent Support Layer Height
|Yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Tree Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Tip Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Distance
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Density
|25
|%
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Diameter Angle
|2
|degrees
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Angle
|40
|degrees
|
|-
|Preferred Branch Angle
|45
|degrees
|
|}
[[Category:Supports]]
[[Category:Miniatures]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

2026-03-05T00:14:49Z

TimNolte:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Timnolte supports v5}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Timnolte supports v5}}

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fbz-A4jdEFay_BhCykqnTrJJIuXGIYn8?usp=sharing

These settings assume that you are using Orcaslicer, which is the recommended slicer for printing miniatures. However since many slicers are forks of one another, you will likely be able to find the same or similar settings in the slicer of your choice.

Changes from previous version:

* removed raft

If you use these supports and find something that works better, please add something to the notes for the setting in question or to the discussion page.

== Settings ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Support
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Enable Support
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Type
|Tree (auto)
|dropdown
|
|-
|Style
|Organic
|dropdown
|
|-
|Threshold Angle
|25
|direct entry
|
|-
|Threshold Overlap
|50%
|mm or %
|
|-
|First Layer Density
|90%
|direct entry
|
|-
|First Layer Expansion
|6
|mm
|determines how big of a “brim” each support will have. Can be adjusted based on your printbed adhesion.
|-
|On Build Plate Only
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Remove Small Overhangs
|yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Raft
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Raft Layers
|0
|direct entry
|Set this to a value greater than 0 to enable raft
|-
|
|
|
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Filament for Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Support/Raft Base
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|Support/Raft Inteface
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Advanced
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Top Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Support Wall Loops
|2
|direct entry
|
|-
|Base Pattern
|Hollow
|dropdown
|
|-
|Base Pattern Spacing
|2.5
|mm
|
|-
|Pattern Angle
|0
|direct entry (degrees)
|
|-
|Top Interface Layers
|3
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Layers
|2
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Interface Pattern
|Concentric
|dropdown
|
|-
|Top Interface Spacing
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Spacing
|0.5
|mm
|
|-
|Normal Support Expansion
|0
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object XY Distance
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object First Layer Gap
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Don’t Support Bridges
|No
|checkbox
|
|-
|Independent Support Layer Height
|Yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Tree Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Tip Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Distance
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Density
|25
|%
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Diameter Angle
|2
|degrees
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Angle
|40
|degrees
|
|-
|Preferred Branch Angle
|45
|degrees
|
|}
[[Category:Supports]]
[[Category:Miniatures]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides

2026-03-05T00:14:16Z

TimNolte:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Printing Tips & Guides}}

General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

==== Layer Height ====
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

==== Model Orientation ====
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

==== Supports ====
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:

* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5|timnolte supports v5]] (current)

===== Supports Related Questions =====

* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

===== Advice for making your own supports =====
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

==== Cooling Towers ====
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

==== Printing Multiple Models ====
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).
[[Category:Miniatures]]
__FORCETOC__

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides

2026-03-05T00:13:38Z

TimNolte:

General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

==== Layer Height ====
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

==== Model Orientation ====
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

==== Supports ====
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:

* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5|timnolte supports v5]] (current)

===== Supports Related Questions =====

* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

===== Advice for making your own supports =====
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

==== Cooling Towers ====
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

==== Printing Multiple Models ====
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).
[[Category:Miniatures]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

2026-03-05T00:12:46Z

TimNolte:

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

2026-03-05T00:12:07Z

TimNolte:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Timnolte supports v5}}

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fbz-A4jdEFay_BhCykqnTrJJIuXGIYn8?usp=sharing

These settings assume that you are using Orcaslicer, which is the recommended slicer for printing miniatures. However since many slicers are forks of one another, you will likely be able to find the same or similar settings in the slicer of your choice.

Changes from previous version:

* removed raft

If you use these supports and find something that works better, please add something to the notes for the setting in question or to the discussion page.

== Settings ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Support
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Enable Support
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Type
|Tree (auto)
|dropdown
|
|-
|Style
|Organic
|dropdown
|
|-
|Threshold Angle
|25
|direct entry
|
|-
|Threshold Overlap
|50%
|mm or %
|
|-
|First Layer Density
|90%
|direct entry
|
|-
|First Layer Expansion
|6
|mm
|determines how big of a “brim” each support will have. Can be adjusted based on your printbed adhesion.
|-
|On Build Plate Only
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Remove Small Overhangs
|yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Raft
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Raft Layers
|0
|direct entry
|Set this to a value greater than 0 to enable raft
|-
|
|
|
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Filament for Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Support/Raft Base
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|Support/Raft Inteface
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Advanced
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Top Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Support Wall Loops
|2
|direct entry
|
|-
|Base Pattern
|Hollow
|dropdown
|
|-
|Base Pattern Spacing
|2.5
|mm
|
|-
|Pattern Angle
|0
|direct entry (degrees)
|
|-
|Top Interface Layers
|3
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Layers
|2
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Interface Pattern
|Concentric
|dropdown
|
|-
|Top Interface Spacing
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Spacing
|0.5
|mm
|
|-
|Normal Support Expansion
|0
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object XY Distance
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object First Layer Gap
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Don’t Support Bridges
|No
|checkbox
|
|-
|Independent Support Layer Height
|Yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Tree Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Tip Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Distance
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Density
|25
|%
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Diameter Angle
|2
|degrees
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Angle
|40
|degrees
|
|-
|Preferred Branch Angle
|45
|degrees
|
|}
[[Category:Supports]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides

2026-03-05T00:10:01Z

TimNolte: /* Supports */

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides

2026-03-05T00:09:08Z

TimNolte: /* Supports */

General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

==== Layer Height ====
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

==== Model Orientation ====
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

==== Supports ====
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:

* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5|timnolte supports v5]] (current)
* [[timnolte supports v4]]

===== Supports Related Questions =====

* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

===== Advice for making your own supports =====
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

==== Cooling Towers ====
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

==== Printing Multiple Models ====
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).

Printing Miniatures/Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

2026-03-05T00:08:32Z

TimNolte: TimNolte moved page Printing Miniatures/Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5 to Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

#REDIRECT [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

2026-03-05T00:08:32Z

TimNolte: TimNolte moved page Printing Miniatures/Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5 to Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fbz-A4jdEFay_BhCykqnTrJJIuXGIYn8?usp=sharing

These settings assume that you are using Orcaslicer, which is the recommended slicer for printing miniatures. However since many slicers are forks of one another, you will likely be able to find the same or similar settings in the slicer of your choice.

Changes from previous version:

* removed raft

If you use these supports and find something that works better, please add something to the notes for the setting in question or to the discussion page.

== Settings ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Support
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Enable Support
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Type
|Tree (auto)
|dropdown
|
|-
|Style
|Organic
|dropdown
|
|-
|Threshold Angle
|25
|direct entry
|
|-
|Threshold Overlap
|50%
|mm or %
|
|-
|First Layer Density
|90%
|direct entry
|
|-
|First Layer Expansion
|6
|mm
|determines how big of a “brim” each support will have. Can be adjusted based on your printbed adhesion.
|-
|On Build Plate Only
|yes
|checkbox
|
|-
|Remove Small Overhangs
|yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Raft
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Raft Layers
|0
|direct entry
|Set this to a value greater than 0 to enable raft
|-
|
|
|
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Filament for Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Support/Raft Base
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|Support/Raft Inteface
|Default
|dropdown
|
|-
|
|
|
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Advanced
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Top Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Z Distance
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Support Wall Loops
|2
|direct entry
|
|-
|Base Pattern
|Hollow
|dropdown
|
|-
|Base Pattern Spacing
|2.5
|mm
|
|-
|Pattern Angle
|0
|direct entry (degrees)
|
|-
|Top Interface Layers
|3
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Layers
|2
|dropdown / direct entry
|
|-
|Interface Pattern
|Concentric
|dropdown
|
|-
|Top Interface Spacing
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Bottom Interface Spacing
|0.5
|mm
|
|-
|Normal Support Expansion
|0
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object XY Distance
|0.25
|mm
|
|-
|Support/Object First Layer Gap
|0.2
|mm
|
|-
|Don’t Support Bridges
|No
|checkbox
|
|-
|Independent Support Layer Height
|Yes
|checkbox
|
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|+Tree Supports
!Setting Name
!Setting Value
!Setting Type
!Notes
|-
|Tip Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Distance
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Density
|25
|%
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Diameter
|1
|mm
|
|-
|Branch Diameter Angle
|2
|degrees
|
|-
|Tree Support Branch Angle
|40
|degrees
|
|-
|Preferred Branch Angle
|45
|degrees
|
|}

Timnolte supports v5

2026-03-05T00:08:07Z

TimNolte: TimNolte moved page Timnolte supports v5 to Printing Miniatures/Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

#REDIRECT [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

2026-03-05T00:08:07Z

TimNolte: TimNolte moved page Timnolte supports v5 to Printing Miniatures/Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides

2026-03-05T00:04:11Z

TimNolte: Created page with "General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM. ==== Layer Height ==== Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it. If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger think..."

General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

==== Layer Height ====
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

==== Model Orientation ====
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

==== Supports ====
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:

* [[timnolte supports v5]] (current)
* [[timnolte supports v4]]

===== Supports Related Questions =====

* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

===== Advice for making your own supports =====
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

==== Cooling Towers ====
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

==== Printing Multiple Models ====
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).

Main Page

2026-03-05T00:01:16Z

TimNolte: /* Printing Miniatures */

== Welcome to the wiki! ==
This knowledge base is intended to provide support for 3D printing miniatures with FDM printers. This is a community contributed resource of information that will continue to be built and refined as more people provide their own recommendations and experiences. There are also many great resources elsewhere that this site will also link to and reference.

If you are brand new to 3D printing miniatures or to FDM printers, you may want to start with the following resources:
* [[FDM Miniatures FAQ]]
* [[FDM Miniatures Glossary]]

=== Guidelines ===
Due to the rapidly changing 3D printing ecosystem all advise here should be considered editorial based on personal experience and a starting point for anyone wanting to get started 3D printing miniatures with an FDM printer. Some content may be considered best practices and other content may represent advice that has risks and should be used with caution. At any time content on this site may be removed or revised. This site should be considered a family friendly site so things should be kept at a PG rating and questionable content will be removed.

=== FDM 3D Printing Basics ===
General printing guidance that should be considered first steps when getting started with FDM 3D printing or when troubleshooting printing issues.

==== Hardware ====
0.2mm~ nozzle, you need this if your not a god of printing and want detail.

(Optional) A cool plate for your printer. It will save you filament as you won't need brims or as big brims and can avoid failures due to supports breaking. I'd get this and never look back.

==== Filaments ====
Recommended filaments, those to stay away from, and general filament maintenance guidelines.

Egeloo PLA plus and Sunlu PLA 2.0 are badgers recommended filaments. Both work well on overhangs, have good walls, and don't have massive issues when damp, though they still print better when dry.

==== Calibration ====
How to calibrate FDM printers & filaments.

Calibrate any major change. Different Nozzle? Calibrate. New filament? Calibrate. Same goes for any major settings changes, if you double the speed, or change layer height/line width calibrate again. It will save you pain later.

When I say calibrate I mean, temp tower, flow rate test, and pressure advance test. They don't have to be perfect, but you need to check they are ok, and fine tune from there.

==== Tools ====
General tool recommendations.

=== Printing Miniatures ===
Guides on printing miniatures on FDM printers.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides|Printing Tips & Guides]]

==== Printing Tips & Guides ====
General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

==== Layer Height ====
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

===== Model Orientation =====
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

===== Supports =====
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:
* [[timnolte supports v5]] (current)
* [[timnolte supports v4]]

Common questions:
* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

===== Advice for making your own supports =====
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

===== Bases =====

===== Cooling Towers =====
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

===== Printing Multiple Models =====
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).

==== Model Creators ====

===== FDM Miniatures =====
Recommended model creators specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for printing their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/FDM/Arbiter Miniatures|Arbiter Miniatures]]

===== Non-FDM Miniatures =====
Model creators that are not specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for attempting to print their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/non-FDM/One Page Rules|One Page Rules]]

=== Printing Terrain ===
Guides on printing terrain on FDM printers.

=== Printer Model Tips ===
General guidelines and tips for specific FDM printers.

* Bambu Lab
** [[Bambu Lab A1/A1 Mini]]
** [[Bambu Lab P1S]]
** [[Bambu Lab P2S]]
* Elegoo
** [[Elegoo Centauri Carbon]]
* FlashForge
** [[FlashForge Adventurer 5M/5M Pro]]

=== Model Prints Galleries ===
A gallery of prints done on FDM printers.

* [[Galleries/Miniatures|Miniatures]]
* [[Galleries/Terrain|Terrain]]

Main Page

2026-03-03T20:47:41Z

TimNolte: /* Printer Model Tips */

== Welcome to the wiki! ==
This knowledge base is intended to provide support for 3D printing miniatures with FDM printers. This is a community contributed resource of information that will continue to be built and refined as more people provide their own recommendations and experiences. There are also many great resources elsewhere that this site will also link to and reference.

If you are brand new to 3D printing miniatures or to FDM printers, you may want to start with the following resources:
* [[FDM Miniatures FAQ]]
* [[FDM Miniatures Glossary]]

=== Guidelines ===
Due to the rapidly changing 3D printing ecosystem all advise here should be considered editorial based on personal experience and a starting point for anyone wanting to get started 3D printing miniatures with an FDM printer. Some content may be considered best practices and other content may represent advice that has risks and should be used with caution. At any time content on this site may be removed or revised. This site should be considered a family friendly site so things should be kept at a PG rating and questionable content will be removed.

=== FDM 3D Printing Basics ===
General printing guidance that should be considered first steps when getting started with FDM 3D printing or when troubleshooting printing issues.

==== Hardware ====
0.2mm~ nozzle, you need this if your not a god of printing and want detail.

(Optional) A cool plate for your printer. It will save you filament as you won't need brims or as big brims and can avoid failures due to supports breaking. I'd get this and never look back.

==== Filaments ====
Recommended filaments, those to stay away from, and general filament maintenance guidelines.

Egeloo PLA plus and Sunlu PLA 2.0 are badgers recommended filaments. Both work well on overhangs, have good walls, and don't have massive issues when damp, though they still print better when dry.

==== Calibration ====
How to calibrate FDM printers & filaments.

Calibrate any major change. Different Nozzle? Calibrate. New filament? Calibrate. Same goes for any major settings changes, if you double the speed, or change layer height/line width calibrate again. It will save you pain later.

When I say calibrate I mean, temp tower, flow rate test, and pressure advance test. They don't have to be perfect, but you need to check they are ok, and fine tune from there.

==== Tools ====
General tool recommendations.

=== Printing Miniatures ===
Guides on printing miniatures on FDM printers.

==== Printing Tips & Guides ====
General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

==== Layer Height ====
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

===== Model Orientation =====
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

===== Supports =====
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:
* [[timnolte supports v5]] (current)
* [[timnolte supports v4]]

Common questions:
* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

===== Advice for making your own supports =====
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

===== Bases =====

===== Cooling Towers =====
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

===== Printing Multiple Models =====
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).

==== Model Creators ====

===== FDM Miniatures =====
Recommended model creators specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for printing their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/FDM/Arbiter Miniatures|Arbiter Miniatures]]

===== Non-FDM Miniatures =====
Model creators that are not specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for attempting to print their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/non-FDM/One Page Rules|One Page Rules]]

=== Printing Terrain ===
Guides on printing terrain on FDM printers.

=== Printer Model Tips ===
General guidelines and tips for specific FDM printers.

* Bambu Lab
** [[Bambu Lab A1/A1 Mini]]
** [[Bambu Lab P1S]]
** [[Bambu Lab P2S]]
* Elegoo
** [[Elegoo Centauri Carbon]]
* FlashForge
** [[FlashForge Adventurer 5M/5M Pro]]

=== Model Prints Galleries ===
A gallery of prints done on FDM printers.

* [[Galleries/Miniatures|Miniatures]]
* [[Galleries/Terrain|Terrain]]

Main Page

2026-03-03T20:47:27Z

TimNolte: /* Printer Model Tips */

== Welcome to the wiki! ==
This knowledge base is intended to provide support for 3D printing miniatures with FDM printers. This is a community contributed resource of information that will continue to be built and refined as more people provide their own recommendations and experiences. There are also many great resources elsewhere that this site will also link to and reference.

If you are brand new to 3D printing miniatures or to FDM printers, you may want to start with the following resources:
* [[FDM Miniatures FAQ]]
* [[FDM Miniatures Glossary]]

=== Guidelines ===
Due to the rapidly changing 3D printing ecosystem all advise here should be considered editorial based on personal experience and a starting point for anyone wanting to get started 3D printing miniatures with an FDM printer. Some content may be considered best practices and other content may represent advice that has risks and should be used with caution. At any time content on this site may be removed or revised. This site should be considered a family friendly site so things should be kept at a PG rating and questionable content will be removed.

=== FDM 3D Printing Basics ===
General printing guidance that should be considered first steps when getting started with FDM 3D printing or when troubleshooting printing issues.

==== Hardware ====
0.2mm~ nozzle, you need this if your not a god of printing and want detail.

(Optional) A cool plate for your printer. It will save you filament as you won't need brims or as big brims and can avoid failures due to supports breaking. I'd get this and never look back.

==== Filaments ====
Recommended filaments, those to stay away from, and general filament maintenance guidelines.

Egeloo PLA plus and Sunlu PLA 2.0 are badgers recommended filaments. Both work well on overhangs, have good walls, and don't have massive issues when damp, though they still print better when dry.

==== Calibration ====
How to calibrate FDM printers & filaments.

Calibrate any major change. Different Nozzle? Calibrate. New filament? Calibrate. Same goes for any major settings changes, if you double the speed, or change layer height/line width calibrate again. It will save you pain later.

When I say calibrate I mean, temp tower, flow rate test, and pressure advance test. They don't have to be perfect, but you need to check they are ok, and fine tune from there.

==== Tools ====
General tool recommendations.

=== Printing Miniatures ===
Guides on printing miniatures on FDM printers.

==== Printing Tips & Guides ====
General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

==== Layer Height ====
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

===== Model Orientation =====
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

===== Supports =====
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:
* [[timnolte supports v5]] (current)
* [[timnolte supports v4]]

Common questions:
* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

===== Advice for making your own supports =====
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

===== Bases =====

===== Cooling Towers =====
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

===== Printing Multiple Models =====
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).

==== Model Creators ====

===== FDM Miniatures =====
Recommended model creators specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for printing their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/FDM/Arbiter Miniatures|Arbiter Miniatures]]

===== Non-FDM Miniatures =====
Model creators that are not specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for attempting to print their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/non-FDM/One Page Rules|One Page Rules]]

=== Printing Terrain ===
Guides on printing terrain on FDM printers.

=== Printer Model Tips ===
General guidelines and tips for specific FDM printers.

* Bambu Lab
** [[Bambu Lab A1/A1 Mini]]
** [[Bambu Lab P1S]]
** [[Bambu Lab P2S]]
* Elegoo
** [[Elegoo Centauri Carbon]]
* FlashForge
** FlashForge Adventurer 5M/5M Pro

=== Model Prints Galleries ===
A gallery of prints done on FDM printers.

* [[Galleries/Miniatures|Miniatures]]
* [[Galleries/Terrain|Terrain]]

Main Page

2026-03-03T20:44:29Z

TimNolte: /* Printer Model Tips */

== Welcome to the wiki! ==
This knowledge base is intended to provide support for 3D printing miniatures with FDM printers. This is a community contributed resource of information that will continue to be built and refined as more people provide their own recommendations and experiences. There are also many great resources elsewhere that this site will also link to and reference.

If you are brand new to 3D printing miniatures or to FDM printers, you may want to start with the following resources:
* [[FDM Miniatures FAQ]]
* [[FDM Miniatures Glossary]]

=== Guidelines ===
Due to the rapidly changing 3D printing ecosystem all advise here should be considered editorial based on personal experience and a starting point for anyone wanting to get started 3D printing miniatures with an FDM printer. Some content may be considered best practices and other content may represent advice that has risks and should be used with caution. At any time content on this site may be removed or revised. This site should be considered a family friendly site so things should be kept at a PG rating and questionable content will be removed.

=== FDM 3D Printing Basics ===
General printing guidance that should be considered first steps when getting started with FDM 3D printing or when troubleshooting printing issues.

==== Hardware ====
0.2mm~ nozzle, you need this if your not a god of printing and want detail.

(Optional) A cool plate for your printer. It will save you filament as you won't need brims or as big brims and can avoid failures due to supports breaking. I'd get this and never look back.

==== Filaments ====
Recommended filaments, those to stay away from, and general filament maintenance guidelines.

Egeloo PLA plus and Sunlu PLA 2.0 are badgers recommended filaments. Both work well on overhangs, have good walls, and don't have massive issues when damp, though they still print better when dry.

==== Calibration ====
How to calibrate FDM printers & filaments.

Calibrate any major change. Different Nozzle? Calibrate. New filament? Calibrate. Same goes for any major settings changes, if you double the speed, or change layer height/line width calibrate again. It will save you pain later.

When I say calibrate I mean, temp tower, flow rate test, and pressure advance test. They don't have to be perfect, but you need to check they are ok, and fine tune from there.

==== Tools ====
General tool recommendations.

=== Printing Miniatures ===
Guides on printing miniatures on FDM printers.

==== Printing Tips & Guides ====
General printing tips and guides for printing miniatures via FDM.

==== Layer Height ====
Start with 0.06mm layers. You may see a lot of advice online for 0.08mm layers, but they struggle due to how bad their overhangs are. 0.06mm is not a lot slower, but the quality increase along with better overhang performance I believe it worth it.

If your happy with your profile at 0.06mm, then you can try lower. But take it slow, and things will start to get strange. Badger thinks 0.05mm profiles are the perfect balance of speed/quality/workability as 0.04mm profiles often crash slicers and take so long to slice and print.

===== Model Orientation =====
One of the first decisions you make when preparing a model for printing is what the orientation will be. It may be tempting to orient it vertically, with its feet on the ground, but this will often have suboptimal results. Instead, you will generally orient the model so that it is leaned back. This allows you to take advantage of the greater detail on the Z axis and to have supports on the back of the model, so any support scarring is less noticeable (all supports leave at least a little scarring).

Other considerations are to minimize the amount of supports needed, to minimize the appearance of layer lines, and to align the layers for stronger parts.

If you are unsure of how you should orient your model and it came with a pre-supported file, you can check that file for the orientation. Note that pre-supported files are generally not suitable for FDM printers since the supports are designed for resin printing.

===== Supports =====
How you support your model is a major factor for how well your print will turn out. FDM printers cannot print directly onto thin air, so anything with enough of an overhang will need supports. Below you will find some supports settings that you can use:
* [[timnolte supports v5]] (current)
* [[timnolte supports v4]]

Common questions:
* What about the Resin2FDM tool?
** The Resin2FDM tool is a plugin for Blender that allows you to convert resin supports (on pre-supported files) so that they work with FDM printers. However, our experience has been that well-tuned tree supports (see the links above) provide better results with faster print times. This is because resin printing has different support requirements than FDM printers. Since the tool works by thickening the supports so that the FDM slicer can pick them up, you will need to cut most of them to free the model, which creates additional scarring, and with the density of supports generated, it is easy to accidentally cut part of the model.
* How does this differ from the Fat Dragon Games (FDG) support settings?
** Since FDG only does support-free models their settings do not have optimized settings for supports.

===== Advice for making your own supports =====
Concentric support interface and two interface layers allows the supports to create good base for critical overhangs.

z distance wants to be around 0.04 plus your layer height. A rough guide to give you a starting point for minis. Keep in mind closer can sometimes be easier to remove, but this should already be quite tight compared to other advice.

I recommend hybrid, slim or strong trees.

You want small support branch diameter. ideally around 1mm, but increase it a little if you have generation issues.

I recommend one wall, and rectilinear base pattern of around 2-3mm

Manually paint on supports to tips of critical overhangs, often supports won't generate as well as they could there, and its critical you don't have failures on these tips.

===== Bases =====

===== Cooling Towers =====
When printing models with thin sections at the top (think a model with a sword held vertically above their head), a layer of filament may not have time to cool before another layer is added. This can result in the the print head pulling the previous layer out of alignment. The easiest solution to this is a cooling tower. In essence, a cooling tower is a sacrificial object that forces the print head to do something else long enough for the layer to cool. The general process is:

# In your slicer, add a generic box object (often you can do this by right clicking and selecting “add object” or something similar from the context menu).
# Resize the box so that its X and Y dimensions are 5mm, and so that it is the same height as your model. A quick way to set the height is to move it so that it overlaps the model and resize the height until the top of the model no longer pokes through.
# Set the infill for the box to 0%. Make sure that you are only adjusting the infill for the box, not the model. This is often done by right clicking on the box and selecting “infill” from the context menu.
# Set the walls and top and bottom perimeters to 1 loop/layer. Again, make sure that you are adjusting only the settings for the box, not the model. This is often done by choosing the walls/perimeters option from the context menu for the box.

Note that if you are printing multiple models and using the “print by object” setting in your slicer, you will need to create and join a cooling tower for each model so that the cooling tower doesn’t print totally separately (which would defeat the purpose). However, if you are not using “print by object”, the additional models may act as cooling towers (though the chances of print failure go up).

It may seem that this is a waste of filament and time, but in reality it uses very little filament (due to being the thinnest possible shell with no infill) and adds a negligible amount of time to the print.

===== Printing Multiple Models =====
It may be tempting to fill a print sheet with models, but this has the major drawback that if one model fails, it will almost always ruin the rest of the sheet. Since FDM printing tends to be slow, this can mean that you have a 10+ hour print fail at 90% completion.

A much better approach is to use the “print by object” setting in your slicer. This setting allows the slicer to calculate where to position the models on the sheet so that it can print one, then move and print another, and so on. Since it has to leave sufficient room for the print head, this will greatly reduce the capacity of a print sheet, but the benefit is that if one model has a failure, it won’t impact the previously printed models (and maybe not ever the subsequent models).

==== Model Creators ====

===== FDM Miniatures =====
Recommended model creators specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for printing their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/FDM/Arbiter Miniatures|Arbiter Miniatures]]

===== Non-FDM Miniatures =====
Model creators that are not specifically designed for FDM printing, and any tips for attempting to print their models.

* [[Printing Miniatures/Creators/non-FDM/One Page Rules|One Page Rules]]

=== Printing Terrain ===
Guides on printing terrain on FDM printers.

=== Printer Model Tips ===
General guidelines and tips for specific FDM printers.

* [[Bambu Lab P2S]]

==== BambuLab P2S (Profile is work in progress - March 2026) ====
The following settings have been optimized for the BambuLab P2S. These settings are based on HoHansen, Timnolte, Painted4Combat and ObscuraNoc settings and tweaks. At this point - Thank you for your work. Disclaimer: Please always check before printing if the settings are applicable for your setup, printer and environment.

===== Requirements for these settings =====

* The nozzle is a stainless steel 0.2mm
* The filament is SUNLU PLA+ 2.0.
* OrcaSlicer in the newest version (this guide is written based on 2.3.2-rc)
* Textured PEI Plate. Another will work as well but you will need to tweak your brim settings, temperature and cooling.

===== Settings =====
Start with a standard profile of the P2S and set it to 0.2mm nozzle, the according build plate and the filament type. Then set your base process settings to 0.08mm layer height and start from there. The settings are split into the following sections:

* Printer
* Filament
* Process

Every setting is listed as a screenshot taken from OrcaSlicer.

====== Printer ======
[[File:Printer settings.jpg]]

====== Filament ======
[[File:Filament Settings.png]]

[[File:Filament Cooling.png|722x722px]]

[[File:Filament Overwrite.png|722x722px]]

====== Process ======
'''Quality Settings'''

[[File:Q1.png]]

[[File:Q2.png]]

[[File:Q3.png]]

[[File:Q4.png]]

'''Strength'''

[[File:St1.png]]

[[File:St2.png]]

'''Speed'''

[[File:Sp1.png]]

[[File:Sp2.png]]

[[File:Sp3.png]]

'''Support'''

[[File:Sup1.png]]

[[File:Sup2.png]]

[[File:Sup3.png]]

'''Multimaterial'''

[[File:M1.png]]

'''Others'''

[[File:O1.png]]

[[File:O2.png]]

=== Model Prints Galleries ===
A gallery of prints done on FDM printers.

* [[Galleries/Miniatures|Miniatures]]
* [[Galleries/Terrain|Terrain]]

Printing Miniatures/Printing Tips & Guides/Timnolte supports v5

2025-08-07T13:54:34Z

TimNolte: Adds link to Google Drive orignal source.

Main Page

2025-02-20T14:46:28Z

TimNolte: /* Printing Miniatures */

Galleries/Miniatures

2025-02-16T20:52:34Z

TimNolte: New Miniatures gallery.

This is a community gallery of example prints of miniatures done on FDM printers.

=== FDM Supportless/Supports-free ===

=== FDM Pre-Supported ===

=== Non-FDM ===

Main Page

2025-02-16T20:49:57Z

TimNolte: Links to new pages.

Main Page

2025-02-12T14:34:47Z

TimNolte: /* FDM Printer Basics */

Main Page

2025-02-04T22:49:39Z

TimNolte: /* Guidelines */

Main Page

2025-02-04T22:48:32Z

TimNolte:

Main Page

2025-02-04T01:54:39Z

TimNolte:

Welcome to the wiki! This knowledge base is intended to provide support for 3D printing miniatures with FDM printers. This is a community contributed resource of information that will continue to be built and refined as more people provide their own recommendations and experiences. There are also many great resources elsewhere that this site will also link to and reference.

Due to the rapidly changing 3D printing ecosystem all advise here should be considered editorial based on personal experience and a starting point for anyone wanting to get started 3D printing miniatures with an FDM printer. Some content may be considered the best practices and other content may represent advice that has risks and should be used with caution. At any time content on this site may be removed or revised. This site should be considered a family friendly site so things should be kept at a PG rating and questionable content will be removed.

== Getting started ==
*