Dude, can I just say that you are the best. Been trying to print minis and it sucked. Then I dialed up your settings with my Neptune 3 pro and just printed a mini in 2 hours and it came out like a champ. Can't even thank you enough!
Thank you for your months of hard work and experimentation. I bought an Ender 3 last year and have been sucked in with 'Magic Numbers' and outer layer set to 99999. You have cleared the air like a true scientist. Respect.
Thank you! Once again, providing an excellent breakdown of the WHY. Wish more people would take the time to learn why you adjust things and tweek things.
Thanks again Tom. Always awesome when someone who's company is about 3d printing had someone at the helm who gives back to and helps the community as a whole.
Just watched an hour and a half of your videos and it has saved me multiples of that PER PRINT on print times(not to mention the time it would have taken me to work out how to do this, which realistically would have been never). I was using the top layer trick as suggested by many online and getting shoddy results after 12-24 hour prints. I just reprinted a previously 12 hour job which took a touch over 2 hours and is of hugely higher quality. Looks like I can hold off on that resin printer after all. Not only that but the presentation of this channel is superb. Subscribed and very thankful for the work you have put in here.
Glad it helped you (and yeah, stay away from using the so-called top layer trick, it's a terrible setting and causes other issues in Cura that diminish print quality.) :)
dude your models are sick, thanks for living as an example for the rest of us. now that i see that market exists and you can really make something for yourself in terms of a small business, i'm like damn i wanna try that out. small business all the way
Wow. I have no interest in printing miniatures (none-the-less it is fantastic content that I thoroughly enjoy watching), but this is my first weekend with my printer and I'm scouring for resources. I really appreciate the time you took to explain your profile settings and what they actually do. I just printed the 11th link in my cable chain with more understanding of the settings, and it required zero cleanup - unlike the rest. You give me hope :)
this video made the quality of my slice preview sky rocket. I was trying to print a head with horns on it and the tips were not printing out. after following these adjustments to the options it changed to a fine point. thank you.
Started 3D printing with Ender 3. most of these settings were extremely helpful in perfecting my prints of basic D&D figurines. however there was one subtle setting that was screwing over a specific test model over and over, and it was the Outer Wall Line width. The model has a sword with a pretty nifty overhand angle, but the tree supports generated under the sword were nowhere near touching the edge of the sword. on closer inspection, the gap was caused by a grey outline of the sword that was not being filled by any layers. changing the width of outer wall layer to .2 filled some of that grey area, but changing outer wall width to .1mm completely filled that grey area. Hopefully now I won't have an oddly thin sword (supposed to be gladius shaped) that droops extra. Currently using ABS filament (plenty extra came with printer upon purchase so using it as practice) if that specifies anything else.
I got your tiles set one, and the LED tile, just those alone are going to make my players jaw drop... I am printing the LED tile as we speak on my Ender3 with the profile you went through, and they are all coming out great... Thanks for your AWESOME vids.
This video made my day! Ive had my ender3 now for a year and a half. I purchased it to create small gears. This task was very difficult until today. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Btw I responded back to you on my previous inquiry. Thanks again.
Thanks a bunch. I followed along with the video and changed the settings on my LottMaxx accordingly and got great results, my turtle looks awesome, it was printed with a .4 nozzle. This print is light years ahead of my first few prints, I'm excited to see what .2mm will look like using my new settings.
I've been printing a lot of minis for over two months with a profile taken and adapted from one of your previous videos and it has been working like perfect. I used the same process with this great video to update the old profile with the tweaked settings and made some comparisons prints. And the results were discouraging. After four different prints with the old and new profile, the old one surpassed the new one in every aspect. The old one is faster, cleaner, more reliable in terms of the tree supports and leaves a smoother surface on the mini. I really don't see why this is happening as most of what was presented in this video seems very reasonable.
@@hussalojr5916 Learn how to use support blockers, it will save you tons of time and it works for the infill also, this way you can set different infill amounts for different parts of the print.
Thank you so much! I have an Ender 5+ I used your profile and printed the skeleton sample and it came out PERFECT. I never thought to change the temperature that much I just left it at the stock 200/60. Keep kicking ass man!
Thanks for all these Tom , they have really helped. I have been playing around with 0.04 layer height and a 0.2mm nozzle, but so far I've found the stock 0.4mm nozzle with your profile produces the nicest print. I have one more test to try 0.2mm nozzle with an otherwise virtually unchanged profile and see what happens
@@therron15 There is mention that FatDragon models never require supports. Too bad that leaves out those of us who get minis from other sources that might actually require support. A company that only supports their own minis is not really a part of the community, no matter how great their videos or models are.
Soooo much info, my brain is about to explode. My mind may wander off at times but at least you really explain it well. And I can see that you know what you're talking about. Keep up the great work.
I don't know who you are... or where you come from... but I FREAKIN LOVE YA! these setting were night and day difference from the defaults, i've just got started and this was the best video i've seen so far!
Thanks. I've updated the settings since this video a bit, my latest Cura 4.8 mini profiles can be found at www.fatdragongames.com in the Resources menu. :)
Great video and great information as always. Your files have really gotten me going to fabulous results these last few weeks. I would love to see some side by sides of models with older settings vs new settings if you have them available.
Awesome video! Really good explanations :D Any chance you update your settings files for Cura 4.7 ? I've been trying to import them but it fails and says "cura could not find a quality type" Thanks!
You’re soothing voice has guided me all week with my first printer. Any screwups has been user error 😂. Also your miniature settings are the still applicable to larger models?
Great! Maybe some discussion about flow (maybe still to high) and extrusion width (essential on surface, but with 0,3 on a 0,4 nozzle you are nearly anytime on the right side). But GREAT: When you share profiles, make it like that: Explain anything you changend and why! Excellent work, i think! Thank you!
Fantastic, thank you for your work and for taking the time out to break down a few of the settings with your thoughts etc. (Goes off to try it out on my Ender 3)
Awesome video, thanks, but there are things completely non-intuitive that I can't stand about Cura. I'm probably missing something obvious though. There are far less settings in Sic3r, but you always know exactly what what set of parameters something goes with. It's clearly in the Print, Filament or Printer settings. I spent an hour working through this video, get some good results, switch to another profile, am completely unclear when the question comes up about changed settings if I'm saying I want to use the changed settings in the new profile or save the new settings to the old profile. Suddenly all the settings I took so long to work through are changed when I go back to miniatures. I've tried changing just a couple of things and changing back and forth and I honestly can't figure out exactly what I'm answering on that question. Then I change materials and sometimes I think the print temp and bed temp follow the material (as would make sense) and sometimes I think it maybe doesn't. Very frustrating. And it runs like a dooooooog on an older computer. But that's to be expected when running something modern and powerful on an old (but cost effective) computer. After seeing the video I thought, "I'll give it another shot." I now remember pretty clearly why I gave up the first time and moved to something else. That said, I truly do appreciate the video, and that Cura and Slic3r and so many others are free, and all the time people put in helping others figure all this out.
Gonna try this out now. My cura profile was way different than yours and it worked well on large prints but really struggled on smaller. Thanks for posting
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors I think you mentioned that your minis avoid supports but have you done any testing of the different types of supports when it's necessary? I'm currently getting very rough textures where the support touches. I might have missed it but I dont see a video on how to handle supports/overhangs
I started building my own profile for this with the stats from the video, but I didn't realize you had provided a Dropbox link with the updated versions of the profiles. I just want to say thank you for sharing. This has been really insightful and I cannot wait to test these settings with the miniatures STL files I have from my players.
Super helpful, thank you! Is there any chance you could also share your insights on the optimal settings for supports (standard or Tree) and print orientation? That’s been a challenge for me lately with slightly more complex shaped models...
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors lack of support info really sucks. im not gunna buy your models, i play sci fi games. I need to know what support setting i need.
@@TheCheeseKnees97 then you need to ask whomever you bought your minis from for their recommended support settings (I have no way of knowing what support settings they designed/engineered their product to use.) I provide customer support for my products which includes recommended print settings, so should they.
Nice overview. But I've understood that "Print thin walls" means, that if a wall is thinner than 2x the extrusion width (0.8mm on 0.4mm nozzle), it will still be printed, but ignored, if this is disabled. Such thin areas are guaranteed to not print that well, but it's better to try and potentially fail, than to give up, right? Definitely have this setting on. By the way, you can see such walls as yellow in preview.
Please make a Cura profile for printing minis with Prusa. I cannot get decent results with mine. I print minis on a ender 3 with your last profile and it work wonderful. 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Amazing info, would you be able to make a video on the differences for terrain printing? I am running another printer and will adjust your passed on knowledge to that
Hi there! First of all, you should know that you are my hero! Your videos have saved me lots of time (and money!!!) with my Ender 3. Now my question: I don't know if that was there before, but now with Cura 4.4, in the "material" section there's no option to choose nozzle size, just the word "empty". Is that bad? Also, I must say that, when I did the Cura update, I got an error message about the Legacy settings. The program seems to work ok though. Maybe you should update the Legacy files for the new version?
You're great man! I have seen all your videos and your guidelines improved a lot my printings, thanks man for all the hard work and passion you have put in your videos. I just want to ask why I get awesome results on a 0.28 layer height and like you said with a lower height the heat starts to melts. I'm using abs at 210°C with an hotbed of 109°C.
I used the 4.4 cura profiles from the drop box and honestly, everything came out stringy and all the details were mushed together. It was a huge mess. I didn't mess with it because I did't know enough. I'm in the process of mixing and matching settings between popular 3d printing youtubers and hoping I crit a good cura profile.
I rarely ever use supports as none of the miniatures I design require them. All of the minis shown in my video are support-free and can be found here: @t :)
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors im confused, new to printing i thought things like the octopus warrior arms the curled one would need a support since its free hanging??
Looking forward to your take on the New Prusa-Slicer....and you should get one also.....could expand your audience.....just sayin....BTW......LOVE the channel.
I already own several Prusa MK2 and Mk3 printers, and they do not produce the same quality that the Ender 3 does for tiny models like miniatures (especially the Mk3 with its well documented inconsistent extrusion problems).
None of the miniatures I design/sell require supports. All of the minis shown in my video are support-free and can be found here: www.fatdragongames.com :)
Thanks for the excellent video. On flow rate my Ender 3 is a crazy exception, I have to set the flow between 230 and 240 to get anything to print. Normal setting under extrude to the point of making cute little bird nests. Have you heard of any similar situations to mine?
Thanks for this awesome content. This has helped me greatly in fine tuning my ender 3 v2. Now my questing to you is this. I have a cylinder with a hole in the middle. 40mm wide, 22mm internal diameter and 5mm heigh. I have infil before walls tucked yet it always prints the walls before infill. No matter which way I have it around it always prints walls first. What am I missing? Running cura 4.8. Cheers.
I'm trying to improve my 0.6 petg quality since it looks so... ugly. so miniatures make a lot of sense! if my cr10 can print miniatures, the rest shouldn't be a problem, eh? I copied a lot of your settings into my new "base petg" settings with slight modifications cuz 0.6 nozzle. lets see how the next bency comes out!
Hey Tom. Love your videos, they have helped me out a lot. One question I have is: how would you recommend using supports when printing minis that require them? I've tried printing with supports in the past and have had issues removing them (especially when they are built between and around the legs of the characters).
Cura 4.2.1 now has individual flow settings - if you look for support flow, set that to 10% (I'm currently playing around with it, 10% seems to work fine). It creates a far lighter but still supportive structure for your model - I've found it much easier to remove, with less harm to the miniature. Eager to see what other suggestions come your way - every bit helps!
@@colintate Thanks! I'll definitely give that a shot. Basically what's happening now is that i end my breaking all my minis at the ankles so I can remove the supports between their legs. Then i glue them back together. Not ideal!
Hi, there's a TH-cam channel, don't remember exactly the name of the channel but search for Danny the 3d DM he has a video on how to setup support on Cura. Use Tom's general settings and Danny for support settings.
Cura has added an experimental setting named "Tree Supports". Have you tried it and if so what are your thoughts on it? Thanks for the amazing explanation/tutorial
Has the downloadable profile been tested with Cura 4.2.1? Cura 4.2.1 changed many of the default settings on the Ender 3. If a profile just uses the defaults for a setting (instead of explicitly stating what value to use), a profile imported into Cura 4.2.1 ends up with different settings that if that same profile was imported into Cura 4.0.
I believe on the facebook group Tom said he was sticking with Cura 4.0 for the time being. I believe that was yesterday, so I'm not sure which is best, but I would guess Cura 4.0
You can have multiple versions of Cura installed. So you can keep the old and try the new. The other thing you can do is create a generic printer profile that has the same specifications as the defualt Ender 3 profile in 4.2.1, but you will either have to recreate all your print profiles manually or jump through some some hoops in the old version of cura to be able to import them to the new profile... it's easier just to re-enter manually. Creating the generic profile gets rid of the "creawsome mod" nonsense.
Interesting... my experience is that when printing holes, printing the outer perimeter last leads to tighter fits (sometimes parts don't fit at all and I have to add more tolerance), meaning that the inner perimeter takes up space and pushes the outer perimeter out from its intended position. Thus I assumed that printing the outer perimeter first would also lead to better surface quality. I use PrusaSlicer though. I will give disabling that a try and see if my logos come out more crisp.
hey i just got your videos, amazing just a few questions with the detail on those minis did you use a .3 or .4 nozzle and and the miniature size was it 32mm or larger?
I use these same settings for our World War Tesla tanks so no need for a video for those. As for the Mega-S, I don't use that printer so can't do a video on them.
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors i downloaded your fat dragon presets but cura wont import them. I think i need to spend many hours trying to gain the skills necessary to print. Cant even find the auto support button in cura.
Wonderful video. Thanks for all the hard work to test this out. I’m starting to experiment with PLA+ for stronger minis. Any thoughts on what one would change to use that?
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors Thanks for that PLA+ recommendation. I'm surprised to hear nothing changes at all though. I assume you mean nothing other than the extrusion & bed temperatures? (I see eSun's temp ratings are higher than PLA, as one would expect.)
@@Mike-tc2rl No, my profile is designed for PLA Pro, nothing changes unless you use standard PLA, then you drop the nozzle temp some. Bed temp remains 60˚.
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors Ah... gotcha. Thanks, that makes sense. Now I have to buy some PLA Pro. Any interest in adding an affiliate link for me to click through?
Great video, going to have to rewatch thus a few times to absorb it all! Wouldn't 4.2's replacement of the standard profiles with the Creawesome mod break the FDG profiles? Or have you compensated for that somehow? I've been staying on 4.0 out of a deep paranoia about breaking the FDG profiles, since I live or die by them (metaphorically speaking). 😂
Really good tutorial. The only problem is that after I finished and tried to slice my model at the end of the slicing Cura repeatedly crashed. Any idea why? I am using the latest software and I work on Mac OS
I need that 99999999 top layer trick to make my prints completely solid. 100% infill leaves gaps inside, like those nitrogen-aerated chocolate bars from several years ago.
Watch this video for why it's a bad idea (th-cam.com/video/AqEWl51s9Rw/w-d-xo.html). Also, I'm curious why you would want to print infill areas slower than wall shells? That's adding an insane amount of print time for zero benefit.
Hi, I know I'm late to the party but I love your videos. I watched whole video and something i don't understand...what about supports for overhanging parts?
@@Cloudman572 - good question. When you manually level, the z-layer height is always at a given Z value, so trying to match the height to a full step of the motor makes sense. What auto leveling does is adds a tiny offset to the Z value at every point to compensate for the bed. This means you can't match it to a full step. If a full step was 0.2mm, the ABL may make the height in one area 0.22, not a "magic number", and you have no control of that. But yet the print still looks great using an ABL because stepper motors can handle the fractional steps very well these days, IMHO.
@@Cloudman572I was going to say when the printer homes, it always starts at 0 so you're set to print full steps, but I think you hit on something very observant with your question. We don't know when the stepper is physically in a full step position or not, so the motor could actually be between steps when the bed is set to 0. That would be even more reason why you can't rely on "magic numbers". HMMM, I'm going to have to think about that one. How would you set the z end stop to make sure it was at a whole step?
@@GeorgeLeite All I can think of is that you must be able to instruct Z motor to go to a set full step and then full step n steps to start in the best place but that is too much trouble for my limited knowledge - I will just stick with the manual and non full steps. Thanks though. Have a great day all.
What do you think of tree supports for printing miniatures? I've tried it out and found that removing supports is much easier, given I can print supports without touching the base of the model. Also, what do you think of printing in ABS and using acetone smoothing for models without lines? Do you feel as though you lose too much detail or the glossy look isn't appealing to you? I've found it's tricky to execute well but seems to generate almost injection molded part appearance.
So you mentioned in both this and your earlier video that the strength of the mini comes from the shell, not the infill. With that in mind, is there a reason you choose Grid infill over Lines infill?
In regards to retraction settings, I have a Neptune 3 Pro which is direct drive. Should that be shorter for it then as compared to a printer with a bowden?
Dude, can I just say that you are the best. Been trying to print minis and it sucked. Then I dialed up your settings with my Neptune 3 pro and just printed a mini in 2 hours and it came out like a champ. Can't even thank you enough!
Thanks! Try using my newest profiles on my website under the Resources menu, they come out even better now :)
Thank you for your months of hard work and experimentation. I bought an Ender 3 last year and have been sucked in with 'Magic Numbers' and outer layer set to 99999. You have cleared the air like a true scientist. Respect.
Thanks - prints after watching this are at least 3 times better - you provided exactly the right information - this is fantastic.
Thank you! Once again, providing an excellent breakdown of the WHY. Wish more people would take the time to learn why you adjust things and tweek things.
Thank you for all the hard work you do for us miniature printing enthusiasts. You take the frustration out of the hobby.
Thanks again Tom. Always awesome when someone who's company is about 3d printing had someone at the helm who gives back to and helps the community as a whole.
Thanks! :)
Just watched an hour and a half of your videos and it has saved me multiples of that PER PRINT on print times(not to mention the time it would have taken me to work out how to do this, which realistically would have been never).
I was using the top layer trick as suggested by many online and getting shoddy results after 12-24 hour prints. I just reprinted a previously 12 hour job which took a touch over 2 hours and is of hugely higher quality. Looks like I can hold off on that resin printer after all. Not only that but the presentation of this channel is superb. Subscribed and very thankful for the work you have put in here.
Glad it helped you (and yeah, stay away from using the so-called top layer trick, it's a terrible setting and causes other issues in Cura that diminish print quality.) :)
dude your models are sick, thanks for living as an example for the rest of us. now that i see that market exists and you can really make something for yourself in terms of a small business, i'm like damn i wanna try that out. small business all the way
Go for it! You never know until you try :)
Wow. I have no interest in printing miniatures (none-the-less it is fantastic content that I thoroughly enjoy watching), but this is my first weekend with my printer and I'm scouring for resources. I really appreciate the time you took to explain your profile settings and what they actually do. I just printed the 11th link in my cable chain with more understanding of the settings, and it required zero cleanup - unlike the rest. You give me hope :)
Great!
this video made the quality of my slice preview sky rocket. I was trying to print a head with horns on it and the tips were not printing out. after following these adjustments to the options it changed to a fine point. thank you.
Try my current profile settings on my website, the new profile quality blows these older settings away.
Started 3D printing with Ender 3. most of these settings were extremely helpful in perfecting my prints of basic D&D figurines. however there was one subtle setting that was screwing over a specific test model over and over, and it was the Outer Wall Line width. The model has a sword with a pretty nifty overhand angle, but the tree supports generated under the sword were nowhere near touching the edge of the sword. on closer inspection, the gap was caused by a grey outline of the sword that was not being filled by any layers. changing the width of outer wall layer to .2 filled some of that grey area, but changing outer wall width to .1mm completely filled that grey area. Hopefully now I won't have an oddly thin sword (supposed to be gladius shaped) that droops extra.
Currently using ABS filament (plenty extra came with printer upon purchase so using it as practice) if that specifies anything else.
I got your tiles set one, and the LED tile, just those alone are going to make my players jaw drop... I am printing the LED tile as we speak on my Ender3 with the profile you went through, and they are all coming out great... Thanks for your AWESOME vids.
Thanks! :)
You're doing good work here, my friend. You're helping a lot of people.
This video made my day! Ive had my ender3 now for a year and a half. I purchased it to create small gears. This task was very difficult until today. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Btw I responded back to you on my previous inquiry. Thanks again.
tree support is awesome in experimental for tall objects with overhangs up high. im sure it will become a permanents setting
I don't print miniatures, but you explained the settings well enough that I could decide which ones I wanted to implement in my own profiles. Thanks!
Thanks a bunch. I followed along with the video and changed the settings on my LottMaxx accordingly and got great results, my turtle looks awesome, it was printed with a .4 nozzle. This print is light years ahead of my first few prints, I'm excited to see what .2mm will look like using my new settings.
Thank you so much for releasing these publicly and explaining them in such detail!
I love this guy I have no interest in printing miniatures but I just watch it for fun.
I've been printing a lot of minis for over two months with a profile taken and adapted from one of your previous videos and it has been working like perfect. I used the same process with this great video to update the old profile with the tweaked settings and made some comparisons prints. And the results were discouraging. After four different prints with the old and new profile, the old one surpassed the new one in every aspect. The old one is faster, cleaner, more reliable in terms of the tree supports and leaves a smoother surface on the mini. I really don't see why this is happening as most of what was presented in this video seems very reasonable.
Almost my exact settings and I can confirm you will get Awesome results with this profile for mini's.
can you post them? thanks in advance
@@kindabadngl3242 There here in the video! Mine are pretty much the same.. any difference is negligible.
You got any tips for supports?
@@hussalojr5916 Learn how to use support blockers, it will save you tons of time and it works for the infill also, this way you can set different infill amounts for different parts of the print.
@@totalbullion5882 Supplrt blockers? Yikes this is getting more confusing
I've tried several profiles for my ender3pro and yours is the best for miniatures. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much! I have an Ender 5+ I used your profile and printed the skeleton sample and it came out PERFECT. I never thought to change the temperature that much I just left it at the stock 200/60. Keep kicking ass man!
Also, my stock micro sd reader crapped out as soon as I went to start another mini 😆 fml
So awesome! Been waiting for this. My minis have been great since watching your first video. Can’t imagine the improvements.
Glad it's helped you! :)
Great video! Still waiting on that supports video!
Thanks for all these Tom , they have really helped. I have been playing around with 0.04 layer height and a 0.2mm nozzle, but so far I've found the stock 0.4mm nozzle with your profile produces the nicest print. I have one more test to try 0.2mm nozzle with an otherwise virtually unchanged profile and see what happens
What were your results?
Super thorough explanation for anyone who wants a good understanding of each setting and what it does. Bravo.
fantastic tutorial, will be another one support settings? thanks!
I have also have similar request.
same here, 2 videos and no mention of supports at all, I find this one is kind of important
@@therron15 There is mention that FatDragon models never require supports. Too bad that leaves out those of us who get minis from other sources that might actually require support. A company that only supports their own minis is not really a part of the community, no matter how great their videos or models are.
@@MartyEllenberger this is devastating news. im just trying to learn about my printer, not buy dnd minis
Soooo much info, my brain is about to explode. My mind may wander off at times but at least you really explain it well. And I can see that you know what you're talking about. Keep up the great work.
Thanks!
Your settings worked great for a CR-10S Pro V2!! Thanks! Just printed a miniature I am extremely happy with.
Thank you! Your videos have really helped me get set up with my 3d Printing journey.
Thank you :)
I don't know who you are... or where you come from... but I FREAKIN LOVE YA! these setting were night and day difference from the defaults, i've just got started and this was the best video i've seen so far!
Thanks. I've updated the settings since this video a bit, my latest Cura 4.8 mini profiles can be found at www.fatdragongames.com in the Resources menu. :)
Great video and great information as always. Your files have really gotten me going to fabulous results these last few weeks. I would love to see some side by sides of models with older settings vs new settings if you have them available.
That's a great suggestion, I'll have to do that on the next revision!
Awesome video! Really good explanations :D
Any chance you update your settings files for Cura 4.7 ? I've been trying to import them but it fails and says "cura could not find a quality type"
Thanks!
You’re soothing voice has guided me all week with my first printer. Any screwups has been user error 😂. Also your miniature settings are the still applicable to larger models?
Those are some really great prints you show at the beginning! I'm sure it helps a lot that the level of detail is tailored for FDM.
Yes, to get the best possible quality a sculpt needs to be created with the mechanical requirements of the printer in mind.
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors That is good to know. Is there a video on that subject?
Great! Maybe some discussion about flow (maybe still to high) and extrusion width (essential on surface, but with 0,3 on a 0,4 nozzle you are nearly anytime on the right side). But GREAT: When you share profiles, make it like that: Explain anything you changend and why! Excellent work, i think! Thank you!
Searched for this when my model came out looking like a sponge.
SpongeBob STL
Fantastic, thank you for your work and for taking the time out to break down a few of the settings with your thoughts etc. (Goes off to try it out on my Ender 3)
Awesome video, thanks, but there are things completely non-intuitive that I can't stand about Cura. I'm probably missing something obvious though. There are far less settings in Sic3r, but you always know exactly what what set of parameters something goes with. It's clearly in the Print, Filament or Printer settings. I spent an hour working through this video, get some good results, switch to another profile, am completely unclear when the question comes up about changed settings if I'm saying I want to use the changed settings in the new profile or save the new settings to the old profile. Suddenly all the settings I took so long to work through are changed when I go back to miniatures. I've tried changing just a couple of things and changing back and forth and I honestly can't figure out exactly what I'm answering on that question. Then I change materials and sometimes I think the print temp and bed temp follow the material (as would make sense) and sometimes I think it maybe doesn't. Very frustrating. And it runs like a dooooooog on an older computer. But that's to be expected when running something modern and powerful on an old (but cost effective) computer. After seeing the video I thought, "I'll give it another shot." I now remember pretty clearly why I gave up the first time and moved to something else. That said, I truly do appreciate the video, and that Cura and Slic3r and so many others are free, and all the time people put in helping others figure all this out.
Good Tutorial. I had a lot of ringing with my Anycubic i3 Mega Cura profile. I used your settings and got great results. Thank you!
Hi Tom, great video. I like that you explain what each setting does, really helps a new printer like myself.
Tried your profile yesterday and turned out my cleanest print to date. Thanks!
Btw - flow rate set at 236% but it worked
Gonna try this out now. My cura profile was way different than yours and it worked well on large prints but really struggled on smaller. Thanks for posting
Be sure to use my latest one for Cura 4.6.2 at the link in the description
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors Will do, thank you.
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors I think you mentioned that your minis avoid supports but have you done any testing of the different types of supports when it's necessary? I'm currently getting very rough textures where the support touches. I might have missed it but I dont see a video on how to handle supports/overhangs
@@markheath14 no, as none of my models require supports I have not developed settings for them.
I started building my own profile for this with the stats from the video, but I didn't realize you had provided a Dropbox link with the updated versions of the profiles.
I just want to say thank you for sharing. This has been really insightful and I cannot wait to test these settings with the miniatures STL files I have from my players.
I love this profile. I’m still getting stringing, but I’m pretty sure that’s just the pla.
Fantastic video! I used these settings and printed the skeleton almost perfectly thank you!
Super helpful, thank you! Is there any chance you could also share your insights on the optimal settings for supports (standard or Tree) and print orientation? That’s been a challenge for me lately with slightly more complex shaped models...
None of our models require slicer supports :)
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors lack of support info really sucks. im not gunna buy your models, i play sci fi games. I need to know what support setting i need.
@@TheCheeseKnees97 then you need to ask whomever you bought your minis from for their recommended support settings (I have no way of knowing what support settings they designed/engineered their product to use.) I provide customer support for my products which includes recommended print settings, so should they.
Thanks man. You gave me an excuse to come back to Cura again.
Nice overview. But I've understood that "Print thin walls" means, that if a wall is thinner than 2x the extrusion width (0.8mm on 0.4mm nozzle), it will still be printed, but ignored, if this is disabled.
Such thin areas are guaranteed to not print that well, but it's better to try and potentially fail, than to give up, right?
Definitely have this setting on. By the way, you can see such walls as yellow in preview.
Please make a Cura profile for printing minis with Prusa. I cannot get decent results with mine. I print minis on a ender 3 with your last profile and it work wonderful. 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
I own multiple Prusa Mk2 and 3 printers and have yet to be able to get any of them to approach the quality an Ender 3 will do for miniatures.
was geting a lot of blobing and stringing, gonna try some things whit my settings now! tysm for the video! really helps a noob like me out ^^
Amazing info, would you be able to make a video on the differences for terrain printing? I am running another printer and will adjust your passed on knowledge to that
One for terrain printing is coming (and I just did one with tips for PrusaSlicer a few weeks ago) :)
Lots of good information here. 👍 👍 The only problem is I'm going to have to watch about 5 or 6 more times. 😁
Hi there! First of all, you should know that you are my hero! Your videos have saved me lots of time (and money!!!) with my Ender 3. Now my question: I don't know if that was there before, but now with Cura 4.4, in the "material" section there's no option to choose nozzle size, just the word "empty". Is that bad? Also, I must say that, when I did the Cura update, I got an error message about the Legacy settings. The program seems to work ok though. Maybe you should update the Legacy files for the new version?
You're great man! I have seen all your videos and your guidelines improved a lot my printings, thanks man for all the hard work and passion you have put in your videos. I just want to ask why I get awesome results on a 0.28 layer height and like you said with a lower height the heat starts to melts. I'm using abs at 210°C with an hotbed of 109°C.
I don't have a Marlin based printer, but Cura + the GPX export plugin has helped a /ton/. But I still often get really bloby tops from nozzle heat.
I used the 4.4 cura profiles from the drop box and honestly, everything came out stringy and all the details were mushed together. It was a huge mess. I didn't mess with it because I did't know enough. I'm in the process of mixing and matching settings between popular 3d printing youtubers and hoping I crit a good cura profile.
Thank you so much... Supportless prints came out good but with supports, everything goes insane :) Can you explain supports for miniatures?
I rarely ever use supports as none of the miniatures I design require them. All of the minis shown in my video are support-free and can be found here: @t :)
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors im confused, new to printing i thought things like the octopus warrior arms the curled one would need a support since its free hanging??
Just used this video today. Awesome stuff and thank you!
Looking forward to your take on the New Prusa-Slicer....and you should get one also.....could expand your audience.....just sayin....BTW......LOVE the channel.
I already own several Prusa MK2 and Mk3 printers, and they do not produce the same quality that the Ender 3 does for tiny models like miniatures (especially the Mk3 with its well documented inconsistent extrusion problems).
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors…..Well THAT SUCKS......still lookin forward to your PRUSA slicer vid...…. chow.
@@charlesforbin6937 yeah me too. Printing minis with my prusa would be the dream.
OMG! Thank you very much! Very greatful! Such a wonderful channel.
Impressive work you have done👍
Thanks for sharing 👍😀
Thanks for watching :)
Thx a lot with these settings I am able to print minis on my easythreed 3d nano one of the cheapest printers on the market
Cant wait to try the settings, Thanks! Surely you print with supports? Just curious why that was unchecked and you skipped over talking about it...?
None of the miniatures I design/sell require supports. All of the minis shown in my video are support-free and can be found here: www.fatdragongames.com :)
Thanks for the excellent video. On flow rate my Ender 3 is a crazy exception, I have to set the flow between 230 and 240 to get anything to print. Normal setting under extrude to the point of making cute little bird nests. Have you heard of any similar situations to mine?
Change the nozzle it might be blocked.
Is your steps per mm correct?
Is the extruder slipping or skipping steps?
Is there a flow multiplier set on the printer?
Thanks for this awesome content. This has helped me greatly in fine tuning my ender 3 v2. Now my questing to you is this. I have a cylinder with a hole in the middle. 40mm wide, 22mm internal diameter and 5mm heigh. I have infil before walls tucked yet it always prints the walls before infill. No matter which way I have it around it always prints walls first. What am I missing? Running cura 4.8. Cheers.
I'm trying to improve my 0.6 petg quality since it looks so... ugly.
so miniatures make a lot of sense!
if my cr10 can print miniatures, the rest shouldn't be a problem, eh?
I copied a lot of your settings into my new "base petg" settings with slight modifications cuz 0.6 nozzle.
lets see how the next bency comes out!
Hey Tom. Love your videos, they have helped me out a lot. One question I have is: how would you recommend using supports when printing minis that require them? I've tried printing with supports in the past and have had issues removing them (especially when they are built between and around the legs of the characters).
I don't have any settings to recommend, sorry.
Cura 4.2.1 now has individual flow settings - if you look for support flow, set that to 10% (I'm currently playing around with it, 10% seems to work fine). It creates a far lighter but still supportive structure for your model - I've found it much easier to remove, with less harm to the miniature. Eager to see what other suggestions come your way - every bit helps!
@@colintate Thanks! I'll definitely give that a shot. Basically what's happening now is that i end my breaking all my minis at the ankles so I can remove the supports between their legs. Then i glue them back together. Not ideal!
Hi, there's a TH-cam channel, don't remember exactly the name of the channel but search for Danny the 3d DM he has a video on how to setup support on Cura. Use Tom's general settings and Danny for support settings.
Cura has added an experimental setting named "Tree Supports". Have you tried it and if so what are your thoughts on it? Thanks for the amazing explanation/tutorial
Has the downloadable profile been tested with Cura 4.2.1?
Cura 4.2.1 changed many of the default settings on the Ender 3. If a profile just uses the defaults for a setting (instead of explicitly stating what value to use), a profile imported into Cura 4.2.1 ends up with different settings that if that same profile was imported into Cura 4.0.
I believe on the facebook group Tom said he was sticking with Cura 4.0 for the time being. I believe that was yesterday, so I'm not sure which is best, but I would guess Cura 4.0
You can have multiple versions of Cura installed. So you can keep the old and try the new. The other thing you can do is create a generic printer profile that has the same specifications as the defualt Ender 3 profile in 4.2.1, but you will either have to recreate all your print profiles manually or jump through some some hoops in the old version of cura to be able to import them to the new profile... it's easier just to re-enter manually. Creating the generic profile gets rid of the "creawsome mod" nonsense.
@@PuttingOnTheFoil is there a way to download previous versions of Cura? I can only seem to find the most recent one
Thanks for all your work on this tom!
Thank you for the walk through Tom!
Though printing the owl bear cubs with these retraction settings produced the worst stringing that I have ever had on a mini print.
Interesting... my experience is that when printing holes, printing the outer perimeter last leads to tighter fits (sometimes parts don't fit at all and I have to add more tolerance), meaning that the inner perimeter takes up space and pushes the outer perimeter out from its intended position. Thus I assumed that printing the outer perimeter first would also lead to better surface quality. I use PrusaSlicer though. I will give disabling that a try and see if my logos come out more crisp.
What does that have to do with printing gaming miniatures?
hey i just got your videos, amazing just a few questions with the detail on those minis did you use a .3 or .4 nozzle and and the miniature size was it 32mm or larger?
can you do a video like this for maybe a tank or a vehicle? and then for the Anycubic I3 Mega-S ? that would be wonderful!
I use these same settings for our World War Tesla tanks so no need for a video for those. As for the Mega-S, I don't use that printer so can't do a video on them.
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors i downloaded your fat dragon presets but cura wont import them. I think i need to spend many hours trying to gain the skills necessary to print. Cant even find the auto support button in cura.
I'm curious, what using 0.2 nozzle would change. Just half everything? (I jest) Interesting subject and a good video on it. :)
Just use the .3 profile that is linked in the video description, slow speeds down by 10-15% if necessary
Wonderful video. Thanks for all the hard work to test this out.
I’m starting to experiment with PLA+ for stronger minis.
Any thoughts on what one would change to use that?
eSun PLA Pro (+) is what I use, so nothing needs changed :)
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors Thanks for that PLA+ recommendation. I'm surprised to hear nothing changes at all though. I assume you mean nothing other than the extrusion & bed temperatures? (I see eSun's temp ratings are higher than PLA, as one would expect.)
@@Mike-tc2rl No, my profile is designed for PLA Pro, nothing changes unless you use standard PLA, then you drop the nozzle temp some. Bed temp remains 60˚.
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors Ah... gotcha. Thanks, that makes sense. Now I have to buy some PLA Pro. Any interest in adding an affiliate link for me to click through?
@@Mike-tc2rl here you go! amzn.to/2ZPsTBU
Thank you for the time in making this video and the profile. What version of Cura does this work for?
4.0 and higher :)
Great video, going to have to rewatch thus a few times to absorb it all! Wouldn't 4.2's replacement of the standard profiles with the Creawesome mod break the FDG profiles? Or have you compensated for that somehow? I've been staying on 4.0 out of a deep paranoia about breaking the FDG profiles, since I live or die by them (metaphorically speaking). 😂
Thank you so much. This is the type of explanation I needed (and enjoyed)
Really good tutorial. The only problem is that after I finished and tried to slice my model at the end of the slicing Cura repeatedly crashed. Any idea why? I am using the latest software and I work on Mac OS
You're talking about versions 3 and 4 in this video -- but the linked dropbox only has profiles that are labeled "Version 1".
I've changed the naming system since this video was done a few years ago, the versions start over with each new version of Cura.
Great information as always. Thank you for sharing.
I need that 99999999 top layer trick to make my prints completely solid. 100% infill leaves gaps inside, like those nitrogen-aerated chocolate bars from several years ago.
Watch this video for why it's a bad idea (th-cam.com/video/AqEWl51s9Rw/w-d-xo.html). Also, I'm curious why you would want to print infill areas slower than wall shells? That's adding an insane amount of print time for zero benefit.
do you have a video for printing supports? i struggle with this on d&d minis.
Awesome video, thank you!
Hi, I know I'm late to the party but I love your videos. I watched whole video and something i don't understand...what about supports for overhanging parts?
None of my models require supports, everything is designed to print on FDM printers without any slicer supports.
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors yeah i can see that..but if i would print something that needs them..any chance of making a guide of some sort?
@@Sniflet maybe someday if I ever have the free time to do so
What really confuses me are support settings because they keep messing up my prints
Same! Looking for definite support tips, as support roofs on miniatures are really an issue for me xD
Many times it isn't the support settings, it's a poorly designed miniature that is not designed to accept supports properly.
try tree support in experimental it only touches the model where necessary resulting in way less nubs and artifacts
The minute you add a ABL like the EZABL or BL Touch, the magic number concept goes right out the window.
Curious- why do they apply before adding auto leveling?
@@Cloudman572 - good question. When you manually level, the z-layer height is always at a given Z value, so trying to match the height to a full step of the motor makes sense. What auto leveling does is adds a tiny offset to the Z value at every point to compensate for the bed. This means you can't match it to a full step. If a full step was 0.2mm, the ABL may make the height in one area 0.22, not a "magic number", and you have no control of that. But yet the print still looks great using an ABL because stepper motors can handle the fractional steps very well these days, IMHO.
@@GeorgeLeite Thanks for the explanation. How easy is it to manually level to a full step? I did a quick google search and came up with nothing.
@@Cloudman572I was going to say when the printer homes, it always starts at 0 so you're set to print full steps, but I think you hit on something very observant with your question. We don't know when the stepper is physically in a full step position or not, so the motor could actually be between steps when the bed is set to 0. That would be even more reason why you can't rely on "magic numbers". HMMM, I'm going to have to think about that one. How would you set the z end stop to make sure it was at a whole step?
@@GeorgeLeite All I can think of is that you must be able to instruct Z motor to go to a set full step and then full step n steps to start in the best place but that is too much trouble for my limited knowledge - I will just stick with the manual and non full steps.
Thanks though.
Have a great day all.
Really, really helpful for an artist starting out with his first 3d printer. Thanks!
Thanks for watching!
Great help!
Thanks for sharing!
What do you think of tree supports for printing miniatures? I've tried it out and found that removing supports is much easier, given I can print supports without touching the base of the model. Also, what do you think of printing in ABS and using acetone smoothing for models without lines? Do you feel as though you lose too much detail or the glossy look isn't appealing to you? I've found it's tricky to execute well but seems to generate almost injection molded part appearance.
So you mentioned in both this and your earlier video that the strength of the mini comes from the shell, not the infill.
With that in mind, is there a reason you choose Grid infill over Lines infill?
I feel it gives a better framework for attaching the shells to.
Is there a more up-to-date version? The profiles fail to import. I think I have 4.8
Is this in writing anywhere?
Yes, Satan has an additional copy.
Could you do a video on support settings?
None of the miniature or terrain models I design require supports.
Would you recommend printing miniatures one at a time or in batches of 5-10 minis at a time?
for a .3 mm nozzle would be much of a difference if I use this profile?? thanks great channel
I have specific profiles for .4, .3, and .2mm nozzles.
@@Tombof3DPrintedHorrors care to link the .3 mm video?? Thanks!
@@luisfontana9070 pssst... read the video description. ;)
In regards to retraction settings, I have a Neptune 3 Pro which is direct drive. Should that be shorter for it then as compared to a printer with a bowden?
Hello sir, which one is your video for 0.3mm nozzle?