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As the title says, I'm looking to find a source for 3D printing master-level models.

I know companies like Privateer Press, Greebo, and Kingdom Death are now selling 3D printed models. But at least on the first two, I can still see print lines, and the result is not as smooth as a traditional cast.

However, for some time companies like Raging Heroes have digitally sculpted and used 3D printing to generate masters for casting. Obviously, there's some cleanup involved, but the key, really fine features (such as facial detail) can't really be smoothed / sanded afterwards and seem to come out perfect.

I think Raging Heroes may have had a dark orange, almost ochre, color on their master prints?

Most companies are really cagey about this, so I'm curious - does anyone here have a source for true master-level prints, rather than relying on a lower quality print and a lot of sanding? Again, looking for better results than PP and Greebo are currently selling as final products.

Thanks for any input

You use much higher grade printing machines, which come with their own slicing software and much higher grade resins. Basically everything goes up a lot from the consumer equipment most of us will buy into.

Also sometimes what you do is use the 3D print to test the model and then you send those 3D files away to the CNC machine which then machines out your mould. That's certainly how GW do it and it wouldn't surprise me if a few others do it that way as well.


As for specifics, Last Sword are pretty open with their process when chatting about it on their discord, I think they use a Formlabs printer, but beyond general interest in chat I've never really dug deep into remembering the details because its all way way way beyond my budget

Quite a few companies use Formlabs printers in-house, I believe Anvil Industries and Impact Miniatures are others, for example. However, they very much rely on sanding and this limits what you can print as a master, since these printers are still in the "desktop" tier, and many of the cheap options from China have matched or exceeded them in quality.

Like you describe, I'm looking for a provider from beyond this tier... if anyone has a lead they can share publicly please let me know!

 RiTides wrote:
Quite a few companies use Formlabs printers in-house, I believe Anvil Industries and Impact Miniatures are others, for example. However, they very much rely on sanding and this limits what you can print as a master, since these printers are still in the "desktop" tier, and many of the cheap options from China have matched or exceeded them in quality.

Like you describe, I'm looking for a provider from beyond this tier... if anyone has a lead they can share publicly please let me know!

You'd probably better search for 'rapid prototyping' and the like, the expression '3D printing' strongly directs you to the consumer segment.

Agreed with searching for rapid prototyping services, for fine detail it may be related to dental or scientific fields. Look for places that use Polyjet-like machines.
Some of the the early shapeways stuff they used printers where the support material was different than the actual part, so it didn't have the surface scarring just needed dissolved and a wash post-printing process.

I've had parts made on Polyjet machines, but for unrelated applications, so it would be really interesting if that turned out to be the key technology. Maybe it comes down to settings used.

But that's also been my experience with "rapid prototyping" companies - it's all about machine time, so they tend not to offer full resolution as it would just tie up the machine for so long. Whereas for a miniature master intended to be used for casting, this is obviously required.

Thanks for the ideas

 RiTides wrote:
As the title says, I'm looking to find a source for 3D printing master-level models.

I know companies like Privateer Press, Greebo, and Kingdom Death are now selling 3D printed models. But at least on the first two, I can still see print lines, and the result is not as smooth as a traditional cast.

However, for some time companies like Raging Heroes have digitally sculpted and used 3D printing to generate masters for casting. Obviously, there's some cleanup involved, but the key, really fine features (such as facial detail) can't really be smoothed / sanded afterwards and seem to come out perfect.

I think Raging Heroes may have had a dark orange, almost ochre, color on their master prints?

Most companies are really cagey about this, so I'm curious - does anyone here have a source for true master-level prints, rather than relying on a lower quality print and a lot of sanding? Again, looking for better results than PP and Greebo are currently selling as final products.

Thanks for any input

Here's a tip - 3D printing at the finest levels is more about skill-level than ingredients past a certain point. Your average desktop 8K machine printing at a 20um layer height is good enough for a 28mm master - but the key is to get the resin selected and dialled in so well that it pulls it off. Shrinkage is a major concern, and so is calculating the arctan/print angle and so forth; things that many home printer bods simply don't bother with.

In other words, you can do it yourself, but you'll need to spend a fair couple of months prototyping and fine tuning the process.