so while everyone's saying that this is an amazing printer why am i saying the opposite well i'm not going to say that the print quality is bad because they're absolutely amazing and you just troll me online as an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about and the build quality of this machine is absolutely outstanding especially when compared to other consumer-grade printers so why am i saying don't buy it well to quickly summarize my reservations with this printer here's vin diesel to help me explain oh and hi i'm ross and welcome to firehammer videos you
see this printer is capable of unrivaled results at the present time to show you just how good it is i've partnered with almost all of the top miniature stl creators out there and printed a selection of each of their ranges so unlike my previous printer reviews where i printed some probably naughty warhammer models this time i've printed directly comparable models without any risk of ip breaches oh and for any warhammer fans watching what do you think of 3d printing is it a threat to games workshop if so in what way let me know down in
the comments and i'll share my thoughts with you at the end of this video so since this printer is capable of arguably the best quality out there right now what's the problem well there's a few and thankfully due to the painstaking trials i've gone through along with the other concerns that i've had not only will i show you the problems with the printer i'll also show you the simple solutions most of them anyway now personally i've had some technical difficulties which i'll get out of the way first number one the bed would not level and
it turns out this was due to a threaded screw from the factory i tested this by printing small squares in each corner of the build plate and making sure each would adhere but i had failures all over the place at various different orientations to compensate for this i started printing my base layers at incredibly long exposure times in order to bridge any gaps the unbalanced bed was leaving unfortunately this coupled with the deeply laser etched plate required me to literally hammer and chisel the prints off the build plate but some of this was also caused
by a lychee slicer issue which i'll get into later undeterred i continued printing with some awesome luke studios models despite luke studios terribly excessive supports i was printing these to compare the quality with another printer that i was reviewing at the same time after only a day of semi-successful prints along with unsuccessful and uneven calibration efforts i came down the next morning to find that my largest print yet had failed halfway through worse than this the lcd was dead physically sound but it had nothing on the display but the good thing was frozen's printer-specific facebook
group and their support team were absolutely great they diagnosed the screen and sent me some replacement parts unfortunately this took two weeks just to process the actual lcd replacement is easy enough but the black border of tape they send is very difficult to fit you could easily crop out a portion of the printable area if it's not aligned properly and there's no way to clearly tell if it is it's also worth noting here and this is the bit that terrifies me unlike other printers that have a solid glass screen above the lcd in this case
the raw lcd panel is what the fep sits on so the issue here is that if you get even the slightest amount of resin on the screen which can happen if you accidentally pierce the lcd mid print and it cures on the glass then your panel is ruined you can apparently soak it off with isopropanol and sticky tape but i don't want to attempt that since there's no lcd protector available i opted for making sure to put an extra sheet of fep over the screen unfortunately for me my replacement lcd screen was dead on arrival
so they sent me another replacement lcd and to be sure they also sent me a replacement motherboard i also need to stress here that they're not doing this as i'm a frozen partner i bought this printer with my own money this video is in no way sponsored by frozen so on receiving the saturn replacement lcd i'd followed some advice that i'd read online to tape it down using captain tape this is really strong tape used in electronics it's also semi-opaque and that really helps with alignment it's really thin which also helps with bed leveling because
bed leveling is the first big design problem with this printer and more than a few people are having this issue now remember at the beginning of the video when i said that the quality of this printer is amazing i think this may be causing the issue you see the upright arms on the print bed are so strong that when you try to level the bed this inflexible metal actually causes the bed to shift as you tighten the screws so once again thanks to dennis wang who has the best solution and that's to a use two
sheets of a4 paper not one when you're leveling it when tightening the screws only crank them until you feel the initial bite then do a quarter turn on alternating corners until it's tight but i've also found it's best to try and push down evenly on the bed as you tighten because this significantly helps especially if you've still got that thick black tape from frozen around your lcd because that raises the height too if you still can't get it level then i'd recommend burning some sage and praying to the machine guards honestly getting this dead on
is trial error and lock so now i've got a working lcd and a level ish bed it's time to actually print some stuff so to start off with something small i printed out some shoulder pads and various heads and other custom components that i could use on my horse heresy space marines for some painting tutorial videos that i've done and i also had a friend who wanted some shoulder pads for their army as well and whilst the 8k's resolution orbit eliminates the voxel lines so those are the lines that you'll see on the edges of
large round surfaces you will still see some layer lines at certain angles even at 0.02 millimeters as i've shown previously even the smallest layer lines can still be seen on a 3d print especially when you're dry brushing or washing however when adding in just the minimal amount of anti-aliasing and two-time image blur every single line is eradicated without any perceivable detail loss i have never seen detail like this but before we get into the full showcase of miniatures there are still more issues first this 8k resin a lot of people have described this as a
double-edged sword and i'm not going to do a comparison with other resins in this video because it'd be way too long but it's already been made clear in various sources online that this 8k resin outperforms the 4k resin when it comes to the detail and that 4k resin is an absolutely incredible product this stuff is much more precise with a glossier finish but for miniatures there's a bigger drawback it's quite brittle this initially came to light when i first got the printer back in february the few parts i was able to print suffered more from
this issue but that's due to the time of year long story short this resin needs to be at 22 degrees celsius minimum but when you have the temperature set this resin is so detailed that you can easily heat up the resin in hot water before its final cure and just pull the parts off the supports with very little cleanup needed with finer components you'll still need to get in there with a pair of fine clippers just to avoid the parts snapping instead of the support snapping off the other issue i had early on was with
the thickness of the rafts and this is in no way frozen's fault at all i found throughout numerous prints that the base layer was incredibly thick like three to five millimeters thick and i initially assumed that this was due to a gap between the screen and the build plate but there was no way that the gap between the screen and my build plate when it was set to zero was five millimeters the solution was simple i just stopped using lychee and sliced it into two box instead then the issue completely disappeared i'd still use lychee
to arrange and support my model but then i'd export that as a single stl load it up into two box and slice it there problem solved so now it was working i went a little print crazy i wanted some models that i could print to compare with warhammer figures my personal favorite range and the current pinnacle of quality when it comes to the retail space but without having a video that was at risk of copyright infringement so i reached out to a load of top miniature creators on my mini factory hoping at least a few
of them would let me print some of their miniatures and well all of them said yes here have an army so i'll show you some big prints in a minute but for now here's a look at a few of those models where games workshop have a very distinct style of large flat surfaces all of these models can go that extra mile they can match those smooth flat surfaces where needed but in the case of textured areas you can not only see muscle definition but you can also see things like pores pock marks and general imperfections
in skin tone wood with even finer grain and for sharp details you can get spikes that literally stab you but while printing these i did notice a couple of more issues with the printer whenever my print started i could hear a mechanical talk sound as the bed lowers to its set print position apparently this is a common issue and can be easily resolved by tightening the screws for the zed rod but i also have an issue where the base layers split on the build plate i can easily remove the models now but the first few
layers the burn-in layers are so adhered to the build plate that i need to crack them off which often sends pieces flying all over the room across my desk into my vat and even in my hair as i found out one evening in the shower or i can solve this by turning on transition layers which i've currently got set to zero so to really test this printer and to have some final thoughts i decided to print something really big so i reached out to black forged games who are one of my favorite creators in fact
i'm just going to say this if you own a 3d printer you should have a model from black forge games because they are absolutely incredible and once again that's a completely unsponsored statement i went and bought their initial models because i absolutely love them so that's just my opinion black forge were kind enough to send me a copy of their corrupt engine model pre-release i'd already fallen in love with their original tengen model and i used that in an earlier 3d printer review black ford have knocked it out of the park with this corrupt version
of the same guy and this model is so huge that i actually ran out of the 8k resin before i could finish the print so i've still got some wings to do and whilst we can all agree that this 3d print looks smooth crisp and most importantly awesome it's not testing the detail that this 3d printer is capable of so i shrunk it down to 32 millimeter heroic scale supported it myself and printed it out and just look at this detail this is far beyond anything that games workshop or forge world has ever produced and
you can even see detail in the recessed areas like the armor plates or within the beads hanging from them there are some huge benefits to 3d prints over what games workshop produce but the main benefits i think are two-fold one in many cases you can print a ready-built model and just snap it off the supports and it's ready to paint with minimal cleanup and two models can now have voids you see due to the inherent process of casting big manufacturers of miniatures can't create recesses at certain angles think space marine bolters with no barrel holes
that's the most obvious example but this limitation is present all over your favorite little army people gaps and mould lines are an absolute bane when it comes to miniatures but with 3d printing you often have none of this and with the intelligent placement of supports and in all cases here these were pre-supported miniatures you can literally print it snap it off cure it and it's ready to paint and all that's before the super sharp detail that's available to you here and once again thanks to this printer you not only get that detail but you also
get no layer lines just to hammer home that point here i want to show you an example of a 3d printed model i painted with nothing but a dry brush dry brushing should naturally highlight any layer lines or imperfections in the surface here there's not a layer line in sight showing just how perfect this printer is it's currently unrivaled in the consumer space and for me this is the biggest problem with the printer i'm a die-hard warhammer fan almost every model they produce either goes on my must buy list or i buy it but this
3d printer coupled with the models created by the designers shown here has completely distracted me from warhammer ever since i started printing with it so if you're currently a warhammer fan like me definitely do not buy this printer honestly the print is amazing and the 8k resolution in the small but oddly shaped print area is absolutely unrivalled and this is coming from the guy telling you everything wrong with it and again this isn't sponsored by frozen i bought this printer with my own money from this point on there's no need to look for innovations in
3d printers with higher resolution than this i think going forward we need to see some ease of use innovations and whilst resin 3d printing has been around for a good few years with this quality level the battle for the highest quality miniatures not only starts here but it starts with most of the war already won so okay go and buy this printer now whilst i do a showreel and a huge thanks to our patrons i just want to do a quick thank you to you as well for watching if you have enjoyed this video or
it's helped you in any way then please hit that like button and don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell i really appreciate you being here and any feedback you can give me down in the comments will help us to make more and better content in the future let me know what you think of 3d printing and let me know what you think are the best miniatures to 3d print i'll see you guys next time for hammer out [Music] you
