Stormlight Miniatures- is there a desire for a mini painting FAQ?

[KickAssMagicRobot he/him]

First, apologies if there's a better forum this could've gone into!

 

With the Stormlight miniatures Kickstarter closing today, I'm wondering how many people here will be picking up this great hobby for the first time! Is there a desire/need for how-to information for beginners and things to watch out for? There's already a ton of information out there, but I'm more than happy to share what I know if it will be helpful to people. I've been painting minis off and on since the late 90's and pretty seriously since last summer. I've tried most of the techniques and products available and if it will be helpful to people, I can try to compile it all!

[TruthwatchingRadiant He/Him]

Do you have any experience painting 3D printed miniatures? I mean the FDM 3D printers. Not the resin ones. Assuming I’d just be using regular PLA plastic filament.

[karaiwulf fæ/fær]

On 7/15/2025 at 10:57 AM, TruthwatchingRadiant said:

Do you have any experience painting 3D printed miniatures? I mean the FDM 3D printers. Not the resin ones. Assuming I’d just be using regular PLA plastic filament.

I haven't printed minis myself on my fdm printer (successfully, at least -- I can't find a 0.1mm nozzle for my printer to really do it properly).  But assuming you do get good prints, you'd probably want to eliminate layer lines first.  There are a few ways to do this, but using an infill and then sanding is probably your best bet to preserve small details.

Otherwise, I'd suggest using a vapor chamber with acetone -- and this really isn't that bad to setup.  You just take a plastic tub that won't melt in the presence of acetone, put some paper towels with acetone on them in there, and cover your models with the bucket.  How long you leave them in there is gonna be a trick to figure out.

But that's kinda the fun part of 3d printing: endlessly tweaking processes till you find something that works.  /s

Anyway, further than that I'd assume its just like regular injection molded mini painting.