It doesn’t matter who you get the wash and cure from. Just make sure if you get a wash and cure the same size as your printer or bigger. 
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A lot of people have issues with the water washable resin. It’s easier to work with, but there’s been many complaints about the print quality compared to normal resins. Personally I’ve not tried the water washables. I just stick to the normal stuff.
I have had good luck with the anycubic resins and the iform resins.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08863S55P/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
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With the regular, you have to wash the items after the print in 90 % alcohol. The other is just a water wash. The water washable is the only one I’ve used, and I’ve been pretty happy with it, but, like some of the other comments suggest, I’ve been told the regular is more durable.
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I’ve been considering getting a resin printer as well, I think one is in my future!
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Why jump straight to resin for your first 3D printer?
I admit I have a bias here since I don’t have any resin printers and I’m fairly ignorant about that process, but I do own a couple of FDM machines. I’ve never been tempted to trade them in for dealing with buckets of smelly goo and solvents.
Then again, I don’t ever make super detailed figures. Most of my 3D printing seems to be various brackets to hold other things together.
Nevertheless I wonder whether a $450 Prusa Mini would fit the bill. It’s definitely within criteria 1 for budget and size, and I’d say it’s easy to use as well.
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For figs and other types of high detail minis… FDM just doesn’t cut it. You can’t get that kind of detail. Especially if you are talking about newer ones with 4k, 5k, 8k screens. You really have to get the magnifying glasses out to even begin to see the layer lines in 90% of the cases. Things like top layers on rounded surfaces still stand out a bit but they are so easy to prime with a filler primer and not lose any significant detail, but still get rid of those miniscule lines that there’s really no comparison.
Then there’s the print time issue with FDM.
If you want to print one widget on an FDM printer it takes X amount of time. If you want to print TEN widgets on an FDM printer it takes X * 10 amount of time. So… 1 hour for 1 widget… or 10 hours for 10 widgets. Do that on a resin printer and 1 widget may take 1 hour (though you’ll find that print time is usually cut SIGNIFICANTLY over an FDM printer) but if you want to print 10 widgets… It still only takes 1 hour. Time to print is based entirely on layer height. Not how many miles the print head has to travel.
But it’s also apples and oranges. Even with the ABS-like resins, FDM strength is superior for when you do need those brackets and such. That’s why I also have 4 FDM printers. 
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Oh, one more thing. Make sure whatever you get has a monochrome screen. They last longer and cut the print time significantly. I think most printers you can buy now have switched to mono screens, but you definitely want to stay away from the old style screens. (keep in mind that screens have a lifespan just like our laser tubes… they are a consumable and will need to be replaced eventually… They do last quite some time though and with mono screens it’s significantly longer.)
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I have an older Elegoo Mars printer that I’m very happy with. I’ve used water washable as well as standard resins, and have been happy with both. The water washable is easier to deal with and I haven’t had any trouble with it. For miniatures, durability isn’t really an issue anyway.
Your biggest challenge is going to be learning the software. There are free programs you can download to make models from (Blender, etc) and lots of YouTube videos on their use, but the learning curve is still pretty steep (at least for me). You can start from a commercially produced stl or obj design, but often they will consist of an outer skin that is not printable. You need to learn how to fill the skin in to make it printable. I use Meshmixer for this (MakersMuse on YouTube has videos). Then you need to use a slicer software to add supports for your particular printer. I use Prusaslicer for this; you can save the dimensions/characteristics of your resin and your printer in this program. After that I take the sliced .sl1 file into UVTools to fix islands and resin traps, and output the file in the format required by my printer (.cbddlp). That file goes on a usb drive that delivers the file to the printer.
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Wow your post has a really inspired me to now learn a foreign language.
After thoroughly reading every single reply I truly believe I have a better chance of learning to read, write and speak Mandarin Chinese. Understanding 3-D printing I think at this stage in my life is going to be very challenging.
I got a little secret to tell you. I think of you every single day when I view my beautiful miniatures.
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I have the very first anycubic resin printer that was released. It drives me nuts. I don’t use it anymore because it felt like after the first week, everything was a dropped print. I figure it was because it was new at the time, and they didn’t get the bugs worked out, so I’ve been wanting to get rid of this one and upgrade to a larger one. I’m just annoyed that my husband paid as much as he did for something that’s now around a hundred dollars.
I don’t even want to clean it though…that resin has been sitting in the vat for I don’t know how many years now…I’d donate the machine, but I think it would just give the next person a headache.
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Awww, that’s sweet.
Really, it’s not as bad as it sounds. You just have to start with easy stuff. it’s possible to create some very nice 3D printed minis from free available stl files that have been printed before and been shown to work.
Go to Thingiverse.com and search for miniatures. There are literally thousands of free files. Most of them are geared toward gamers (monsters, fighters,etc) but there are still lots of non-gamer minis, and you can also shrink down larger items.
Check out Thingiverse - Digital Designs for Physical Objects. She has a bunch of cute things (little chairs and such), and you can download and play with those files to get a feel for things.
Oh, forgot to mention TinkerCAD. It’s free (web-based) and is one of the easiest programs to start with. @theroar84 has a ton of videos on it, and this article: Cardboard Cube Challenge - A TinkerCAD Skill Builder
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I really want to learn to design miniatures for resin printing. These miniatures will be the accessories for the 1/64 scale dioramas I make for the eBay store.
After reading all the replies I think I know which 3-D printer I would like to have. So now I have to go back to YouTube with that specific printer.
I want you to know I really really really really miss everyone so very much!!! I’m still here but not as often.
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For what you want to do I think Blender is a good way to go in the software. I believe it has an .stl output option though I have no idea how the result would work in the printers mentioned.
I bought a large area FDM printer, planning to use it where the Glowforge cannot go and to use the Glowforge for any flat area. But I have found setting up far harder than the Glowforge.
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Do you have an iPad with Pencil?
Nomad Sculpt is very similar to desktop ZBrush with a more intuitive iPad interface and costs around $12.
It’s not really necessary to generate .STL natively out of your modeling software (tho most will) - most slicers can import common 3D files such as .OBJ, .FBX, .DAE, etc.
There are a lot of simple tools for making models watertight if they aren’t already. Windows has built in 3D Builder, Meshmixer is free and avail for Mac.
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Thank you so very much for posting the information. I am extremely blessed and fortunate I have 2 iPad Pros add 2 Apple pencils. Since 2010, my iPad Pro is the number one tech toy for all things Internet and computer related. Last October, I purchased the latest one and then watched this video. This is a wonderful video that will make iPad Pro user is aware of all the things and iPad can do. Apparently it’s all about the dongle.
I will definitely research your suggestions!!!
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Blender can export to STL. I have printed things I have modeled in Blender on my Elegoo Mars. Some understanding of 3D modeling and the software is required to produce manifold objects (what @ekla called “watertight”).
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Started composing this a couple days ago, but didn’t have time to structure some final points…
I’ve been in the 3D printing realm since 2007 lobbing my STLs to a service bureau in NC. At the time, $250k-$500k was a tad much to drop on the machines.
By 2012, a handful of desktop resin printers became “affordable”. $15,000 was the price of admission for one of these machines that offered a build envelope (30mm x 40mm) to fit several rings into. Half liter of casting resin was ~$200. A resin vat replacement cost $600. Given the previous time & expense of outsourcing, it was still a no-brainer to pull the trigger on this machine.
Later in that year, the B9 Creator was a $2500 kickstarter project. It’s 30 micron build envelope didn’t increase much (32mm x 57mm), but their (castable) resin was under $100 and replacement vats didn’t exceed $150. The machine offered an option to reconfigure into 50-micron printing. This decreasing of resolution tightness served to increase the build envelope to 54mm x 96mm.
This was the concurrent era where Formlabs started up. The Form1 “drew” each layer with a laser rather than a projected image the aforementioned units deployed. While I wasn’t fond of its mediocre speed and resolution, this process allowed for a “whopping” 5-inch sq build envelope. Enviable, but its other specs didn’t align with what I was after back then.
By ~2018, companies like AnyCubic offered an inexpensive resin machine in their Photon. Much of that glory got usurped when Elegoo swooped in with the Mars; a $200 resin printer with $30 resins and $50 spare metal vats. This entire daggum printer cost what a bottle of resin did in 2012! It would’ve been irresponsible NOT to try it out.
Verdict? Elegoo is legit. Overall build is impressive at it’s price point and it uses a similar stretched-FEP peel mechanism that was found in the workhorse $15000 printer from 2012. While it’s mildly annoying that Elegoo riffed out numerous variants of the Mars (Mars, Mars Pro, Mars 2, Mars 2 Pro, Mars 3) the attractive entry price has pushed ownership numbers beyond critical mass where replacement parts for all of them should remain available for a good while. The Mars lineup print at 50-micron resolution with an envelope of approx 68mm x 120mm – PLENTY of space for a handful of detailed miniatures or figurines in one go.
Moving up in size, the $500 Elegoo Saturn maintains a 50 micron resolution fine-ness while bumping its build envelope to 120mm x 192mm.
Once they’re done fulfilling their 2021 Kickstarter campaign, Elegoo may widen the pre-sell of their Jupiter printer. This monstrosity weighs in around 90lbs, could probably displace a desk, and has a build envelope of 277mm x 156mm (10 x 6 inches, 11 inches high) Likely ballparks around $1300 when out of its Kickstarter phase. Purpose of mentioning this behemoth is to put in perspective where that $1000 budget lands in the current state of 3D resin printing.
Biggest is best, rite? Only carries as much sense as buying an oven to handle a daily piece of toast. Unless there are very specific frequent needs for huge prints, the best candidate is one whose build envelope matches what you honestly need. Cost of consumable replacement parts on the larger machines mushroom exponentially. 2K LCD screen of the Mars was $30 last I checked. 4K 9" screen for the Saturn is $80. Elegoo Jupiter’s 6K 12” screen might hit $400 or more. The amount of resin required to fill the Jupiter’s vat will be a silly exercise compared to what the Mars sips.
Most of the resin printers I’ve considered have started out with crafting a cardstock mock-up of its build envelope. Everything within that volume should be considered the print boundary…
This shot revealed to me that I wasn’t missing much with the Elegoo Saturn when an incoming Form3 had a similar-enough cubic volume in their build envelopes.
A 1:64 scale target means most human figures would be sized approximately an inch tall. Allowing for a generous quarter-inch elbow room, well over 200 characters can be arranged on an Elegoo Mars build platform for printing.
I’ll second @ekla ‘s suggestion with Nomad Sculpt. It harnesses the power of the Apple Pencil’s responsiveness/sensitivity into a highly portable sculpt-whenever-the-inspiration-strikes platform. There are plenty of beginner tutorials that’ll get you familiar with the basics.
Watch that clip on a computer screen while launching this NOMAD WEB DEMO on a Pencil-equipped-iPad and follow along.
If you discover a newfound love for sculpting and want to pursue investing in yourself, check out Vertex School’s course on sculpting & printing miniatures. The bonus bundled courses on ZBrush has applicable concepts for Nomad while the Anatomy sculpting course should lay down some solid fundamentals. I can envision a scenario where you (or someone you hire) sculpts a kitbash-ready file. Head, torso, upper arm, lower arm, etc all contained in their own layer. Whenever a character is needed, load up this master file, arrange and pose all the parts as needed, then MERGE (or copy) all layered parts into a single mesh, export as STL/OBJ and load into the 3D printer.
Last thing I want to mention in this post is that resin printing can be extremely rewarding especially the exquisiteness of detail that can magically emerge and moreso if it’s your own creation HOWEVER, the glut of all these inexpensive units on the market pretty much regardless of the brand IMO are best deployed by those who have an INTERMEDIATE skill set and knowledge of this particular process. ANY resin printer freshly unboxed will undoubtedly be dialed-in at the factory and score an easy “1” on the 1-10 difficulty scale for it’s initial prints… It’s what happens when SOMETHING, ANYTHING changes where the machine requires a re-zeroing of the platform, or a change of the FEP film, or a custom dialing-in of exposure times that the troubleshooting difficulty rating for a noob can escalate to a 6 or 7. Consequences of ignoring the what, hows, and whys of the process? This daily Reddit thread or this one of “failed print” postings will testify the point.
The question of “What’s the best resin printer” is non-sensical to me because it’s the equivalent of asking “Which faucet in that building has the best water?” ALL the sub-$3000 resin printers are capable of churning out fantastic prints and at the same time, if something goes a little sideways, they will ALL require a similar level of experience to diagnose and troubleshoot. In my 10 years in the resin printing rodeo, no 3D resin printer has been engineered to allow escaping this “intermediate experience” requirement. Some have offered a good, knowledgeable community to pull beginners up into intermediates (B9 forum) while others like envisionTEC include a bundled 2-days of hands-on certificate-completion training at their Detroit headquarters for plunking down 15 grand. Bottom line, no 3D printer will allow you to stay in a self-imposed beginner bubble so make certain you enter with the mindset of WANTING to learn everything there is to learn.
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@CarterTG Thank you for sharing your experiences. Very interesting!
+1 for the Small Robot Studio video tutorials for Nomad Sculpt. I have been training up on Blender and, have barely touched Nomad yet. I have played a little and, watched a couple of the Small Robot Studios videos. Nomad seems like it will be easier and more intuitive for modeling organic shapes.
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I do not even know where to begin.
You are being awarded the Glowforge Super Hero Award. In the past this award was only given to someone who created an exceptional piece of art with their GF.
Oh my goodness your post is mind blowing incredible. Thank you so very much for helping me. Time is such a precious commodity and you took your own personal time to help me.
Will you come to my home to set all of this up for me?
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