There’s a narrative that pops up in almost every Reddit thread about printing miniatures: you should always be chasing the highest possible print quality.

With resin, that's a much easier goal to achieve. With FDM, getting close often takes a lot more time, tuning, and effort. For many people, that extra effort simply isn't worth the return.

Resin absolutely produces better miniatures. But it isn't always an option. Cost, available space, ventilation, health concerns, or simply not wanting another hobby to manage are all perfectly valid reasons to stick with FDM.

Likewise, trying to make FDM indistinguishable from resin isn't always a worthwhile goal either.

That doesn't mean quality FDM miniatures aren't possible.

We've all seen what people like HOHansen and ObscuraNox have achieved. Their work has shown what's possible with enough knowledge and patience, and these days I print almost exclusively using ObscuraNox's settings in Orca Slicer. (Mostly because Bambu Studio still struggles to generate support interfaces consistently without manual intervention.)

But... I also print plenty of low-quality minis.

Trying out a new printer. Printing an army quickly for an upcoming game. Testing different scales. Practice models. Paint mules. Experimenting with settings.

There are lots of perfectly good reasons to intentionally print something that isn't the absolute best your printer can produce.

In fact, I'm still a big advocate for a 0.4mm nozzle using Bambu's stock 0.08 mm High Quality profile. Hit print. Go.

For a huge number of people, it's already good enough.

There absolutely is a place for high-quality FDM prints.  

But for me, they're the exception rather than the rule. I'm printing miniatures to play games with. Once they're on the tabletop, and especially once they're painted, the differences become much harder to notice than they do under a macro lens on Reddit.

The game comes first. Good-looking models are a bonus.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

There is absolutely a place for low-quality prints.

They're accessible to newcomers, require almost no tuning or experience, and can go from unopened printer to playable miniatures in a matter of hours. And they're often far better than people give them credit for.

Take the models in this photo. (OG prints)

These were printed on a brand-new X2D almost immediately after unboxing.

• 0.4 mm nozzle
• Stock 0.08 mm High Quality profile
• Filament wasn't dried
• No calibration
• Printed in Bambu Studio
• No support interfaces

Quick and dirty.

Originally I wasn't even planning to paint them. I simply wanted to see how quickly I could print an entire Kill Team— roughly two hours per miniature, about sixteen hours total.

Then I found an old can of aluminum spray paint. "Why not?"

From there... Everything went downhill.

I accidentally followed it with what turned out to be a thick gloss yellow spray. The metallic disappeared. The finish became ridiculously shiny.

Then came a homemade wash that didn't quite work. Followed by an overly enthusiastic drybrush. And finally a pretty terrible photo.

By most Reddit standards, these Strikers from Puppetswar should never have seen a gaming table.

Average prints. Questionable paint job. Game over.

Except... After sealing everything with a matte varnish to kill the gloss, they actually turned out...

...not too bad.

Not amazing. Not competition pieces. Just... good.

Good enough that I'm perfectly happy putting them on the table. They already look better than a lot of the sea of grey I see at my local game store.

All from what many people would dismiss as "bad" prints.

More importantly, I learned far more from these models than I would have by chasing perfection.

Spray priming. Washes. Colour choices. Drybrushing. Selective painting. Fast tabletop techniques.

Every one of those lessons came from prints that most people would have told me weren't worth painting in the first place.

Sometimes "good enough" really is good enough.

In my last post, I talked about getting started with the X2D and my decision to continue printing a quick Kill Team project rather than jumping straight into my larger print project, through which I am evaluating the X2D for tabletop wargaming purposes.

Since then, I've spent a lot more time experimenting with the machine's capabilities, particularly around the 0.2mm nozzle and some of the more advanced dual-nozzle workflows.

As someone who primarily prints miniatures for tabletop gaming rather than display cabinets, I've become increasingly interested in a simple question:

Where Is the Point of Diminishing Returns?

It's easy to get caught up chasing the absolute best print quality possible. The X2D is certainly capable of encouraging that mindset, producing exceptionally high-quality prints, but it comes at a cost.

For this round of testing, I moved to the 0.2mm nozzle after printing a couple of vehicles from Puppetswar Miniatures using the 0.4mm nozzle and worked toward my first project milestone: a 1000-point OPR army.

The improvement was immediately noticeable. No surprise there.

Small details that were already respectable on the 0.4mm nozzle became sharper with the 0.2mm nozzle at a 0.08mm layer height using a modified version of ObscuraNox’s profiles and settings. Surface transitions became cleaner. Delicate features held up better. The difference wasn't revolutionary, but it was absolutely visible.

Then came the next question.

If 0.08mm layer heights look good, what about 0.06mm?

And the answer, at least for me, has been interesting.

The jump from a 0.4mm nozzle to a 0.2mm nozzle is easy to see. The jump from 0.08mm to 0.06mm layers is much harder to spot once a model is sitting on a gaming table, primed, painted, and viewed from normal tabletop distances.

The printer is doing more work. Print times increase— from roughly 2.5 hours for a complete model and its accoutrements on the 0.4mm nozzle to more than double that with the 0.2mm nozzle. Quality improves, but the improvement becomes increasingly difficult to appreciate outside of close-up photography and side-by-side comparisons.

(I've included a comparison image of two similar models side-by-side. The last image in the included set. The model on the left was printed with the 0.2mm nozzle at 0.08mm layer height, while the model on the right was printed with the 0.06mm equivalent settings.)

Again, I'm printing for tabletop wargaming purposes, not display pieces.

That doesn't mean it's not worth doing. It simply means the value equation changes.

As I move into printing the next 1,000 points for this project, I'm using ObscuraNox’s 0.06mm profile largely as provided. In some cases, this pushes print times to 10 hours (!) or more for a single infantry model. Remember, these Striker models from Puppetswar Miniatures can be chunky.

More on that in my next update.

Dual Nozzles and Support Interface Material

Update: I've revised this section and removed the print time and material usage numbers from the original version. The discussion around those figures was starting to overshadow the actual point I was trying to make, which is less about the numbers themselves and more about whether this workflow provides enough value for my miniature-printing use case.

I've also been experimenting with using PETG on the secondary nozzle as a dedicated support interface material.

The concept is honestly pretty cool. Different materials don't bond particularly well together, which means supports can separate from the model incredibly well. In practice, the results were every bit as impressive as the advertising videos made it seem.

The thing is, I don't really have a support-removal problem to solve.

I've gotten pretty comfortable with orienting models, placing custom supports, and generally thinking about where support marks are going to end up before I hit print. Most of the supports on my miniatures can already be removed by hand, and whatever scarring remains is usually in a spot that nobody is ever going to see once the model is assembled, painted, and sitting on a tabletop or something that I'm not bothered by given the purposes that I am printing for in the first place

Could the PETG interfaces improve those surfaces further? Absolutely.

But for the majority of the tabletop miniatures I print, I don't currently see enough benefit to justify adding another material and another layer of complexity to the process.

For display pieces, showcase models, or particularly difficult prints, I can absolutely see myself using it. For everyday space marines and other minis I'd rather spend a few extra minutes preparing the print and keep the workflow simple.

Chasing the Last 10%

And that's where I keep finding myself with the X2D.

Not asking whether it can produce better results.

It absolutely can.

The more interesting question is whether those better results are worth the additional time for the intended purpose.

For a display miniature that might take dozens of hours to paint? Probably.

For a centerpiece character model? Almost certainly.

For the fifteenth trooper in an OPR army or the next batch of terrain? Maybe not.

One of the things I've enjoyed most about this machine so far is that it allows me to explore that balance. It can comfortably produce gaming-quality miniatures in volume, but it also gives me the tools to push quality much further when I decide a model deserves the extra attention.

I'm still experimenting, and I suspect I'll continue bouncing back and forth between profiles depending on the project.

For now, though, my biggest takeaway is that the best settings aren't necessarily the ones that produce the highest-quality print.

They're the ones that produce the right print for the job.

What's Next?

Over the coming weeks, I'm going to spend a bit more time with the second nozzle and see where the value lies within my workflow.

I'm also planning to take a closer look at Bambu Studio and determine whether its ease of use is enough of a value proposition given some of the challenges I've encountered around print consistency, settings management, and output reliability. The frustrations about in not auto generating support interfaces and inconsistencies in slice renderings has me looking elsewhere for more reliable software. 

About the Models Pictured

All prints shown were produced on the X2D.

The vehicles were printed using a 0.4mm nozzle at 0.08mm layer height, accompanied by more than a few frustrations regarding inconsistencies in how Bambu Studio handles ironing and supports.

The infantry models were printed using the 0.2mm nozzle at 0.08mm layer height with a modified version of ObscuraNox’s profiles and settings.

The odd orange model shown was simply the result of me selecting the wrong filament for the job.

All models are from the Strikers range produced by and provided for this project by Puppetswar Miniatures via MyMiniFactory.

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I'm not employed by or paid by Bambu Lab or Puppetswar—just sharing my own experiences as I go.

One of the first things I wanted to do after deciding to slow down my printing was start painting through the backlog of miniatures I’d accumulated. I’d just finished a couple smaller warbands and was honestly tired of painting tiny details. I wanted something quicker, more technique-focused, and less concerned with precision.

So I finally painted up the Army of the Earthenkind (shout out to Ill Gotten Games / u/IllGottenGames2012 the models) that I printed about three months ago for Dragon Rampant and OPR.

The goal was to paint the entire army using almost nothing but sponges, cheap craft paints, and household basing materials. In the end I did use a few speed paints to add contrast and break up all the grey, but otherwise I stuck pretty closely to the original plan.

About halfway through the process I really wasn’t feeling it. Everything looked too grey and too bright. A heavy homemade brown wash ended up fixing most of that, toning everything down and tying the models together.

It took me about a week to finish the whole army, spending roughly two hours on each stage:

• Black primer (airbrush)
• Burnt umber (smooth makeup sponge) — 2 coats
• Pewter grey (rough makeup sponge)
• Bright grey (fine-tip makeup sponge)
• Speed paints for contrast (brush)
• Eyes and accent colours for characters (brush)
• Leaf green on the bases (quick pass)
• Homemade brown wash over everything
• Re-do eyes to brighten them back up
• Oregano + PVA glue mix, plus tufts and rocks for the bases
• Another pass of leaf green on the bases
• Matte varnish (airbrush)

It was a bit of a slog, but I’m glad I pushed through and got it done. Now that they’re finished, these little rock monsters look almost exactly like what I had in my head at the start of the project.

Aside from the oregano bases — which I’m still not totally sold on — I’m really happy with how they turned out. And honestly, I don’t think spending significantly more time on the bases would’ve improved them enough to matter.

Painted minis don’t get posted to r/FDMMiniatures all that often, so here’s a whole pile of them to help balance things out.

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For those wondering, all of these prints were done on the A1 Mini, print-by-object, 0.4mm nozzle using the 0.08mm High Quality default setting. The largest model, the Lurching Keep, was printed in two parts and assembled but if I were to print it again I would do it all in a single print; at the time I was worried about it failing part way through as I wasn’t confident in my process at the time.

Looking for suggestions to improve flat surface prints.

Left print on Image 1, and Image 2 of a full tank print, are what I'm trying to correct.

I posted this about ironing to help with the issue shown in Image 3 (SAGA measuring sticks) and made the necessary adjustment to my printing profile, but no luck with altering the quality of flat surfaces.

The Right print on Image 1 shows the same part only as a result of a vertical orientation, where as the Left print was horizontal. Obviously the vertical print is better, however in many cases not having to reorient a print is better for reducing supports and overall printing time + filament.

Other than orientation, is there something I can do to improve these flat surface prints?

Specs: X2D; Bambu PLA Basic; Always Dried; 0.4mm Nozzle.

---

Update 01: Ironing or not, the 'islands' shown on the left hand print (and on the tank) appear on the print preview. The only way to get them to not appear is to rotate the models. It's like Bambu Studio is deciding to create it's own interpretation of a flat surface, adding humps and valleys to what should be a flat surface.

Here's what BS is doing: https://imgur.com/a/1CdN4sb

When I bought my A1 Mini around Christmas, I figured it’d just be an affordable way to support a newly revived miniature wargaming habit. I wanted to print the odd figure, some terrain, maybe a few gaming aids here and there. I wasn’t trying to print full armies (but I did), and I had pretty realistic expectations going in.

Three months later, I was honestly happy with where the Mini fit into my workflow. I’d printed hard during those first few months to really learn the machine; its strengths, weaknesses, and where it made sense for my needs. I had settings dialed in enough for solid tabletop-quality prints (not display pieces). I was content. My plan was actually to slow down a bit, refine the process, and focus on printing only the things I’d realistically use.

So when Bambu Labs reached out and asked if I’d be interested in putting the X2D through its paces for miniature printing, I was genuinely caught off guard. I wasn’t looking to print more. I wanted to print less. The A1 Mini already felt like enough for what I needed.

But I said yes.

Partly because it felt like a good opportunity to really refine my process while taking the next step. (and get a shiny new toy 😉)

To properly evaluate the X2D, I knew I needed a focused project instead of random test prints. So over the next 4 months, I’m going to print a single army from start to finish. The goal is to keep printing the same style of miniatures over time so I can actually track quality improvements, workflow changes, and where the X2D genuinely fits for tabletop miniature printing.

The plan is to print roughly 4000pts of an OPR Grimdark Future army (basically a 2000pt-equivalent 40k army… for a game I refuse to play). Along the way, I’ll be documenting the process and sharing my thoughts as I go here on r/BambuLab.

Some of the things I want to look at:

• Quality vs speed
• Whether the dual nozzle setup is actually useful
• Multi-colour printing for tabletop gaming
• Dual-material supports
• Whether the X2D is genuinely a good tool for miniature hobbyists, or just overkill

To help with the project, I’ve also partnered with Puppetswar Miniatures, who generously gave me access to their Strikers range. Of all the sci-fi miniature lines I’ve seen, the Strikers line is one of the most complete and well-designed out there.

You can follow along with the print queue and army progress here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bmEqUDOdLRy2RSVlZQb64KXNLZBPXK6hV9OSXAw3j6Q/edit?usp=sharing

I’ll probably post 1-2 updates a month here in r/BambuLabs as the project moves along. Just my thoughts and experiences as I figure things out.

For now, here are my initial impressions.

While waiting for supplies to arrive (including a pair of 0.2mm nozzles), I spent time running the X2D with the stock 0.4mm to calibrate things and get a baseline feel for the machine.

So far I’ve printed:

• An Angels of Death-style Kill Team using various Puppetswar minis (pictured; details below)
• A few vehicles
• Terrain
• Tokens and gaming aids
• Storage solutions

Compared to my A1 Mini, a few things stood out immediately:

• The larger build plate is genuinely useful. Since I print miniatures entirely “By Object,” the extra space lets me organize prints way more strategically.
• The AI fault detection is actually decent. It’s not always right, but it errs on the side of caution and has already saved a few print beds worth of models. Combined with “By Object” printing, it’s been really solid.
• Despite all the X2D horror stories online, mine has been flawless so far (knock on wood). Maybe I got lucky.
• The improved camera and lighting matter more than I expected. When a fault pops up, I can actually see what’s happening before deciding if I even need to go touch the printer or failed print.
• The dual nozzle setup has been genuinely useful for two reasons:
  1. Simple multi-colour gaming accessories
  2. Not constantly swapping between 0.2mm and 0.4mm nozzles

That second one matters more than I expected. I print miniatures with the 0.2mm and basically everything else with the 0.4mm. Constantly changing nozzles gets old fast.

Dual-material supports though? I’m still undecided.

Yes, it works. But right now I’m not convinced it’s worth the trade-off. The prime tower absolutely nukes efficiency. I’ve seen prints use 7x more material and take 5x longer. I’m sure some of that can be optimize— but waiting 20 hours for a single miniature is wild. At that point, I’d rather spend extra time orienting the model properly and manually painting supports where they make sense— THIS makes more a difference, and is a better use of time, than the increased in printing. 

The biggest issue so far honestly isn’t the printer— it’s Bambu Studio.

The slicer feels wildly inconsistent. Same model, same settings, different slice results. Interface layers don’t generate properly half the time. Updates meant to “improve” quality sometimes make prints worse. It makes it hard to tell what problems are actually printer-related versus slicer-related.

I’d probably switch to Orca Slicer immediately if the X2D had proper support already.

…

Anyway, those are my early impressions. Once the 0.2 nozzles are installed and I finish the first 1000pts of the project, I’ll come back with more thoughts specifically around print quality, speed, supports, and where the X2D actually shines for miniature printing.

Notes on the initial 0.4mm prints

The models in the header image were printed for Kill Team (Angels of Death equivalent) using the 0.4mm nozzle.

( Here's a video of them up close: https://youtu.be/IBcwJDzIGik )

The earliest prints used the stock 0.08mm High Quality profile in Bambu Studio with custom supports, before gradually moving toward a modified 0.4mm version of ObscuraNox’s profiles and settings.

These prints were done for tabletop gaming purposes— not display pieces, and for that use case they’re more than good enough. Once painted and sitting on a table, they blend in perfectly well beside traditionally produced minis. I’m a strong advocate in balancing speed and quality when it comes to FMDMiniatures  for gaming. Chasing perfection at the cost of print time just isn’t worth it for how I personally use miniatures.

Most of the models shown are from the Prime Striker [Tactical]  range from Puppetswar Miniatures, with the sniper coming from the Recon Snipers [Tactical] set and the leader from the Striker Leaders [Tactical] set.

For later comparisons, I’ll be printing equivalent minis— and in some cases the exact same models, using the 0.2mm nozzle so I can properly compare the trade-offs and value between the two setups.

I've had an A1 Mini for a few months now and the settings were pretty much dialed in. Received a X2D and now I'm trying to do the same but am running into issued I previously didn't have.

• 0.2mm nozzle
• Bambu PLA Basic (grey)
• Support walls are at 2, hollow base pattern (never been an issue in the past), Branch Angle is a 8 (upped from 5).
• Filament dried in AMS2 Pro for 12hrs.

Ideas what's with the cracking shown in the picture? Prints are failing as a result.

A quick update on a project I’ve just started.

[BambuLab](https://bambulab.com) reached out a little while ago about taking a look at the X2D with a focus on miniature printing, given the amount of time I spend on wargaming and my previously shared work regarding 3D printing supporting my hobbying. My unit arrived last week, and I’ve got some additional parts (including 0.2mm nozzles) on the way, but for now I’m just working with what’s in the box and getting a feel for the machine.

I’m coming from an A1 Mini, so I’ve been putting the X2D through some early test prints and using the time to dial things in before I start swapping hardware.

For something a bit more real than calibration pieces, I’ve started printing a proxy Angels of Death Kill Team using models from the Puppetswar Miniatures’ Strikers line. At 3hrs per print, included all of the model’s accoutrement and large solid bases, I’m happy with the results thus far. The supports are always the sticking point, but they’re coming off nicely but the scarring is still not ideal. 

Speaking of Puppetswar, I will be collaborating with them over the next 3 months for this X2D project. The longer-term goal is to print a full 2000pt OPR army based on their Strikers line as I put the X2D through its paces. I’ll get into that in more detail once things are further along.

For context (since I know it’ll come up): I’ve generally preferred 0.4mm for tabletop minis as it offers a great balance between quality and speed, taking into consideration that I print minis for playing, not display, purposes. I’m not making any calls on the X2D yet, as I haven’t even touched a 0.2mm on it, but I’d be surprised if a change in printer will shift my thinking. 

For now, the plan is to keep printing this proxy Kill team, keep tweaking settings, and start sharing more structured updates over on r/BambuLab once the rest of my setup arrives.

I’m not employed by or paid by Bambu Lab or Puppetswar — just sharing my own experience as I go.