For my birthday this month, I got myself a 3D Printer. I am entirely new to 3D printing, so I searched online for reviews of beginner-friendly printers. Also, I was looking for a filament printer because I did not want to deal with the liquid resin required for a resin printer. I mainly want to use the printer for tabletop wargames terrain, so a filament printer is probably a better option than resin due to the weight and the price of filament vs. high-quality resin. I settled on the Bambu Lab A1 as a great options for beginners.

The first thing I printed was a Benchy. This cute little tugboat is commonly used as a benchmark to ensure that printer settings are correct due to its various angles and curves. This was extremely easy to print because it came pre-loaded on the printer’s memory card.

The next thing I printed was this fidget cube. This was printed from the phone app called “Bambu Handy.” It was one additional step towards setting up and printing any STL file.

For the next step, I installed the Bambu Slicer software, which is very easy to use. I had these skeleton STLs from a Kickstarter I backed a while ago. The STL files were pre-supported so they did not require any additional setup in the software. Still, the software flagged a third skeleton as having problems even though it was pre-supported, so I did not print it. They came out a little rough but better than I expected for a filament printer. They are printed with the standard 0.4 mm tip that came with the Bambu A1. I also bought a 0.2 mm tip and can adjust the layer thickness for finer detail. I will try printing some more figures in the future.

Finally, I printed a piece of wargame terrain, which, as I said at the beginning, is what I wanted the printer for. This Red Dragon Ramen stand is a neat little Cyberpunk-style street corner restaurant. I will use this for Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone, a skirmish combat game from Monster Fight Club.

So, I have started on my 3D printing journey. I have picked up some STL models that I will use for Star Wars Legion, desert-style buildings that you might find on Tatooine. More on that in the future.

Thanks for reading!