# Recent-ish 3D printing experiences? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** tools-electric-diy\ **Created:** [June 23, 2026, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recent-ish-3d-printing-experiences/1031130 "2026-06-23T08:27:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 4
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2026, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recent-ish-3d-printing-experiences/1031130/4 "2026-06-23T16:09:37Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > We threads. Ah, very cool, I’ll peruse those! Sorry I missed them in a cursory search. Why did you decide to get a resin printer… is it mostly for the small-scale details for miniatures? From that thread, the mess seems like a real hassle? The hybrid full-color printers seems pretty cool for that use case: [HeyGears G1 Series: The World's 1st Desktop Full-Color 3D & UV Printer – HeyGears Store](https://store.heygears.com/pages/heygears-g1) It can print a full-color medium-high resolution miniature by combining FDM and UV printing in the same unit, building up depth and adding CMYK color at the same time. No more painting — we all know [how terrible I am at that](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/painting-miniatures-but-extremely-lazily-or-other-techniques-as-in-tabletop-games/1020821/12) 😅 > [@Chronos](#): > > mostly use the Makerbots we have in the makerspace at school What are you mostly making on them? Is this for a classroom, or do you just go to the makerspace for your personal use? > [@Chronos](#): > > Are you interested in designing things yourself? To me, that’s the real fun part of the hobby. Yes, very much so! But I’m more interested in the potential artistic and cartographic aspects than functional parts — think topo maps, geology layers, bathymetry cutaways, and things like that. Along with the occasional earring for the GF and Batman mask for the cat, of course 😆 Hence the desire to upgrade. While my current one can technically print 4+ colors in the same print, it has to purge the current filament with every color change, meaning heaping globs of waste for any color variations that aren’t strictly layer-by-layer on the Z-axis. Nowadays there are several “toolchanger” printers with better filament swapping and/or multiple nozzles. They allow faster and less wasteful multi-color prints. The one I’m considering right now is [Bambu Lab H2C | Bambu Lab US Store](https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/h2c) because it seems the most reliable and easy to use, among the current toolchanger models and brand ecosystems. It’s not perfect — still produces a prime tower — but should still quite a bit less wasteful than the non-toolchanger printers. Really what I want to make are multi-color dioramas & topo maps, like of national parks and hiking trails, but with complex layers and colors (at least 6-8). My hope is to start with digital mapping data (digital elevation models, bathymetry, streets, etc.) and turn them into meshes and then manually adjust them and add props and lighting kits. I am not really quite sure the best workflow to do this with… standard CAD like Fusion or Onshape? A game engine like Unreal? Blender? Advice welcome. I’ll have to read through that longer thread on my lunch break… wonder if anyone’s done something similar already? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recent-ish-3d-printing-experiences/1031130)._