Our First Resin Printer - The Phrozen Sonic Mini

My Husband and I took the plunge and bought a resin printer and it has been one of the best hobby purchases we have made. I wish we purchased The Sonic Mini earlier it is an amazing machine by Phrozen. The three major reasons we chose to go with the Phrozen mini for our first resin printer is the price, the speed and longevity.

The price – at the point when I purchased this machine it was priced at under $400 Australian, not including postage of course but that’s the cheapest resin printer we had ever heard of.

The Speed and longevity - the Sonic mini has a Parallel UV LED light Matrix and a thermal stable mono LCD screen enabling it to print for over 2000 hours before needing replacement and produce your prints faster than a lot of other printers.

The Machine was ordered directly from Phrozen the manufacture. It was well packed and arrived in great condition with no damage. It was easy to set up and start printing.

When we ordered it, we added a bottle of phrozen’s Aqua green resin which smells bad but worked really well with the machine. We have now shifted to using Esun resin as we can get it cheap here in Australia and the smell is a lot less intense.

The machine comes with its usual kit of scrappers, gloves, funnel and memory stick.

Ok so now for its one down side it’s a UK power supply that comes with it and they don’t do any other type, so I just grabbed myself an adaptor and tapped it to the power supply and that’s what I’ve been using so far.

Another bonus of the sonic mini is it comes with a see-through resin tray/tank which helps with seeing through to resin prints when printing.

Lastly for a first resin printer, the build plate is small but that’s normal for most resin printers these days, however with all its other features I believe that until the technology gets cheaper and in turn, they come with larger build plates this printer is awesome for what you get.

This is a perfect machine for a lot of us getting into resin printing and is going to get a continued flogging from me.

Thank you Phrozen for an awesome machine.

My Malifaux Crew

Browsing the shop with my husband I found these Malifaux The Kin, I refer to them as my gremlins and I instantly fell in love with their cheeky poses and personalities being portrayed. I am extremely grateful to my husband for putting these miniatures together as they have so many tiny parts and the biggest thing, I hate getting super glue on me :P. (sorry Hun but I have bought some more to :P) Malifaux is a skirmish-level miniature wargame manufactured by Wyrd Miniatures involving gang warfare in the ruins of a crumbling city. Malifaux is a twisted mirror of an alternate earth in the 1900’s. It’s a game of Gothic Horror, Victorian medieval structures with wild west gun slingers in a fantasy setting. The setting of the game is centred around a mysterious city called Malifaux. The city of Malifaux was discovered through a breach opening into another world. This world is a source of the valuable mineral known as "soulstone" which allows for magical effects. The game pits masters and their crews against one another for control of this resource. Malifaux has just released their third edition to this game and I am really looking forward to playing a game of Malifaux on our ‘work in progress’ fantasy city table top. I would really love to add more Gremlins to my collection by incorporating 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition miniatures. When deciding the colour theme of my gremlins I had to incorporate my favourite colour, blue! I am totally in love with how they have all turned out individually and as a hole. I painted these in January of 2020 and have used a variety of Army Painter, Vallejo and Citadel paints. With these miniatures however I have used mostly Army Painters paints as it is my largest collection of paints I currently own. I have used the Monte Morte mini detail brush set to achieve the finer details, for example the pupils, teeth and lit cigar. I have based these miniatures with resin bases to fit in with our collection of miniatures for Frostgrave. I also believe the bases are perfect for Malifaux to as they have a western feel to them. I have also added some homemade static grass tuffs to add realism and give extra detail.

Ruined Watch Tower

This is the ruined version of the watch tower and again you can choose so many different pieces to create as many visually different broken watch towers for your gaming table of varying heights.

The Broken Watch Tower is from the Kickstarter City of Tarok by Black Scrolls Games. This has been the best kickstarter my husband and I have backed for value for money and the quality of prints are absolutely amazing. The level of detail is outstanding for example the ability to be able to insert clear plastic card between the windows of some buildings and the versatility being able to add and swap in and out parts to make different looks. You can use as many or as little segments to create a tower, small buildings or even addons to other buildings like the city walls. The trap doors and some of the stone staircases are removable.

We have printed the Broken Watch Tower on our Ender 3 using eSUN PLA+ Filament plastic for use in Frostgrave and DnD.

I painted the tower in January of 2020 using the Monte Morte paint range and Citadel Lead Belcher.

This piece has been primed with vehicle primer filler to cover some of the prints layer lines then under coated in flat black. For the wood I have dry brushed in Monte Morte burnt sienna and then dry brushed with yellow ochre. The roof has been painted with Monte Morte Phthalo blue, then dry brushed with Monte Morte Cobalt blue. For the stone I dry brushed with Monte Morte paynes grey first then made a mix of two parts grey and one-part white, dry brushed with this then again made a mix of two parts grey and two parts white and again dry brushed. After that I dry brushed with the Monte Morte titanium white to finish the stone look. The silver is a mix of Monte Morte silver and lamp black on the door, for the reverts I used citadel lead belcher.

I am looking into how to incorporate ways to light up the inside of all my buildings and I still need to do all the weathering and foliage on every print.