If you search for “resin printing starter kit” online, you will find shopping lists longer than most Christmas wish lists. Fifteen items, twenty items, thirty items. Three different pliers. A dedicated curing chamber that costs more than the printer. A resin filter funnel system. A hygrometer. A second monitor for the slicer PC.
Most of this is noise. You do not need most of it. Some of it you will genuinely never need. And buying the whole list at once is the quickest way to wake up a week later wondering why you spent $500 before you made a single print.
This is the honest version. What you actually need to start, roughly what it should cost, and what you can safely leave until later.
The minimum kit
There are seven categories of gear for a starter setup. If you get these right, you are ready to print. Everything else can wait.
- A printer
- A bottle of resin
- A wash and cure station (or a manual equivalent)
- Nitrile gloves
- A respirator and some form of ventilation
- A work surface you can protect
- Basic cleanup tools
That is it. Seven items, not thirty.
The printer
This is the single biggest decision and the one I see new hobbyists get wrong most often. People either overspend on a top end flagship machine that does not produce noticeably better miniatures, or underspend on a budget machine with a pixel size too large for crisp character models.
For most beginners in 2026, one of three printers will be the right answer. All three are Elegoo machines because Elegoo have owned the value end of the market for several generations running.
The Elegoo Mars 4 at around $149 is the best cheap route into the hobby. 18 micron pixels, no smart features, no speed tricks. It does the one thing that matters without any fluff. If your budget is tight, this is the pick.
The Elegoo Saturn 3 at around $230 is the best mid size option. 24 micron pixels on a significantly larger build plate. 24 microns is a notch softer than the Mars 4 on very fine work, but on 28mm and 32mm character models you will struggle to see the difference. The extra plate area means you can print a full unit of infantry in one go.
The Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra at around $249 is the best pick if speed matters. A tilting VAT mechanism reduces peel force, which lets the printer push layer timings much faster without compromising resolution. Still 18 microns. Meaningfully quicker.
If you are not sure which, default to the Mars 4. You can always add a bigger printer later, but a good small printer is a better first experience than a mediocre big one.
The full printer buying guide goes deeper on the decision if you want it.
The resin
Skip the bottle that came in the printer box. It is almost always a generic resin that the manufacturer includes to get you started, not the resin you would choose if you had to buy it separately.
For a first bottle I would recommend Wargamer Resin. It is built specifically for printing miniatures, has sensible flex so your prints survive handling, and holds fine detail on faces and filigree without needing a perfect wash and cure setup. Beginners forgive beginners, and this resin forgives beginners.
For bulk printing of rank and file troops, terrain, or anything that is not a hero character, Sunlu ABS-Like is the cheap workhorse. Roughly half the price per bottle, perfectly acceptable detail, and reliable enough that you can buy it in bulk without worrying about a bad batch.
If you want the longer explanation of why expensive does not mean better when it comes to resin, I wrote a full article on that.
A single bottle of resin is typically 500ml or 1kg and gives you a lot of prints. Start with one bottle of Wargamer Resin, see how far it takes you, and add a second bottle of Sunlu when you are ready for bulk work.
Wash and cure station
When a print comes off the build plate it is covered in uncured resin that has to be washed off and then cured under UV light. The wash and cure station automates this.
The Elegoo Mercury Plus or the Anycubic Wash and Cure 3.0 at around $120 both do the job well. They wash in the same bucket as they cure, which saves space and means you are not moving a resin covered model between containers. For a starter kit, either is fine.
If you want to do this manually for the first few prints to keep your budget tight, you can wash in a tub of isopropyl alcohol or dedicated resin cleaner, then cure under a cheap UV nail lamp. It works. It is less convenient and less controlled. A dedicated wash and cure station is the single most worthwhile upgrade after the printer itself.
Safety gear
Resin is not water. Uncured resin is mildly toxic, mildly sensitising (meaning repeated exposure can trigger an allergic reaction even if your first exposure was fine), and should not touch your skin.
You need nitrile gloves. A box of a hundred disposable gloves costs under $15 and should last months. Do not print without them on.
You need a respirator. The fumes from uncured resin are not fatal but they are unpleasant and they are not something you want to breathe in an unventilated room every evening. A cheap half mask respirator with organic vapour cartridges runs about $30 and does the job.
You need ventilation. Open a window. Better, open a window and run an extractor fan. Resin printing indoors in a closed room is the fastest route to developing a resin allergy that ends the hobby for you. My ventilation and safety guide covers realistic home setups in more detail. Do not skip this.
I am not going to write a scare piece here. Thousands of hobbyists print resin safely every day. The precautions above are simple, cheap, and entirely adequate. What is not adequate is skipping them.
Work surface
Dedicate a corner of a desk, a shelf, or a garage workbench to your printer. Put a silicone mat or a disposable plastic tray under the printer to catch resin spills. Resin cures into a permanent hard plastic under UV light, so a spill you do not clean up becomes a permanent feature of your desk.
A cheap silicone baking mat from a homewares shop works perfectly. Cost: $10 to $15. Do this before the first print, not after the first spill.
Basic cleanup tools
Four items handle ninety percent of what you will need in the first few months.
- A metal scraper or spatula to remove prints from the build plate. The one that comes with your printer is fine.
- Kitchen paper in bulk. You will use a lot of it.
- A small pot of isopropyl alcohol or resin cleaner for wiping down the build plate and the VAT.
- Side cutters (the ones you would use for model kits) for removing supports cleanly.
That is enough tooling to get clean, paintable miniatures out of the printer.
What this actually costs
Adding the cheapest sensible version of each category:
- Printer (Elegoo Mars 4): ~$149
- Resin (one bottle Wargamer): ~$35
- Wash and cure station: ~$120
- Nitrile gloves (box of 100): ~$10
- Respirator: ~$25
- Silicone mat: ~$10
- Cleanup tools and paper: ~$20
Total: roughly $370 to $400 for a complete, safe, working miniature printing setup.
That is a real number. It is not the cheapest possible number and it is not the most expensive. It is what a working kit actually costs when you strip out everything you do not need on day one.
What you can safely skip for now
Every one of the following items gets recommended in gear lists online. None of them are necessary for your first month.
- A separate dedicated curing chamber
- A resin heating mat
- A hygrometer or thermometer
- A resin filter funnel system
- Dedicated resin storage containers beyond the bottle they shipped in
- An extra build plate
- Replacement FEP or nFEP sheets
- An air purifier separate from ventilation
Some of these become useful later. None are starter kit items. Do not let someone convince you otherwise.
Where to set it all up
The ideal resin printing corner has three properties: it is ventilated, it is out of direct sunlight, and it is somewhere you can leave resin covered gear without worrying about it.
A spare room or garage is perfect. A desk in a corner of a living room with an openable window is fine. A closet or a windowless cupboard is not fine, no matter what anyone on a forum tells you. Resin needs airflow.
If you can put the printer itself inside an enclosure with extraction venting to a window, even better. This is not a starter kit requirement but it is the single biggest quality of life upgrade you can make later.
The upgrades that are actually worth it later
Once you have printed for a month or two and the workflow feels natural, a short list of upgrades becomes worth considering.
- A second, larger printer (Saturn 3 if you started on a Mars 4), and second hand options are worth a look before buying new
- A proper enclosure with extraction to a window
- A dedicated curing box if you want faster or more controlled curing
- A heating mat if you are printing in a cold room
These are optimisations. The starter kit above is where you begin.
What comes next
When you are set up, start with the clean beginner setup article which walks through the first print workflow. If you want the video version of the gear conversation, my ultimate starter gear video covers the same kit with the actual items on screen.
The thing I most want you to take away is this: you can start resin printing well on a sensible budget, and the gear that gets recommended beyond the list above is usually an optimisation you can make later with better information than you have on day one. Buy the starter kit. Get printing. Add to it as the need appears, not before.