A new resin printer sits on the desk. The build plate is level, the VAT has resin in it, the slicer is installed. The question that stops almost every new hobbyist in their tracks is: what do I actually print first?
The internet will give you a thousand answers. A marvel of a dragon, a detailed bust, a full miniature army, the thing you spent $25 on at MyMiniFactory last night. Most of those answers are wrong. Your first print is not a trophy. It is a systems check. This article is about treating it that way.
Why your first print is a test, not a showpiece
When a resin printer arrives, a long list of variables needs to be confirmed before you know the machine and workflow are reliable. The build plate has to be levelled correctly. The exposure has to be calibrated for the resin in the VAT. The room temperature has to be within the resin’s working range. The supports have to hold. The wash and cure steps have to work end to end without damaging the print.
If any one of those variables is wrong, the print fails. If two are wrong, diagnosing which one went wrong becomes much harder. The first print is where you flush out those unknowns one at a time, with test pieces chosen specifically to reveal problems fast.
Printing a marvel of a dragon as your first print means that if it fails you have almost no way of knowing why. The test pieces below tell you exactly what is wrong.
Print one: the exposure calibration test
Every printer ships with a resin exposure calibration test. On Elegoo machines this is called RERF. Other manufacturers have their own names. The test is a small grid of features at different exposure times, and it tells you exactly what exposure your current resin needs on your current printer at the current room temperature.
Do not skip this. Running the RERF test takes about 45 minutes. Skipping it and guessing exposure means two or three hours of failed prints for every successful one. The maths is always in favour of running the test.
The test file lives on the USB stick that came with the printer, or can be downloaded from the manufacturer’s website. Load it, print it, read the result, set your exposure.
Time spent: one print cycle. Knowledge gained: your correct exposure for this resin on this machine.
Print two: the community test print
Once exposure is dialled in, the next print should be a dedicated test piece rather than a finished miniature. The resin printing community has converged on a few standard test files over the years. The Ameralabs Town is the most popular. The Rookie Resin Tester is another good option. These models include every feature that can fail on a resin printer in one small package: thin walls, fine detail, pointed geometry, horizontal overhangs, small text, tight tolerances.
Print one of these in the resin you plan to use for your actual miniatures. Wash and cure it using the workflow you plan to use every time. Then inspect the result feature by feature.
- Are the thin walls crisp or distorted?
- Does the small text read clearly?
- Are the overhangs clean or drooping?
- Does the tight tolerance feature (usually a pin and hole) fit?
- Is the surface finish smooth or pitted?
Every failure mode maps to a specific variable. Crisp walls but poor text suggests exposure slightly too long. Drooping overhangs suggest exposure too short or lift speed too fast. Pitted surface suggests VAT contamination or a cold room. This is diagnostic, not cosmetic.
Time spent: one print cycle. Knowledge gained: a complete map of your current printer’s strengths and weaknesses.
Print three: a single miniature, small and simple
Now you print something that looks like a miniature, but pick carefully. Your third print should have all of these properties:
- Smaller than 32mm tall
- A single piece, not a multi part model
- A solid base, not a cluster of flying elements
- Not attached to a scenic diorama
- Not a rare or paid for model you would be upset about failing
A generic orc warrior, a simple skeleton, a space marine with a straightforward pose, a lightweight test bust. The free sample packs that come with most printer manufacturers are often perfect for this role.
Support this model yourself rather than using manufacturer presets. Do not just press the auto support button and accept whatever appears. Instead, look at the model and identify where gravity is going to pull uncured layers away from the printed mass, and add supports to those points. Thin limbs, weapon tips, overhanging cloaks, and pointed weapons are the usual suspects.
Print it. Wash it. Cure it. Remove supports with side cutters. Inspect what came out.
Time spent: one print cycle. Knowledge gained: whether your complete workflow from slicer to painted miniature works end to end for a simple piece.
Print four: something you actually want
Once the first three prints have gone through cleanly, you have a printer and a workflow you can trust. Now print the thing you bought the printer for. If that is a dragon, print the dragon. If it is a full unit of infantry, print the first four figures of the unit. If it is a bust, print a bust.
The reason this waits until print four is that if it goes wrong at this stage, you know it is the specific model that is causing problems, not the printer or the workflow. That is a much easier problem to diagnose and fix.
What to avoid on day one
Specific traps that new hobbyists fall into:
- Printing a full army as print one. If one figure fails in a batch of twenty, the resin wasted is eye watering. Get one figure right first.
- Printing a multi part kit as print one. A multi part model has tolerances that need to be right to the fraction of a millimetre. A new printer is not the place to test whether your tolerances work.
- Printing something pre supported from Patreon as print one. Those supports were tuned for someone else’s printer with someone else’s resin in someone else’s room. They may or may not translate. Print a model you supported yourself first so you understand what reliable support looks like.
- Printing the biggest model the build plate will fit. A large print takes hours. If it fails you have wasted more time and more resin than a small test print that would have told you the same thing in thirty minutes.
The underrated benefit of slow early prints
There is a quiet benefit to treating your first few prints as systems checks rather than showpieces. It calibrates your expectations about the hobby as a whole. Resin printing is fundamentally a craft with a lot of small variables. Hobbyists who expect miracle prints on day one are almost always disappointed. Hobbyists who expect diagnostic information on day one almost always end up with a reliable workflow by print five or six.
The people who quit resin printing in the first month are almost always the ones who tried to print a hero model on day one and got a pile of broken supports.
Where to go from here
Once you have those first four prints behind you, you have the foundation of a real miniature printing workflow. The common mistakes article covers the specific failure modes that will come up in the weeks after. The post processing article covers the wash, cure, and cleanup workflow in more detail. If you are still choosing a printer, the best printer buying guide lists what I would pick today at each budget.
If you want the video version of this walkthrough with the prints on screen, my video on the same topic covers the same four print sequence with real examples. Either way, your first print should be a test, not a trophy. The trophies come later, and they come more reliably when you start small.