Revolution!
Today, we would like to share with you one of the most important information in the history of our company.
After almost a year of trials and hard work, we have succeeded. Thanks to this, we can present today a new line of miniatures in 6 mm scale. Miniatures printed on a 3D printer! Thus, the world of great possibilities opens up before us.
Most likely, no one in the world has produced historical infantry miniatures on a scale of 6 mm with such a level of detail yet. Miniatures are as detailed as our metal patterns, with many other advantages.
Technological progress in the field of printing and hard work of all people involved in the project made it possible to realize it.
Our first line of printed miniatures will be minis for the Second French Empire, under the reign of Napoleon III. Soon, printed sets of British infantry will come out.
This miniatures can be seen and bought this weekend at the Joy of Six convention in Sheffield, and then at our distributor, in the Bolter.pl shop (it’s in English).
About miniatures
New technology and new material raises many questions like “what are these miniatures?”.
We invite you to look at the gallery, which presents some printed minis. Please click on the picture to enlarge it.
French infantry 
Union infantry in Greatcoats 
Cuirassiers 
Union Infantry in Greatcoats 
Dragoons 
Highland Infantry 
Systeme La Hitte artillery 
Confederate Infantry in Greatcoats 
Union Infantry for Western Theater (hats) 
Generals 
British units 
French hussars 
Comparision of minis. On a left side metal miniatures, on a right side, 3D printed ones.
Our older miniatures were placed on trays. Advances in printing technology made this need obsolete. So you will save your time, because miniatures are NOT placed on trays – you will need fewer time to prepare them to paint. Nevertheless printing resin is different than standard resin, so you will have to prepare the miniatures for painting in a little different way, than for example plastinc ones. More information here: LINK
Printed minis with attached supports 
Printed minis with attached supports 
Printed minis with attached supports 
Printed minis with attached supports 
Printed minis with attached supports 
Printed minis with attached supports
Behind us are months of trials and errors and constant corrections when it comes to various parameters of the printout and the sculpture itself. Printed figures are quite hard and not very plastic – they will not bend, but using large force can of course break them. Damaged ones, however, do not spill “into fine”, so you can always glue them together. These physical features of figurines must be kept in mind when cutting them and preparing them for painting.
Hard minis will luckily also mean that we will miss the bane of this scale – rifles bending in to every direction of the world. From now on, all rifles will always have the same shape!
Painting printed minis is very similar to metal ones. We described them well on our website, in the painting guide. Basically, it is worth remembering that the undercoat is also the basic color of the uniform. On this scale, we do not put a separate undercoat on which we paint the right layer of paint. We immediately put on the color of the uniform.
The painting guide is here:
LINK
What’s next with metal?
Metal miniatures will still be a part of our offer. There will be more sculptures that we will cast in metal.
Both materials have different properties and advantages. We will use it, for example, to create minis of important characters, which we mentioned a long time ago. The closest example will be General Custer.
The introduction of new technology will first of all speed up the process of creating new minis. The design and production of the whole line for a new nation can last several weeks, not several months.
Therefore, both techniques will harmonize with each other.
Army builder
Our Army Builder has undergone many changes. Some of its graphic appearance has been changed, and many new functionalities have been added, including possibility of saving and uploading roosters, summary of the size of our army, or naming your divisions. We will describe them in a separate entry, for now we invite you to explore the army of the Second Empire, remembering that it is still a test version of this army and some small things may change. English version is available!
Main screen with an English version of Army builder, showing French armies 
French army of Italy – screen showing many new features of Army Builder.
Post scriptum
Preparations up to this moment lasted about a year and cost a lot of effort and work for all the people involved. We would like to thank them very much in this place. We hope that you will like the minis and that they will allow faster development of historical wargaming in 6 mm scale.
En avant! 😉