NokiMo
Volition Miniatures
Volition Miniatures

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Maliketh – Printing and Assembly Instructions

As we always say around here: how’s your resin stock? To print the Maliketh figure, you’ll need a good amount of resin and several build plates.

I’m Bianca, Rafael’s wife. Since we decided to handle the printing side of things ourselves, I became responsible for supporting and printing the models.

Well, starting with Maliketh as my first fully supported print felt like diving straight into the Souls line of 3D printing, what a challenge it was! My expertise is in marketing, and there were moments I truly thought this model would defeat me. But I'm so methodical that I managed to win this battle.

One thing I wasn’t very satisfied with in the supports we used to offer (made by a partner) was the amount of post-processing needed due to support marks. With my new setup, most of the pieces required very little sanding, so I believe the result turned out well. If anyone wants to share feedback on the supports, we’re totally open to it, we always aim to improve.

Besides the STL files, we’re also including the editable Lychee files (.lys) for your convenience. It was something we had wanted for a long time, but unfortunately our partner didn’t provide the editable files. Now, all our models will be pre-supported on Lychee.

BASE – Printing:

This part requires a lot of resin. We thought long and hard about how to make it printable and decided to divide it into parts, some of which can be printed in FDM to save resin.

SIX PLATES:
The six plates of the base can be printed in FDM. Our FDM printer is from 2014 and still handled it surprisingly well, so if you have a more recent printer, you’ll definitely get excellent results.
These plates were also resin-tested, so if you only have a resin printer, no worries, it’s totally doable, each plate weighs around 30g of resin.

The central part of the hexagonal base and the logo were designed with FDM in mind.

However, if FDM is not an option for you, it’s possible to assemble the base using just the six resin plates. In that case, you might want to find a solution to close the hexagon for better figure stability, something like an MDF base or other sturdy material.
That said, we believe the thickness of the base rim is enough to support the terrain above it, the question is just overall stability.

3 GROUND PIECES:
We designed these as hollow shells to save resin. They are connected via cracks, so you’ll need to seal those cracks to finish the base.

BASE – Assembly:

The plates are numbered with small circles. Follow these marks when assembling.
We recommend assembling them in two halves (3 plates + 3 plates), and then attaching both sides to the central FDM piece. We included a small gap allowance to compensate for any potential resin expansion, so the parts should still fit together easily.

Finally, glue the hollow terrain shell over the assembled base plates.

MALIKETH’S HAIR

Ah, the hair… we didn’t even mention it in the release post, but after everything was printed, the box storing these pieces fell, and the hair parts shattered! So back to the printer we went. Pretty much everything happened during our test phase.

Cleaning the supports on the hair pieces requires extra care and attention. I used thin supports, but since we’re dealing with strands, it’s best to go slowly and carefully.

Assembly order for the head and hair:


Well… we weren’t used to pieces this large. Rafael was a miniature sculptor, and we actually got a bit scared while printing this one, kept asking ourselves: “What are we doing with our lives?”

We haven’t even fully assembled our copy yet, I’ll spend the next few days painting it before the final assembly. I think only then will we truly grasp the magnitude of this figure.

In the end, we decided to keep the full figure at 34 cm tall to fit inside our Saturn 4 Ultra without needing awkward cuts. The 32mm scale version ended up around 14 cm, and when we placed it next to our 32mm humans, we couldn’t help but ask: How is this little human supposed to defeat that beast? Now this is a true boss for your RPG campaign!

This text got pretty long, but honestly, we could say even more about the journey of bringing Maliketh to life.

Thank you so so so much for the support, together we’re building an incredible collection!

Rafael & Bianca

Maliketh – Printing and Assembly Instructions

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