The New 3D Printing Thread

Now that is the million $ question

As with all these things its not a simple answer, the 'normal' resins (consider them the equivalent of PLA filament) are rather brittle once cured.  However on the plus side they do tend to be stronger and don't suffer from the weakness of layer de-lamination which can happen with FDM prints.  Having said that at the sort of thickness this shell is printed the tabs should be quite strong but flexible enough to fit the shell etc.

Now it is possible to get more flexible resins, in fact the reason I bought this clear blue resin was that Elegoo's claims were that they had a new formulation which exhibits less smell (good thing) and more flexibility, they referred to it being more like ABS than PLA in the FDM world.  So I bought a bottle to try it, because I do find that very minute details such as antennae etc... on miniatures can be too brittle with standard resin.  Unfortunately I've found this resin to be just as bad if not even more brittle than the standard ones I'd used before.  I've had a long chat going with Elegoo on FB to try to establish if indeed I had the new formula or if it was old stock as it turns out the only way to tell is the production date on the bottle, but they insist it is the new formulation.  So it doesn't as far as I can see live up to the claims.

There are other resins that are specifically made to be more flexible, but they are more difficult to get hold of and are quite a bit more expensive, so for now I will be using the standard types until I either find a cheaper source or more formulations hit the market - it seems there are plenty in the pipeline.