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I have snapped more spear shafts than I care to admit. Early on, every army I printed in cheap standard resin came with a tax: a handful of broken weapon tips and at least one wing or banner pole that cracked the first time the model left its shelf. The fix wasn’t better support removal or gentler handling. It was switching resin. If you print miniatures that get played with, the kind picked up every turn, bagged for game night, and dropped on a hardwood floor by a kid who wanted to see your dragon, then ABS-like resin is the single upgrade that ends the repair cycle.
This is a deep dive on ABS-like resin specifically. If you’re still deciding between resin categories (standard vs. ABS-like vs. water-washable), start with the best resin for miniatures guide, which covers the whole landscape. This article assumes you’ve already decided toughness matters and you want to know which tough resin to actually buy, and how to print it without losing detail.
What “ABS-Like” Actually Means (It Isn’t ABS)
Let’s kill the marketing confusion first. ABS-like resin is not ABS plastic. You can’t acetone-smooth it, and it isn’t injection-molded styrene. “ABS-like” is a category name manufacturers slapped on photopolymer resins formulated with toughening additives, usually a blend that trades a sliver of maximum detail resolution for impact resistance and a little flex before fracture.
The practical difference is mechanical. Pure standard resin is hard and glassy. It holds gorgeous detail and then shatters when a thin feature takes a lateral hit. ABS-like resin is slightly more ductile: a spear shaft bends a few degrees and springs back instead of snapping clean. At 28 to 32mm scale, the detail you give up is invisible to the naked eye and to most cameras. The durability you gain is the difference between a model that survives a campaign and one that lives in a repair pile.
A few brands market a third tier, the “tough” or “high-impact” resins like Siraya Tech’s Tenacious, which is a flexible resin meant to be blended rather than printed straight. More on that below, because blending is the secret weapon that most beginners never hear about.
The ABS-Like Resins Worth Your Money
I’ve grouped these by how I’d actually recommend them, not alphabetically. Prices are per liter and drift with sales, so treat them as ranges.
Best Overall: Siraya Tech Blu
Blu is the resin the community keeps coming back to, and it earned that the honest way. It’s the toughest ABS-like resin I’ve used straight out of the bottle: genuinely impact-resistant, with thin features that flex before they fail. Detail is very good. Not quite standard-resin crisp at the absolute finest level, but you will not see the gap on a tabletop model.
What makes Blu the default is that it’s forgiving. It cures consistently across a wide exposure window, so dialing it in on a new printer is less of a fight than with fussier resins. The grey-blue color reads detail well and primes under anything. Low odor for an uncured resin, though you still glove up and ventilate.
Cost: about $28 to $35/L. Also sold direct from Siraya Tech. Best for: Your default army resin if durability is the priority.
Best Budget: Elegoo ABS-Like Pro
If you own an Elegoo printer and want to keep one supplier, or you just want toughness for less, Elegoo’s ABS-Like Pro is the value pick. It isn’t as tough as Blu and won’t take a drop quite as well, but it’s a massive step up from standard resin on brittleness, and it routinely sells in the $20 to $28/L range. The “Pro” reformulation prints faster than the original Elegoo ABS-Like at the same quality. Detail on 28 to 32mm models is clean and the curing is predictable. Available through Elegoo directly and on Amazon.
Cost: about $20 to $28/L. Best for: Elegoo owners and anyone who wants tough prints on a budget.
Best for Ecosystem Buyers: Anycubic ABS-Like Pro 2.0
Anycubic’s ABS-Like Pro 2.0 sits in the same tier as Elegoo’s: noticeably tougher than standard, good detail, easy to source, often bundled cheap with Anycubic printers. It cures fast and clean. In side-by-side drop tests it lands between Elegoo ABS-Like Pro and Siraya Blu, closer to the Elegoo end. If you’re already buying Anycubic resin out of habit, the Pro line is the one to grab over their plant-based standard.
Cost: about $22 to $30/L. Best for: Anycubic ecosystem buyers who want durability without changing brands.
The Toughness Cheat Code: Siraya Tech Tenacious
Tenacious isn’t a print-it-straight miniature resin. It’s a flexible, almost rubbery resin that you blend into a harder resin to buy impact resistance. A common recipe is 20 to 30% Tenacious mixed into standard or ABS-like resin. The result keeps most of the host resin’s detail but gains dramatic resistance to snapping. I keep a bottle around specifically for models with stupid-fragile parts: pole arms, thin staves, antennae, banner tops.
The trade-off is that more Tenacious means more flex and slightly softer detail, and you have to re-calibrate exposure for the blend. But for a unit of spear infantry that historically lost a weapon a session, a Tenacious blend is the difference between an army and a hospital ward.
Cost: about $35 to $45/L, and you use it sparingly so it lasts. Best for: Blending into your main resin to rescue fragile models.
Honorable Mention: Sunlu ABS-Like
Sunlu’s ABS-like resin is the cheapest entry that’s still worth printing, frequently the lowest price per liter of anything here. Detail and toughness both sit a notch below the Elegoo and Anycubic Pro lines, and batch consistency is a little more variable. If budget is the hard constraint and you’re printing rank-and-file troops rather than centerpiece models, it’s a defensible buy. For anything you’ll paint to a high standard, spend up.
Comparison Table
| Resin | Toughness | Detail | Cost/L | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Siraya Tech Blu | Excellent | Very Good | $28 to $35 | Toughest straight from bottle; forgiving to dial in |
| Anycubic ABS-Like Pro 2.0 | Good+ | Good | $22 to $30 | Fast curing; easy to source |
| Elegoo ABS-Like Pro | Good | Good | $20 to $28 | Best value; faster than original ABS-Like |
| Siraya Tech Tenacious | Flex additive | Host-dependent | $35 to $45 | Blend 20 to 30% for impact resistance |
| Sunlu ABS-Like | Fair | Fair | $16 to $24 | Cheapest usable; variable batches |
How to Actually Print ABS-Like Resin
Buying the right resin is half the job. ABS-like resins behave a little differently from standard, and a few people walk away disappointed purely because they printed it like standard resin.
Expect longer cure times. ABS-like resins generally need slightly higher layer exposure than the standard resin you may be used to. Start from the manufacturer’s recommended settings, then run a calibration print rather than trusting a generic profile. An AmeraLabs Town or a UVtools exposure matrix will get you dialed in within a couple of prints.
They flex more during removal. That ductility you’re paying for means parts bend a hair more when you pull them off the plate. Use a sharp scraper and warm the plate slightly if your workspace is cold. Viscosity climbs fast below 20°C/68°F, and cold ABS-like resin prints poorly.
Don’t over-cure. This is the big one. ABS-like resin gets more brittle the longer you UV-cure it. Over-curing defeats the entire point: you bought toughness and then baked it out. Cure to set, not to maximum. Two to four minutes per side in a station like the ones in my wash and cure station roundup is plenty for 28mm models, so resist the urge to leave them under the lamp “just to be safe.”
Shake hard, don’t mix brands mid-vat. Like all resin, ABS-like settles. Shake 30 to 60 seconds before pouring. And don’t top off one brand’s ABS-like with another’s, because the photo-initiator concentrations differ and you’ll get inconsistent exposure. Drain and filter before switching.
So Which One Should You Buy?
If you want a single answer: Siraya Tech Blu. It’s the toughest, it’s forgiving to print, and it’s the resin I reach for when I’m printing models I actually care about keeping intact. The price premium over budget resin pays for itself the first weekend nobody has to glue a sword back on.
If budget is the deciding factor, Elegoo ABS-Like Pro (or Anycubic’s Pro 2.0 if you’re in that ecosystem) gets you most of the durability for meaningfully less, and either is a night-and-day upgrade over standard resin for play minis.
And if you have a few models with comically fragile parts, keep a bottle of Tenacious on the shelf and blend it in. It’s the cheapest insurance in the hobby.
One honest caveat: ABS-like resin is overkill for pure display pieces that live in a case. If a model will never be touched, standard resin’s slightly finer detail is the better call. See the main resin guide for that side of the decision. ABS-like is specifically for minis that get handled. For everything that hits the table, it’s the right buy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ABS-like resin actually stronger than standard resin? Yes, meaningfully, for impact and flex. A standard-resin spear tip snaps cleanly under a lateral hit; the same part in a good ABS-like resin bends and recovers. The trade is a tiny, usually invisible reduction in maximum detail at miniature scale.
Does ABS-like resin print at lower detail? Slightly, on paper. In practice, at 28 to 32mm you won’t see the difference without a loupe. The detail loss only matters for competition-grade display pieces printed at the finest layer heights.
Can I mix ABS-like resin with standard resin? You can blend resins to tune properties. That’s exactly what Siraya Tech Tenacious is designed for. Blend, then re-calibrate exposure for the mix. Don’t randomly top off one ABS-like brand with another mid-vat, though, because that just creates inconsistent curing.
How much resin will a bottle of ABS-like make? About the same as any resin. A solid 28mm character runs roughly 5 to 15ml, so a 1L bottle yields a lot of models. Hollowing stretches it much further. See how much resin a miniature uses for a full cost-per-print breakdown.
Is ABS-like resin safe to wash like normal resin? Yes. The standard IPA wash process applies. If you’d rather skip IPA entirely, that’s a different category trade-off; the water-washable resin guide covers why water-washable resins tend to be more brittle and why they’re the wrong pick for play minis.
Why did my ABS-like print turn out brittle anyway? Almost always over-curing. ABS-like resin embrittles with excess UV exposure. Cut your cure time, calibrate exposure with a test print, and store finished models out of direct sunlight.