Lychee Slicer Settings for Miniatures: The Settings That Actually Matter
Cut through the noise on Lychee slicer settings for resin miniatures. Layer height, exposure, anti-aliasing, support presets: here's what moves the needle and what doesn't.
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Lychee Slicer has a lot of settings. More than you need. More than most tutorials cover, because covering every option would take forever and most of them don’t matter for miniature printing.
This guide covers the settings that actually change your results: layer height, exposure time, anti-aliasing, and the support configuration options specific to miniatures. Everything else is fine left at default until you have a reason to change it.
Before diving in — if you’re setting up your first print, the complete beginner’s guide to resin printing covers the full workflow. This guide assumes you’ve gotten past the first-print stage and want to dial in your slice quality.
Lychee Free vs. Lychee Pro
Lychee has a free tier and a paid Lychee Pro subscription (~$8/month). The free version handles the essential workflow. Pro adds per-model hollowing with drain holes, advanced support editing, multi-plate management, and the full anti-aliasing options.
For miniature printing, the features that matter most in Pro are: the hollowing tool (saves significant resin on larger models) and the extended anti-aliasing options (noticeably cleaner surface on curved surfaces at 4K printers). If you’re printing on a 12K or 16K printer, anti-aliasing differences are minimal — the native resolution carries the surface quality. If you’re on a 4K machine and want cleaner faces and curved armor, Pro’s AA settings are worth the cost.
Everything in this guide that mentions “Pro” requires the subscription. Free users can apply the other settings.
Layer Height
Layer height is the most impactful print quality setting. Smaller layers = finer detail on surfaces with vertical relief = longer print time.
0.05mm (50 microns): The standard for miniatures. Fast enough for batch printing, fine enough that layer lines are invisible on any surface not viewed at extreme close range. This is where I start for infantry and standard character models.
0.03mm (30 microns): Noticeably better surface quality on curved armor, faces, and cloth folds. Layer lines disappear even under bright light. The trade-off is print time — 30-micron layers take roughly 65% longer than 50-micron for the same model height. Worth using for display pieces, centerpiece models, named characters.
0.02mm (20 microns): Reserved for extremely fine detail — display-quality named characters, very small models (15mm scale), anything that will be photographed close-up. Print time jumps significantly. Not practical for army builds.
For army infantry: 0.05mm. For display/showcase models: 0.03mm. For close-up photography or competition entry: 0.02mm.
Exposure Time
Exposure time is printer-specific and resin-specific. There’s no universal number. That said, here’s the framework:
Normal exposure layers: The time each standard layer spends exposing. Too short = under-cure, poor adhesion between layers, potential peel failure. Too long = over-cure, features melt together, fine detail fills in (faces lose definition, thin gaps close).
For miniatures, under-cure causes structural failures. Over-cure causes detail loss. For fine miniature detail, slightly toward under-cure is better than slightly toward over-cure — you’d rather have a fragile thin feature than a merged one.
Typical ranges by printer class:
- Mono 4K (35µm): 2.0–3.0 seconds
- 12K (22µm): 1.8–2.8 seconds
- 16K (18µm): 1.5–2.5 seconds
These are starting points. Run a resin calibration print (Ameralabs Town or ResinWorks test file) before committing to these numbers on your specific resin. The calibration print takes 30 minutes and tells you exactly where your printer/resin combination sits.
Bottom exposure layers: The heavily extended exposure time for the first 6–10 layers that fuse the print to the build plate. Typically 30–50 seconds, sometimes more. Too short and the raft pulls off mid-print. Too long and the raft welds itself to the plate and takes the surface coating with it on removal. Find a number that sticks reliably but releases with a razor blade.
Light-off delay: The brief pause between exposure and the next layer lift. Adding 0.5–1.5 seconds of light-off delay dramatically reduces peel force failures on large flat surfaces. Worth enabling for complex models, large surface area miniatures, and anything that keeps failing mid-print. Adds to print time proportionally.
Anti-Aliasing
Anti-aliasing smooths the staircase effect on angled surfaces — the natural artifact of printing in discrete layers. Without AA, angled surfaces have visible stepping. With AA, the transitions are softened.
In Lychee, AA is found in the Print Settings > Antialiasing section.
Level 1–2: Minimal softening. Noticeable improvement on 4K printers. Barely perceptible on 12K+ (the native resolution already handles this).
Level 3–4: More aggressive softening. Better on curved surfaces. Can slightly reduce sharpness of very fine edge detail — there’s a trade-off between smooth curves and crisp sharp edges. For organic shapes (faces, muscles, cloth), level 3 is usually better. For hard-surface mechanical models (40K vehicles, robots), level 2 may preserve edge crispness better.
Blur threshold: Controls how aggressively AA is applied to transition zones. Default is fine for most uses. Increase it if you’re seeing over-softening on features you want to keep sharp.
For printers above 8K: AA is a marginal improvement. Leave it at level 1 or 2 and spend your attention on layer height and supports. For 4K printers: AA level 2–3 makes a visible quality difference on faces and curved armor. Worth the slight print time increase.
Support Settings for Miniatures
The default Lychee support settings are calibrated for generic objects. For miniatures, they need adjustment.
Support preset starting points:
Use Miniature Light as your base for most humanoid infantry. This preset uses 0.3mm tip diameter and relatively low density — enough to hold the print, not so dense that removal takes 20 minutes.
Use Miniature Medium for:
- Flying models with no natural ground contact
- Models with very large horizontal overhangs (wide cloaks, horizontal spell effects)
- Any print that previously failed under Miniature Light settings
Key parameters to adjust:
Tip diameter: 0.3mm for fine features (fingers, weapon tips, ornamental detail); 0.5mm for structural supports on heavy masses. Thin tips leave smaller marks; thick tips hold better. Use the right one for the job.
Contact depth: 0.1–0.15mm. Shallower = easier removal, smaller scar. Deeper = stronger hold, more visible mark. On faces and visible armor surfaces: 0.1mm. On undersides and hidden surfaces: 0.15mm.
Upper diameter: The column thickness above the base. 0.6–0.8mm is the sweet spot for miniatures. Thicker columns are more stable but harder to cut cleanly at removal.
Island detection: Enable this. Lychee displays the island count at the top of the support view. Your target before slicing is zero islands. Find any remaining islands after auto-support and manually add supports to each one.
The Analyze Tool
The Analyze function (magnifying glass in the Support panel) runs overhang detection and highlights problem areas in red. Run this after auto-support generation, not before.
The color-coded output:
- Red: Definite problem — unsupported overhang, island, or extreme angle. Fix these.
- Yellow: Borderline — Lychee flagged it but auto-supports may have caught it. Verify by zooming in.
- Green: Clear — no support needed.
After analyzing: zoom into every red and yellow area and confirm whether a support was placed. Auto-support misses certain features reliably — weapon tips, thin extremities, inside of bent elbows. These show as red because they’re genuinely unsupported and the auto-generator skipped them. Add manual supports to any red area that doesn’t have one.
Hollowing Settings (Pro)
Hollowing large models reduces resin consumption dramatically. A 60mm monster model solid uses 4–5x more resin than the same model hollowed to 1.5–2mm shell thickness. With drain holes added, the hollow interior doesn’t trap uncured resin.
Shell thickness for miniatures: 1.5–2mm. Below 1.5mm, the walls become fragile and may crack under the stresses of support removal and handling. Above 2mm, you’re not saving as much resin.
Drain holes: Essential when hollowing. Without them, uncured liquid resin is trapped inside the model and will eventually cause cracking as it cures slowly over time. Place 2–3mm diameter holes in locations that won’t be visible on the finished model — the underside of the base, inside a flowing cloak, inside a shield’s rear face.
For miniature infantry at 28–32mm: Hollowing is generally not worth the workflow overhead. The resin volume in a 32mm infantry figure is small enough that solid prints are fine. Start hollowing at 50mm height and above — large creatures, terrain, vehicle components, display bases.
Raft Settings
The raft is what everything else builds on. Its settings affect whether your print survives to the peel phase.
Raft thickness: 1.5–2mm. 1.5mm for smaller, lighter models; 2mm for large plates with multiple heavy miniatures.
Raft shape: Lychee’s default raft extends past the model footprint. This is correct — don’t reduce it. A raft that’s exactly model-footprint-sized can peel at the edges.
Anti-suction raft: Lychee Pro includes a perforated or holed raft option that reduces vacuum forces on large flat raft surfaces. Enable it for plates with large combined footprint — ten infantry in a row creates significant suction on each peel cycle.
Bottom exposure: 8–10 layers at extended exposure. I run 10 bottom layers at 40 seconds on the Saturn for most resins. If the raft is pulling partially off the plate, increase to 12 layers or add 5 seconds per layer. If the raft is welding to the plate and damaging the FEP liner on removal, reduce by 5 seconds.
Print Profile Setup
Rather than adjusting individual settings each time, set up named profiles for your common print scenarios. Lychee saves these per-machine.
Profiles I keep active:
Infantry 50µm — 0.05mm layer height, Miniature Light supports, 2.2s exposure (Saturn + Siraya Tech Blu). Daily driver for army builds.
Display 30µm — 0.03mm layer height, Miniature Light supports, 2.0s exposure. For named characters and display pieces.
Large Model 50µm — 0.05mm layer height, Miniature Medium supports, 2.2s exposure, anti-suction raft. For creatures 50mm+ and terrain pieces.
Set these up once, save them, and you spend zero time re-entering settings per print.
Troubleshooting Common Lychee Issues
Print sticking to FEP instead of build plate: Bottom exposure is too short or the build plate needs leveling. Re-level first. If leveling is correct, increase bottom exposure layers (add 2 layers) and increase bottom exposure time (add 5 seconds).
Detail merging on faces: Over-exposure. Reduce normal exposure by 0.2 seconds and test. If faces still look merged, check if anti-aliasing blur is too aggressive.
Random layer failures mid-print: Usually a support issue rather than a settings issue. Check the failed model’s support placement — the failure typically occurs at the layer where an unsupported section started printing. Re-support and retry.
Supports impossible to remove cleanly: Tip diameter is too large or contact depth is too deep. Switch to Miniature Light preset and reduce contact depth to 0.1mm. Remove supports in the green state (after IPA wash, before final UV cure).
For the full support placement walkthrough specific to 40K and fantasy miniatures, see the guide on adding supports for miniature printing.