Why 3D Printed Extras Are Taking Over the Hobby Bench
If you’ve spent any time browsing modelling groups, forums, or YouTube lately, you’ll have noticed a quiet revolution happening in the background. Suddenly, everyone seems to be adding 3D-printed extras to their builds. What started as a niche curiosity has rapidly become a central part of the hobby, and it’s reshaping how modellers think about detail, accuracy, and personalisation.
What’s driving this shift?
It’s a mix of technology, creativity, and timing.
For decades, injection-moulded kits have given modellers a solid foundation. The best companies still produce exceptional plastic, and a well-engineered kit is a joy to build. But injection moulding has limits. Tooling is expensive, moulds are inflexible, and every sprue needs to appeal to thousands of buyers. That means details which are too thin, too fragile, or too niche to justify appearing in the box rarely make it into mass-produced kits. For years, modellers simply accepted this, and filled in the gaps with scratch-building, aftermarket resin, or some creative improvisation.
Enter 3D printing.
Finally, someone could design and produce highly detailed, incredibly specific upgrades in quantities that don’t need to justify a corporate tooling budget. And the results are stunning: ultra-crisp weld seams, authentic casting textures, minuscule fittings, cloth folds, field-mods, vehicle-specific accessories… all rendered with a precision that even premium plastic can struggle to achieve.
As resin printing evolved, something else changed: the cost. Only a few years ago, desktop printers were expensive, complicated, and prone to frustration. Today, they’re dramatically cheaper, vastly higher resolution, easier to set up, and supported by entire communities of experts. This brought a huge new wave of designers into the hobby, many of whom could now create and sell upgrades from their living room. The barrier between idea and product almost vanished.
Suddenly, the hobby no longer depended on major manufacturers to decide what details matter. A modeller with specialist knowledge and a CAD program could recreate a single variant of a single turret used only for three months on a single front—and people who care about that level of accuracy could finally buy it.
That’s another major factor in the rise of 3D extras: expectations have changed. Plastic modellers today are better informed, more historically engaged, and increasingly interested in authenticity. Reference books, wartime photos, scanned archives, veteran testimony and online research communities have raised the standard of what represents “accurate.” It’s not enough anymore for the general shape to be close — builders want the exact texture, the correct fittings, the right hatch layout, the precise month-variant.
3D printing lets them achieve that.
And there’s a creative angle too. Modelling is an expressive hobby, and many people want their builds to stand out — not just to replicate what’s on the box. Custom parts give modellers the ability to make something unique, personal, or historically distinct. With 3D-printed elements, two people can build the same kit and end up with radically different finished models.
What’s perhaps most exciting is the cultural side: 3D printing has re-energised the garage-workshop spirit of the hobby. In the 80s and 90s, resin aftermarket creators often worked at small scale, experimenting and taking risks. 3D printing has revived that culture, but digitally. Now we see countless small, passionate creators exploring strange, overlooked, and fascinating subjects—simply because they can.
In a sense, 3D printing hasn’t replaced plastic modelling. It has expanded it. It gives builders more freedom, more tools, and more possibilities. It allows the obsessive historian, the diorama builder, the scratch-builder, and the casual weekend hobbyist to all find something that speaks to them.
It’s not a trend. It’s the next layer of creativity the hobby was waiting for.
And it’s only just getting started.
