Speira 3D Printed Figures

 

Spear ACW surgeon and casualties

There is a company based in Sweden called Speira Miniatures that makes 3D printed figures for wargamers and toy soldier collectors. One can order the figures in a variety of sizes from 15mm to 152mm (1/12 scale) in height and scale. The company manufactures the figures to your order and then prints and ships them to your in a 3 to 5 week period. You can make adjustments to the figures for an extra charge, such as changing the hat style, adding a back pack, making the figure thin or fat, mirror image of the original, or you could even put your own face on the figure.

Speira covers a variety of historical eras including the American Civil War, the Wild West, French & Indian War, Napoleonics. Ancients, WW2 and the modern era from the Cold War to the present.

Speira Miniatures link

I was looking for some casualty figures to use as morale markers. I couldn't find any Confederates from other plastic soldier manufacturers and the figure poses were rather limited for the Union figures. I had been painting Union soldiers in kepis as Confederates. When I visited the Speira web site, I was amazed at  the vast variety of just the casualty figures, let alone other ACW action figures. So I purchased approximately 40 individual casualties.

Assorted Confederate casualty figures that I have painted/

I also purchased some vignette figures and a Whitworth breechloading rifled cannon in 1/32 scale.

(L to R: Confederate prisoner, James Longstreet, and Matthew Brady.

Whitworth breechloading cannon in 1/32 scale

Whitworth breech loading rifled cannon, shown with BMC figures for size comparison .

The Whitworth shown without artillery crew figures.

The famous illustrator Alfred Waud, made by Barszo.

The material is some kind of plastic resin, I assume, and it can be a little bit brittle so I generally selected figures that were in relaxed poses that didn't have arms or equipment waving around away from the torso. This minimizes the opportunity for breakage. I probably wouldn't want to buy charging poses, for example, due to my concerns about breakage.

I am a little concerned about the strength of the axle on the Whitworth cannon. The axle itself is solid, but each end has a slender peg that fits through the hub of the wheel. I will bore out the hole in the wheel hub so that the axle pin slips in without resistance. My fear is that the pegs might break off if I try to force the peg into the hub piece.

Speira's artillery pieces are terrific looking models and I have already ordered another Whitworth so that I can have a battery of two guns. I am going to use BMC/Americana artillery crew with the model. See picture above.

Some of the Speira figures come with no plastic base, so you have to order your figure model with a base, at a modest extra cost. Some of the figures come with bases so this won't be a problem with the vast majority of the figures.

A single figure in 54mm, or 1/32 scale, costs around EUR3.0 to EUR 5.0 while a 28mm figure sized to fit in with Perry figures (this is actually an available option) can cost around EUR3.0. So these are not inexpensive figures and it would be very expensive to create a 20 to 30 figure regiment, however, for vignettes I think the prices are reasonable. My Whitworth model cost me EUR14.80 so it ain't cheap. On the other hand, some of the ACW cannon models are not made by other companies, so Speira is a good choice for your mainstream and exotic (e.g. James Rifles and Wiard Rifles) artillery pieces.

In the not too distant future I will paint the Whitworth and post pictures on this blog.