Tips for printing big 1/6 scale figures that nobody warns you about

Ran into the same wall with a big bust last winter, though my failure mode was diffrent. My drain holes were fine but I hollowed with walls too thin for the size, and the vacuum pull during the peel kept deforming the back of the head untill it looked like it was melting. Bumped the wall thickness way up and the problem vanished overnight, worth remembering that hollow isn't automatically better at this scale. I also went the other direction on supports actually. Those chunky supports for the heavy sections saved me more than once, but I learned to place them on areas I was going to sand and fill anyway, like the back of the head or under the chin, so the scar tissue never showed.

One thing that helped me with the uncured resin issue was flushing with IPA right after the print while it's still on the supports, then leaving it in a warm spot for a day before I pop it off. The smell test after that tells you if anything is still sloshing around inside. My wife banned the garage from the house years ago so I do everything in an old fridge I gutted, which sounds wierd but keeps the fumes contained while the flush drains.

For the putty step I actually skip it on areas that get texture, the primer plus dry brushing hides way more than people expect.

On anything that big I quit trying to print it as one piece entirely. Printed a 1/6 power armor guy last spring and cut him into five chunks at the waist, shoulders and hips, printed each section solid with 3mm pins drilled through the joints. Zero failures after that, whereas my single-piece attempts had maybe a one in three survival rate. Superglue plus a bit of sanding at the seams is way less work than salvaging a 40-hour failed print. Also the cut joints give you a natural line to work paint transitions around if you're doing battle damage anyway.

This is kind of reassuring to read as someone who hasn't tried anything bigger than a little skull so far. My issue last month was the liquid going gloopy near the end of the bottle, prints kept coming off half formed, turns out my garage gets way too cold at night and the whole thing was setting up wrong. Warmed the bottle in a bowl of warm water for ten minutes first and suddenly everything worked. Do you guys run your machines in a heated room year round or just deal with seasonal failures? Feels like nobody talks about the temprature thing when they're posting thier perfect big prints.