3D Printing Discussion

[01i]

[Magnetic Duckling]

Shapeways machines are between $400k and $1.5m I believe.
Makerbot's machine is interesting if you want to make VERY rough (and big) pieces to work on but it is more similar to toy than an actual machine to me. It certainly won't do for miniature business.

I think offering a 3D printing service would work, seeing how Shapeways is growing. You just need a significant amount of cash to start.
All Shapeways print shows little lines though, some are less visible than others depending on the material you picked.

01i, would you be so kind and show us an actual print from Makerbot other than the ones they show on their website ? I'd like to see what it looks like "irl" and not on their advertisings. Curious.

[01i]

I never really got any 'finished' prints out of it, and after splitting the company with my fellow director, I actually gave him the makerbot because I'd got a little sick of trying to get it working right, and had no real belief that it'd ever do what we wanted to get out of it. I bought it at the same time as a david laserscanner which was also a little too cheap. I wish now that I'd not bothered with the makerbot, and put the extra thousand towards a better 3d scanner from nextengine.

Initially we were trying with the heated build platform but after accidentally crashing into the platform a couple of times, damaged the surface, and then damaged the backup surface, decided that we needed to do some of our own modifications. We were having better luck replacing the default build surface with a custom copper plate but started having issues with the heating element which I gave up on trying to replace. We needed a specific £2 thermistor that we could only seem to source from the states at a minimum £15 to 20 delivery.

My overall opinion on the makerbot was that it was VERY noisy, extremely hard to perfect, and easy to damage. The change to a copper plate platform was looking alot better though, until the thermistor issue started. Basically it didn't stop heating up. Apparently Mike had a really good print going, until it started to melt We always had one wobble point that alwasy made each print slightly imperfect. Without getting it running, we could never get any of the thingyverse tweaks printed to improve quality.

I'll see if I can get some photos from Mike, but to be perfectly honest, I'd only reccomend going down the DIY route if you have the time and patience to REALLY work at it. Over all it sucked up about £1000 and a couple of weeks to get it built, and god knows how long in failed attempts to print something.

It'll be good for test stuff, or armatures that'll have putty added covering the surface, but there's really no point in using plastrusion for high detail stuff. If you get one, start off on the right foot and buy all the tweak components from thingyverse (eg wobble arresters, tighteners etc) and print from from shapeways.

[01i]

Oh yeah. The problem with offering your own 3d printing service is that unless you match shapeways prices then what's the point? As shapeways prices are so low, the amount of time, effort and electricity just dont add up.

[Magnetic Duckling]

Ok so I sums this up as Makerbot basically sucks. That's what I was afraid of. As you said, it could be fine to do armatures that will be covered (in my case to achieve symmetry more easily) but that is about it right now.
Please look for pictures only if it is not major annoyance. Your review was very helpful by itself, thanks!

And what about david laserscanner, while we are at it? This price makes me suspicious.

I believe some other company is offering cheaper price than Shapeways. I didn't check, just heard, maybe it is one of those 2: http://www.interpromodels.com/services/CAD.html and http://www.gravotech.nl/
I don't know if we can call Shapeways prices low, I have nothing to compare but we spent a fair amount of money making prints (big parts).
Ok maybe offering a 3D print service is not 100% sure to work out but it is not DOOMED, it is worth trying if you got the cash (just my opinion). And if it fails, having a 3D printer at home to print your own stuff is just awesome xD

[blind pig]

I believe this is a makerbot model.

[Magnetic Duckling]

Any idea what height this is ?

[blind pig]

I'd assume the same height as the original model, which is about 80mm high.

[01i]

[01i]

[01i]

Out of interest, why was this thread split from the 3D modelling subforum announcement thread, into the Dr Polymer forum rather than the new 3D modelling subforum?

[mangozac]

Because the 3D modelling subforum is for discussing actual projects, this subforum is for discussion of techniques