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I spent the last two days working on an Oberth-Class destroyer design for 3D printing, shown below. now, I’m pretty happy with it. You may be thinking though, that it’s honestly pretty rough. Details are lacking, shapes seem to be slightly thicker than they really should be, that sort of thing. Why would I do that? Because a 200-meter long Oberth at 1/2000 scale is a centimeter long. So I’m trying to get what details I can in there without things breaking 😄 (And I basically gave up on the radar, as much as I like it. Too spindly) 1cm will put it in scale with the ARII zentradi capital ships and SDF-1 that I recently started acquiring. If it goes well I might try to design an ARMD (perhaps even a version I can swap in as docked to the Macross, after all I have a few…), a Zentradi picket ship, or if I’m crazy enough a simplified Quel-Quallie. I’ll document any of that here. But for now, time to start trying to print this Oberth.

First print for this old CAD model on new Prusa MK4S - Not bad for FDM with basic settings . The back end got "mashed" because auto supports, but for a first print on a FDM , I am impressed .

Because Macross is the coolest. (Extra credit for naming the greeblies and easter eggs!) xoxo, arbit I thought I would make a separate topic for this add-on, since it has a large amount of detail on its own, and can be attached to any flight deck. Full detailed WIP will follow once I get my resources together. Character figures are made by me, using a lot of stock 3D parts from around the internet. Barrels/Lifeboats from Thingiverse, edited by @Xigfrid to add the Macross flag. Barrel racks by @Xigfrid Original SDF-1 3D model made by GUILLEABM83 on Cults3d, heavily edited, separated, and hollowed by me for printing and lighting. Thanks to Guillermo for his awesome work! Macross robots and cameras by OIM on Cults3d. Thanks Olivier! Go check out his library of Macross figures. Platform made by me from super duper secret greeblies on Thingiverse.

I've pinned the final build video up top, followed by the WIP in the rest of the thread. This is a new build to continue my motorized Ranger squadron, but this time I am using Xigfrid's Shapeways 3D printed gear. With Xigfrid's gear I got a much smoother operation, and in many ways an easier installation, although I can't say its ever that easy to cut into your valk like this. I also learned from my last build for the Motorized 1/72 VF-1S Launch Arm to pay closer attention to the type and speed of the motor as well as the coding to test full performance before final installation. In the last build I ended up with a slower motor speed than I expected. I also wanted to give a better step-by-step WIP with Xigfrid's gear, which will be coming up.

After a long time of deciding if I was still obsessed with the ugly VA-3 I finally decided to print it in 3D. I hope this motivates many who helped me with the model and can do it in better quality, to prove that this ugly valk that many do not like is really interesting. The same is only in combat mode and when it is finished, bonded, sanded and painted I hope to change a lot for the better. It is really big especially for the length of the wings and gave a fight when it was printed. I hope you like it and upload the captures when finished. enjoy it

So we don't continue to derail the various specific project threads related to Shapeways, figured a catch-all thread for on-going discussion could be helpful. I know a lot of people are looking at Shapeways and thinking "ooh, I should try that," so a generic advice/tips thread should be helpful. We've had various tips and experiences scattered throughout individual project threads so far. If this would go better in the Models or Workshop section, anyone who has the power to do so, please feel free to make the move. I imagine Macross stuff will pop up here from time to time, but it won't be limited to that. So yeah, open discussion, teaser pics, questions, requests, anything relating to using the service itself. I'm just now learning how to set these up, so I'm expecting a lot of (possibly expensive) trial and error learning here. Decided to start with something I already had a model handy for, and just work on converting it to a kit-like format. So far, it's all built to exact fit, so I expect to either do a lot of sanding, or add tolerances into the parts. Some of you old-school computer simmers might reconignize this one. I'm setting this up for a decently large printing, and so far the parts shown there have uploaded, and haven't generated any kind of errors, so once I get the rest built I'll probably try a test printing. Wingspan is about 4 inches, so I'm expecting the length to be around 6-7 inches assembled. Cost so far is up to about $40 for what's shown, so I'll probably shrink it further for testing. I'm going to aim for 1/100 scale if it's practical, 1/144 if it gets too expensive.