All Things Shapeways

[Chronocidal]

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.

Edited April 15, 2013 by Chronocidal

[renegadeleader1]

Excalibur fighter?

[Chronocidal]

Hehe, yep. I've had a stash of old Wing Commander models collecting dust on backup drives for years. Found a Hornet from the first game as well, and think I have a few others sitting around.

The blocky shapes of the WCIII ships make them really simple to model, so I figured this'd be a good starting project.

Someone suggested making some Homeworld ships as well, so I might see what other models I can dig up. Depending on detail and size, they might be quick to do.

Edited April 15, 2013 by Chronocidal

[Kurisama]

Lt.Kurisama reporting for doody, sah!

I'll be happy to lend any advice

[Chronocidal]

Psh, you should be heading this thing as the local guru. You and Veef have been producing so much stuff from there, you look like old pros already.

Major question right now is how carefully you have to tune parts to fit together. Like for the tails, right now, they're an exact fit for the slots they go into on the wing. If I send them off to be printed that way, I would assume they won't slide together easily, but would I be able to make them fit with a little sanding, or would I need to rework the model?

[electric indigo]

Is there any affordable Mac software that allows you to make decent quality meshes for printing? I work with an older version of Cinema 4D and the Bolean operations are quite horrible.

[Kurisama]

Chrono - you should be ok with WSF+polish even more-so with UD, for a more secure fit - model in a slot & tab for the connecting pieces to be sure. How deep are the grooves/gloves in your model?

You'd have to sand a tad, but not much - it's pretty accurate with the fitting (depending on how small it is) in my experience. The custom 4G head I made fit like a GLOVE, i didn't take into account the layers of paint however - so i had to sand back and re-paint a few small sections.

Indigo - not sure dude, but i head people have a lot of success with google sketch-up and blender is powerful and free - not sure if there is a mac version tho.

[Chronocidal]

Assuming I've got the units right, the recesses should be about 2mm deep. I'll see what kind of things I could do for tabs, though I'm not too concerned about this staying together without glue, and I probably wouldn't paint it until it's glued anyway, if I paint it at all.

I'm mostly just fiddling with the part thickness for the moment, and seeing how much material I can remove before it becomes unprintable. I might split the wing in half, and drill out the insides. It's not that thick, but if you can make those VF-171 missiles hollow, I might be overestimating the thickness I need.

Edited April 15, 2013 by Chronocidal

[Chronocidal]

So, model's pretty much done now, I just need to figure out if Shapeways can even handle it. That, and find out how much it'd be to print at a decent size. I'm fully expecting them to reject the gun pieces, since they're so tiny, but I think the main structure should work.

Edit: Came out to a little over $60 to print this thing, and it'll be about 7 inches long put together. But yeah, I'll be extremely surprised if they print this one. If it fails, I'll just remove a few of the smaller parts and try again.

Edited April 20, 2013 by Chronocidal

[Knight26]

talk to klavs over on wcnews and sci-fi meshes he does a lot of wc stuff on shapeways

[Chronocidal]

I think I found a few of his things on there browsing, looked pretty nice, though most of the stuff was really tiny scale like 1/600. Though, the WC universe was really screwy with their scaling anyway. The Excalibur was supposed to be 105 feet long based on the in-game specs, which might not be that far off based on the cutscenes.

Still, that puts 1/144 scale at almost 9 inches long. Thing is, when I tried scaling the model up to make it that size, Shapeways suddenly eliminated all of the affordable materials as options, and the only way I could make it was with the FUD option, which was like $200, so yeah.. that's not happening

[Gakken85]

I sent kurisama a request for a 1/12 votoms shoulder but idk if the messaging system is screwy.

[Kurisama]

Ah sorry dude - I honestly thought I had replied, even going through my head what I wrote back, but then I just checked - I never replied!!!

I'll send you a reply after i put my son to bed. But in a nutshell, I'll have to decline - unless its Macross or TFs, it's not worth the time and effort for me - I do this on the side, between freelancing and lecturing! Sorry man.

[Negotiator]

can someone please make the piece under the cockpit of the VF-171 CF? y'know the part a couple of us are missing.

Trying to get the part requires the hassle of sending the whole thing back, and from there, they send it to bandai, etc... it will take forever to get the valk back with no guarantee something else wont be wrong with it.

[Dio]

Would it maybe be easier to re-cast an existing VF-171 cockpit piece? I haven't looked too closely at it, but I think it's just snapped on and doesn't require any pin removal.

One request I've got is a set of clips that can attach the VF-22S gunpods to the fighter's underside/hip panels, for the Gamlin/Max/Miriya editions that don't come with FAST packs. The gun pods just sort of tack to the bottom of the aircraft in Macross 30, and it's easily my favorite fighter in the game, so I'd like to replicate it on my Gamlin 22S.

I know it's not show-accurate, but it seems like something that would be easy to do (small size, low number of pieces, low complexity), and what Macross 30 did with them is already taking some creative license in the first place, so it's easy to justify

[cypherxv]

Hello I'm new to these forums. Like all here I'm a macross fan. I was wondering if anyone here can make macross plus and forntier models in 1/285 in all three modes? With the new robotech game from PB, I figure I'll I'd rather play macross than robo.