The Ship Model Forum

@ wefalck: Classic Airships is e.g. not a supplier, but a designer. He offers his design on Shapeways, which is a 3D printing company. Shapeways prints and sells the models, but they do not design them. Many designers offer their designs in a lot of different scales, so a would doubt that they print all these models in all these scales and then perhaps even in different qualities for themselves. As far as I understand it, they would have to pay themselves for getting a 3D printed copy.

@ drasticplastic: I hope that reigel's photos made clear that the chosen quality for printing his highly relevant.

Thanks for the pics.

FYI for those who are interested - Photos of the 1/700 WW1 U-boat from Classic Airships are below. It has been shot with a thin coat of Mr Surfacer 1500 Black primer to protect against oxidation, but otherwise no cleanup done.

What you say means that people sell things they haven't actually seen themselves !?

Yes, I understand the issue with the printing options, but before buying something for sometimes not quite so small amounts of money, it would be good to be able to see the products. It is not only about the printing quality per se, but how the computer modelling translates into the finished product.

Anyway, I didn't want to pick on this particular supplier, but a potentially interesting kit brought this question to the surface.

Several designers show also printed parts - but there are two points:
1.) the quality depends obviously on the printing quality. If someone buys the cheap quality instead of the more expensive one - and apparently there is a significant number of people doing that because otherwise this option would be not available - this would require photos of several printing qualities. Classic Airships e.g. does not even offer a cheap quality for the UBIII class submarine, but only two more expensive ones.
2.) these would cause significant costs for the designers to buy also all the parts themselves. A lot of them design models in their spare time on request of other people and would be rather unfair to ask them to buy them also always themselves to be able to show it.

As I had written before: e.g. this forums offers plenty of information about the different printing qualities (i.e. the abilities of the printing company). The quality of the design - i.e. the main responsibility of the designer - can be seen on the computer renderings.

There are a lot of different designers on Shapeways with very different abilities. And there are different printing qualities. And it is rather unfair to judge all of them - e.g. here Classic Airships - based on designs from other people printed in an unsuitable, cheap quality ("white natural versatile plastic").

Classic Airships makes nice designs and I can only recommend his models.

wefalck wrote:What I found somewhat irritating on most such offers (Shapeway et al.) is that they never seem to show an actually printed model, but only the computer rendering. I know, they may be difficult to photograph, when printed in translucent acrylic resin, but one would like to see what one really gets ...

That's also been one of my pet peeves - I've been disappointed more than once by Shapeways. A pic of a primed model would clearly show any objectionable surface artifacts.

I have purchased several of Classic Airship�s models including 700 scale balloons, airships and their 700 scale submarine. All have been excellent and among the best products I have purchased from Shapeways. Surface texture has been excellent. I have not seen the 350 u-boat in person however based on my experience I would unhesitatingly recommend Classic Airships.

What I found somewhat irritating on most such offers (Shapeway et al.) is that they never seem to show an actually printed model, but only the computer rendering. I know, they may be difficult to photograph, when printed in translucent acrylic resin, but one would like to see what one really gets ...

Finally a reasonably-priced WWl U-boat in 1/350! Thank-you!


Now we need a PE detail set!

Printed in Fine Detail Plastic, this WW1 Type UBIII submarine is now in my CLASSIC AIRSHIPS shapeways shop.




Happy modeling!

Derek