JC_4130 wrote:
harristotle wrote:
There are certainly design aspects to keep in mind depending on how you end up printing. The fine detail at shapeways is a different style printer than the resin printers.
Can you elaborate on this? I think I am going to take PetrOs up on his offer to print in resin, are there any fundamental issues I should be concerned with? My only experience so far is with Shapeways Fine Detail acrylic. I know the resin printers use posts for rafting rather than wax. My current plan is to try and print the hull and the flying deck (hurricane deck) as 1 piece, since I have strength concerns about doing them separately. Would this be problematic in resin?
For my last project, I did violate some Shapeways guidelines, which they let you waive as long as you forfeit your right to a refund if the part shows up damaged. Obviously you can't do that if you are selling through their marketplace, but so far I am just doing personal projects with no plan of commercial sale.
So looking at your design, I don't think you'll have any issue printing it as 1 piece. Without seeing your file in the slicer software it looks like it actually lends itself quite well to a resin printer.
An example of where it can be problematic with resin vs shapeways is ships superstructures. A lot of designers on shapeways have these 1/1200 ships posted that are all 1 piece, that wouldn't print on a resin printer. I just finished designing and printing the Pennsylvania in 1/1200 and I printed each deck of the superstructure as individual decks. It was a pain to cut free and clean each deck, but besides allowing me to detail more in depth, it also alleviated the issue of unsupported areas that will cause a failure. This isn't as big of an issue in the bigger scales as you can add supports on the model itself, but at our tiny scales you can ruin the model trying to cut some of those supports free.
The one issue I've had with resin over shapeways from a quality standpoint is my designs that have holes designed to receive brass wires are never quite big enough as I designed them, but I think light bleed at each layer is the driver of this and just something you have to live with at this scale. I've thought about trying a black resin instead of the usual grey to reduce the light bleed somewhat, but that's TBD.
If you're on facebook send me a PM and I'll send you the link for 2 different model ship groups that may be of interest to you.