Hi Miguel,
Thanks for your patronage!
Gray resin is a newer technology than that used by Shapeways so products printed from the same design do look different. The
Hood funnel models 3D-printed in gray resin you see in the post above are created from the same basic CAD file offered previously from Shapeways. Yes, IMO, gray resin does look better, and better captures the detail included in the CAD design. Compare the surface rivet detailing of the 3D-printed gray resin funnels in the posts above to this photo of one of
Hood's real funnels:
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All those rivets make for a very large CAD file, larger than what Shapeways can accept (the file can't be bigger than 65 MB). Because of this, my
Hood funnels sold by Shapeways were offered separately, and the Shapeways' funnels were broken into upper and lower sections. Modelers buying from Shapeways had to buy each section by itself from Shapeways, then assemble the funnels.
Gray resin products are not available from Shapeways. All of the gray resin models I offer are printed by me, not Shapeways. Because the gray resin printer I have has no CAD file size limitation,
I can print the funnels fully assembled as a pair.
Just recently, I made a slight change to the
Hood funnels' CAD file uploaded to Shapeways. The
Hood funnels of my design sold by Shapeways in all available scales are now fully assembled, too, but each funnel is still offered separately by Shapeways due to Shapeways' CAD file size limitation.
In my opinion, gray resin is a superior material to Shapeways white acrylic "fine detail" plastic for the following reasons:
- Gray resin surfaces are smoother. Gray resin does not use any waxy support material during printing. With gray resin, there is no waxy material for the modeler to have to clean up. Shapeways' white acrylic "fine detail" plastic uses waxy material to support overhanging features during printing. When the waxy support material comes into contact with the resin during printing at Shapeways, the waxy material is hot and deforms slightly. This means that there will be a rougher surface texture any place on the model where the waxy support material comes into contact with the acrylic resin.
Instead of waxy support material, gray resin uses physical structural "sprues" to support overhanging features during printing, normally at the bottom, rising upwards from a 3D-printed "tray". The sprues also provide strength during shipping. The sprues and tray can be cut away with a common cuticle clipper.
- Gray resin does not use any mold release agent like that needed to cast resin products. Thus, there is no mold release agent to clean up.
- Gray resin has no casting block that must be cut or sanded away by the modeler.- Gray resin print lines are finer. Gray resin surfaces do have print lines, a natural characteristic of any current 3D-printing technology. If you look very closely at the
Hood funnel photos, you can see some running vertically between the rivets. But the gray resin print lines are far less noticeable, and generally disappear under a coat of paint.
- Gray resin accepts enamel paints, including Colourcoats, as well as acrylic paints such as Tamiya, Model Master and Vallejo. Alclad2 paints work well with gray resin and so do Molotow paint markers often used by modelers to paint fine details.
- Gray resin costs less. For smaller items, the cost difference is pretty small. But for larger items like the 1/350 scale
Hood funnels or a set of 1/350 scale turrets, it is significant.
Gray resin is by no mean perfect. There are still some characteristics, like print lines, that will be overcome as the technology continues to mature:
- Gray resin 3D-printing is still a very slow process. A pair of gray resin 1/350 scale
Hood funnels takes about 7 hours to print. But as you can see from the photos, they are worth the wait.
- Sprues don't work with some designs. Some models, like cage masts, have a geometry that just doesn't work with sprues. The mast would be destroyed while trying to cut away the sprues.
- The gray resin printer is smaller than the printer used by Shapeways' to create models in white acrylic "fine detail" plastic. That means that some models I offer through Shapeways are just too big to be printed in gray resin. This includes some 1/350 scale superstructures and 1/72 scale Balao class submarine fairwaters.
- Even though gray resin is less expensive, very large models, like 1/96 scale
Arizona fighting tops, can still be comparatively expensive because of the amount of resin required and the extraordinary time required to print them.
Hope this helps!