plasticjunkie
Hi Steve
I think I ordered my deck weapons from someone else at Shapeways but I was VERY impressed with the level of detail. These 3D printed items blows away pe, resin and metal ones.
Thanks so much!
Yes, 3D-printing has come a long way in a very short time! The 3D printing machines used by Shapeways are not your $200 garage or high school printers extruding nylon, they are state-of-the-art machines that cost a whopping $70,000-90,000 USD, printing in very high-quality acrylic plastic called "Frosted Detail". They can print in layers just 16 microns thick, that's 16 millionths of a meter, for exceptional detail.
Be advised that acrylic plastic does not behave like injection molded polystyrene so it takes a little getting used to. Testors liquid cement won't work on it (use CA instead) and putting your new 3D-printed parts in the sun for a few hours to make sure all the resin has completely hardened is a must, especially if you prefer to use enamel paints rather than acrylic paints. Any microscopic bits of liquid acrylic resin remaining in the plastic will react with the enamel paint and keep the paint from hardening. Sunlight exposure prior to painting is the cure. Unlike polystyrene, direct sunlight is actually good for 3D-printed acrylic plastic.
Surfaces are generally rougher than injection molded polystyrene, but often the roughness disappears under a coat of paint. If you find the surfaces to be too rough, don't sand it, use an "air eraser" instead which can smooth acrylic surfaces without harming detail. They look and work like an airbrush but are much cheaper: models by Harbor Freight run about $30 USD and models by Paasche are very popular, too. Instead of emitting paint, an "air eraser" emits a grit. Use common household baking soda as the grit. It's cheap, non-toxic, and plentiful. It's probably already in your kitchen. You'll need a compressor capable of about 50psi but the results are excellent.
There are several excellent designers on Shapeways offering products for modelers, I'm just one. My focus is US Navy and Deutsche Kriegsmarine with a smattering of Royal Navy designs. For Royal Navy fans, be sure to check out another shop on Shapeways called "Micro Master". The designer, a Brit living in New Zealand, does some superb work, very carefully researched for the best accuracy possible. Some designers produce amazing figures in many scales to populate your ships.
Most designers who have shops on Shapeways are not Shapeways employees at all, just folks all over the world with some CAD skills and a desire to produce the most accurate designs based on the best available authoritative references.
Many modelers have provided invaluable assistance in creating Model Monkey designs, including scans of original builder's blueprints obtained from the National Archives. These subject matter experts offer advice during the design process because they are modelers, too, and want the product to be just right. They simply care.
One of the benefits of 3D-printing is that if new, authoritative references are discovered, designs can be improved without the need for cutting steel molds.
There are now more than 1500 Model Monkey designs and many new designs will be coming this year. New designs are released weekly.
Some products can be printed in real metal like silver, bronze, brass and even come plated in real 14k or 18k gold or rhodium (a very white-silver-looking metal). I offer ready-to-print nameplates for over 300 ships in these metals. They include a decorative nautical rope border, very classy. Requests for custom names are gladly accepted. There are some size limitations when it comes to metals and the number of characters is limited, too, but the same nameplates can also be printed in inexpensive acrylic in much larger sizes with many more characters. They can be offered in your favorite font, in Cyrillic letters or Greek letters, too.
Thanks again for the kind words!
Happy modeling!
-Steve