Shapeways is good, but is there anything better?

I was wondering if anyone has tried to do 3 D printing using other companies? I know Shapeways is OK but the surface is still kind of rough. I found a company that does MICRO printing, and they are quite a bit more expensive than Shapeways. These guys look like they could print figures, with faces and all. Check out Fine Line Prototyping.

Kelly,
I've been investigating 3D printing quite a bit of late. The cost of printing really depends on the degree of detail Just as a draft print finishes faster (and cheaper)than a photo quality print on your ink printer, the same is true with 3D. Also, the likelihood of a misprint increases with detail. I would not be surprised if your micro printing were 5x the cost of Shapeways.
I've working on a test pattern, something of the sophistication of the TBS buildings to see what can be done and at what cost.

Mark

I've been reviewing the 3D printer options from this year's CES. The big push there is for home desktop units. In 2014 we can expect to see:

- An under $1000 printer with 75 micron resolution

- A printer that will print in ceramic material

- Multi-color (>2) printers

- A printer that will print in sugar and chocolate...micro mouse candies???

The field reminds me of the situation with laser printers in the 90s: big, expensive corporate printers being replaced by low cost desktops.

Mark

I remember Jon who had some really nice Heavy equipment and used Shapeways but had problems with them when printing out the boom for his Ohio Crane and had found another 3D printer which he said it would maybe double the price but the product come out with better detail! and showed the difference in one of his post I had bought a lot of his forestry Equipment and they where all highly detailed and where made at Shapeways. but he has left since he changed and haven't heard from him! so their are others out there but just need to fine with the right price. Most building of large size is going to cost more because of Volume of product!

Hi Kelly,

Actually the FUD process ( Multijet Modeling process) is probably one the best printing processes out there for Z scale modeling right now from a detail and quality standpoint. The problem is Shapeways does an absolutely horrible job executing it. Plus they have been changing their CAD model build rules a lot in the last year which has caused me all kinds of problems that are just to long to get into... But one of the biggest problems with how Shapeways uses Multijet Modeling process is model orientation or lack there of.

The best surfaces on pretty much any 3D printing process including stereo lithography are the flat surfaces facing up and down on the printing bed so you don't get the build marks you see that look like CNC step over tool marks. Curved surfaces are always going to have these build marks but they will show up a lot less if these surfaces are on the side of your part build (on the printing table) with the curve going from side to side (not up and down). So the trick is to orient your model accordingly on the printer bed to get the best part. So whats a good way to print say a box car? on its side if you want the sides to look the best and you want to do it all in one piece. But the best way to build and print a box car in 3D printing is to break up the box car into 4 separate sides and a separate roof and then print them all flat on the printing bed. You will have to assemble the box car but all four sides and the roof will have the cleanest and best quality surfaces you can get from 3D printing. So where Shapeways drops the ball is that you don't get to choose the orientation of how the model is printed out. You could get lucky and they print it out with your design intent but 9 out of 10 times that's not what happens. Its literally a roll of the dice if you get what you want...

But in all fairness, there's a reason Shapeways does it this way, to save money. They have to squeeze as many jobs on the printing table at one time in order to keep the price so cheap. Think if it like a game of Tetris, models are fit on the bed any which way that allows the most models to fill up the build table... But the problem is, they dont even come close to using the Multijet Modeling process to its fullest potential since you cant dictate part orientation when its being printed. It really is almost a waste of a really good 3D printing machine. They also do a really, really, really horrible job cleaning the parts off of support material. Basically I consider Shapeways to be the Wal-Mart of 3D printing. That's not a bad thing but you basically get what you pay for and customer service is really not so good unless you like only customer service via email...

As Walt mentioned, I did find a really good vender that does Multijet Modeling process and uses FUD. They are called Moddler. www.moddler.com/index.php They actually can print out very small parts (.3 mm DIA rods for example)that Shapeways cant. The parts don't show up all warped to hell. They do an excellent job cleaning the parts. You still need to do some cleaning but you dont get a bag of nasty oily goop with your parts like with Shapeways. But most importantly, you dictate the exact orientation of the part when its printed. As you know, the support material leaves a scaring effect on the plastic where ever it touches it and it requires a lot of finish work if you don't want a crappy textured surface.... Again, with good design intent, you can design your part to minimize this surface scaring on your A surfaces and keep the scaring to areas that you will not see on the model. The other great thing about these folks is that you can actually talk to them on the phone if you have a lot of technical questions with your order. basically these guys are a real job shop and not Wal-Mart... And the turnaround time is always less then 10 days and usually less then a week. But you do have to pay for the service, its not cheap like Shapeways.

Looking back at what I told Walt, the cost is more like 3 to 4 times the cost of Shapeways... I'd say if your doing simple stuff with not a lot of detail that's easy to do a lot of finish work on, Shapeways is your best bet. But if your doing something with a lot of detail that would be very difficult to clean up or has a lot of fine detail that's to small for Shapeways, these guys are definitely worth the money. But as I said, they are a job shop. So no stores to buy or sell your wares on. You have to supply the CAD geometry for them to build your parts.

That all being said, I still think CNC machining will still produce the best quality parts when it comes to rapid prototyping. I've worked with machinists that can create organic shaped parts out of acrylic on a CNC milling machine that come off the CNC bed crystal clear like glass with zero finishing work. But CNC programing, setup and run time is very expensive unless you have your own machine.

Mark,

I forgot to add, there are some good home machines out now and even some you can build yourself. But get ready to do a lot of finishing work on your parts because the surface quality is not so great.... You wont even get close to part finish off the machine like on Multijet Modeling process or stereo lithography.... And contrary to all the media hype, its going to be a very long time before an affordable home machine can produce parts that look like they where injection molded plastic (smooth all over with a shiny surface). Its a long way off before 3D printers put China out of business of producing all the plastic crap you buy at Wal-Mart today....