d12dozr
Good idea about asking for a sample print.
I'm fairly confident about the Form1 printer when it comes to quality of prints and the machine itself. The founders and developers are all MIT guys, so I would think it's a company with real knowledge and commitment behind it. They have also provided numerous extremely complex sample model prints online that all look excellent, which is not the case for many printer makers. I also noticed that after Form1 released sample prints of the Eiffel tower, many other newer printer manufacturers have used this as their sample (for what that's worth).

oli
Yes I plan to sell parts, BUT I am quite experienced in making silicone molds and resin casting, which is very inexpensive. I still need 3D prints to make the molds, but I only need a single good print and from there I can make multiple resin casts. But I also want to make lots of new stuff too, so a printer would be nice and so much quicker than waiting for prototypes, making changes, waiting for the next batch of parts etc.

I've been waiting to do a final print on a robot/mecha 3D print project for awhile now because I'm still debating whether to use a printing service or wait and save to buy my own printer. I've already done some prototype prints in cheaper materials just to make sure everything works correctly, but I've only printed two parts in high resolution because the whole thing is going to cost roughly $1000 on top of what I've already spent (probably around $500). $1000 would be a substantial down payment on my own printer and it's so easy to blow through hundreds of dollars using a printing service just for prototype prints.

I guess I'm not in any huge hurry to get thing thing out, but it sucks waiting to save money when a project is basically done. Any thoughts?

There was a imaterialise SU plugin that was offered a couple of years ago, but I never tried it and I haven't seen anything about it since.

Nice! Great plugin.

The only other explanations I can think of is if they automatically up-charge with a higher polygon or edge count, perhaps assuming that the more complex a model is, the more possibility that it will require more time and/or labor to load it, clean it, etc.

It could also be that certain shapes require a certain printer over another, which they have a different price structure for their machines?

Just so people have an idea of what the difference looks like when speaking of layer resolution, here are a couple of examples.

Layer resolution of 200 microns, or .2mm
This is the current minimum layer resolution of the Makerbot mini and older FDM printers.

Layer resolution of 100 microns, or .1mm
Keep in mind that this picture example is not as magnified as most of the other pictures, so it might look smoother than some of the other examples.
Many FDM printers have this resolution including the higher end Makerbot models.

Layer resolution of 50 microns, or .05mm
This is the minimum resolution of many older SLA printers and newer FDM printers.

Layer resolution of 25 microns, or .025mm
This is the minimum resolution of the Form1 and many SLA printers (usually between 25-40 micron minimum). Some of the newer FDM printers such as the Cel-Robox have also announced such resolution capability by controlling the resin flow by valves instead of merely controlling the feed rate of the filament as it passes through the nozzle, hence getting a more refined stream.

I'm also continually surprised by Makerbots crappy specs. The layer resolution on this Mini is 200 microns! That stinks. I also don't think any of their machines are self leveling. Ugh.

I'm surprised at how many FDM printers are doing the same thing as everybody else without anything new or innovative, but I guess this at least helps push the industry forward with competitive pricing.

It's great to see so many players getting into stereolithography. I'm interested to see the rap sheet on the Autodesk printer.
Hopefully we will continue to see prices come down. I would love to see a good SLA printer for around $1500.

@olishea said:

I used meshlab not mesh mixer to create those (with immense difficulty!)....but i was just wondering what you thought of mesh mixer. I saw some videos and was blown away, especially the hollowing out a shell feature.

@unknownuser said:

Oli, for the CNC'd parts, did you optimize the model for the process? ...or did you just get a quote for the same model that you used for 3D printing? I'm guessing the cost may be significantly less if you can save them repositioning time.

No I just sent them the stl file.

How do I go about this? Any links?

There are CNC service sites (like Ponoko) that give details on how to optimize. Sorry I don't have links off hand, but do a search and I'm sure you will get a lot of results.

I'm stretching my memory here, but I know that some programs like Maya require modeling in quads (for clean results) BUT then when rendering it triangulates everything as the finished product, which leads me to think that triangulation is usually the case(?).

Maybe Autodesk 123D or Blender? Both are free and might be worth a shot. The 123D interface is similar to Autocad, which is old school and archaic and sucks in my opinion. But I'm just wondering if other programs have exporters that even though they export to the same file types still might keep things in quads once exported?

@olishea said:

Thanks for the reply....but did you see my edit?

I got it working by using a "Export to STL mm" plugin. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

When uploading I just specify mm and it works fine. I double checked the volume with my sketchup model and it's exactly the same. I have sent off for some CNC quotes too and the STL file I used was fine, preview looks good and the volume was the same. Just a shame CNC is crazy expensive!

Oops, I didn't notice the edit.
For cnc try getting a quote from http://www.ponoko.com
They used to have good pricing, though I haven't worked with them for a couple of years.

@olishea said:

Sending off a model to i.materialise today. Let's see how it works out! I was up literally all night, when I sleep I'll be dreaming in quads!

Quick question. For price comparison I'm also sending model to shapeways. It has to be in STL format and I'm using meshlab to export. So I'm exporting as Collada, importing into meshlab and exporting STL.

Problem is, my model is coming out tiny, significantly smaller than it should be. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[edit] found a STL plugin which works fine, still can't think why the other method didn't though, even though I specified model units.

When you upload the file on their site are you specifying metric or SAE? And then what units... good chance this is the problem.

@olishea said:

Sending off a model to i.materialise today. Let's see how it works out! I was up literally all night, when I sleep I'll be dreaming in quads!

Quick question. For price comparison I'm also sending model to shapeways. It has to be in STL format and I'm using meshlab to export. So I'm exporting as Collada, importing into meshlab and exporting STL.

Problem is, my model is coming out tiny, significantly smaller than it should be. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[edit] found a STL plugin which works fine, still can't think why the other method didn't though, even though I specified model units.

You might want to try using Netfabb if you run into "strange" problems. I've often found that the older a file is in SU and the more I import objects into the model, the more probability of inconsistencies, which Netfabb Basic (free download) can fix. The interface is a little odd to get used to, but the results I've received from printing have been excellent.

@solo said:

What I really want to know is the price if you have your own machine, I'm contemplating buying one, but do not know which one or what material yet.

If you are serious about buying your own machine these are the only two I've seen so far that have a reasonable price and professional level high resolution:

Form1
http://www.formlabs.com
(around $3000 USD) stereolithography "SLA"
300 micron feature size
25 micron layer thickness

Robox
http://robox.cel-uk.com/
(around $1400 or 849 Lire) Fused Deposition Modelling "FDM"
unspecified minimum feature size
20 Micron layer thickness

I suspect that the Form1 is probably the more precise and professional of the two as can be seen in their model examples, but where the Robox is filament fed it's probably much simpler and therefore easier to tinker with if necessary. Other printers I've seen haven't impressed me much, as far as the level of resolution, and that they don't have the specific features of valve control, self leveling, and/or good software.

Just a little info update:
I've made a couple of small changes on this in the wing design but the bulk of my time has been going toward writing and drawing a comic book that uses this design as a central character. Going from 3D to 2D is quite a brain bender and I'm not a super fast drawer, but it's slowly coming along.

I just bought a used Spirograph for my daughter for Christmas last year. Great toy.

This would awesome if you 3D printed it in a small size and maybe called it "an indoor/outdoor wall ornament". Just screw it to a wall or a post and ta-da very cool decorative ornament. Just an idea...

Great! Really handy.

It has been a few days since I contacted SU about the problem, so it's possible that they made some adjustment within that time, but for whatever reason it was still necessary for me to get rid of those extraneous files (or to just reboot before re-installing) because whenever I tried to remove and reinstall the program it would still have the same issues.

@tig said:

%(#FF0040)[I have also discovered a weirdness with SketchUp v2014 generally...
My alternative "TIG's" user-name with a ' seems to prevent SketchUp loading any of its RB files from that user's Plugins folder. I can manually load them by using the whole file path and escaping the TIG's if the enclosing quotes are '... Then the PluginStore will work... I have reported this to the powers-that-be at Trimble...]

*Please try typing this in the Ruby Console + <enter>:

$:

I think you'll find that SketchUp has failed to insert your ../Eric's.../Plugins folder into the list.
Presumably because of the ' in the user-name is tripping it up.
This means that although:

Sketchup.find_support_file('Plugins')

returns the proper folder-path, when Sketchup tries to ' load' the individual RB files in that folder it will fail, because it uses just the name.rb and NOT the full file-path to it, and since the $: doesn't include the folder-path part it just fails to load everything - Doh!*

This certainly makes sense as that is exactly the scenario that was happening.
But shouldn't my last SU installation and warehouse downloads not work correctly again? Or was this problem something caused by the Plugin Store file(s)?
Currently it seems to be working fine, but I haven't tried any downloads from the PluginStore as of yet.