First up, someone (I don't name names) online was looking for some O scale automotive transmissions, needing a dozen or more. I can't imagine where one would find those, but thought it sounded like a reasonable item to try to 3d print. He sent me a picture of what he was looking for, and I found a few more online.
Drawing one was relatively simple.
I uploaded the drawing to shapeways, and they come out at about $6.00 a piece in their Frosted Detail material. They would be nice, but over $70.00 for a dozen of them seems a might stiff.
Really just to get an idea for as to the size, I printed one on my Afinia.
Not bad, for such a small part, you should be able to click on the picture and get an extreme close up, but you know, for scenery, this might work. And heck, they would only be $1.00 each. I told the gentleman that I would send him one as a sample, to see if he thought they were acceptable, then, upon further review, I just printed out a handful and will send them too him. If the work for him, I will send him an invoice, if not, oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
An interesting side note. Check out the subtle but, in my opinion, obvious difference in the quality of the one on the left versus the one on the right. (Yes, these are primed, if not they are very hard to photograph, and it is hard to make out the details.) The one the left was printed as a batch of 20 at a time. The one on the right was printed by itself. The difference in quality is due to the heat used in the process. When printing 20 at a time, each layer has time to cool before the next layer is added, and it made for a much nice part. A good thing to remember.
I threw some A&I on a few to highlight the good and the bad. I would think they might work for scenery, but that will be up to the person who requested them.
Number two, same scenario, someone asking where they can get something, in this case, theater seats, a bunch of them. I thought this would be relatively easy...but the best of well laid plans. I don't even want to think about how much time I have in getting something I think is acceptable.
Here is the first attempt, the seats had holes in them, and there are other issues to numerous to mention...sorry about the bad picture.
To simplify matters for the blog, I just lined up all the attempts in a row, and did a video of them. Jason, this is for you, since you asked about all my failures at the clinic I did at the MoPac/Frisco convention.
Note that some have been primed and some have had A&I applied to make them photograph easier. The last one, is the one I deemed as acceptable.
Also, below are some individual shots of failed attempts.
Mostly, I was having trouble with the under side of the seats, but on a couple, I had trouble with the seats sticking to the print platform because the surface between the two was so small.
In the end, I painted up the one good one I printed, and will probably send it to the person looking for seats to see if they will work for them. I made the drawing modular, so changing the row from four seats to ten would take less than a minute.
I also uploaded this file to shapeways, and in their Frosted Detail, this set would run over $7.00. Using FD, I could actually thin this out, and eliminate the support underneath, and probably save a couple dollars, but still, they would be over a dollar a seat. I can do these for 50 cents a seat. That is unpainted, but then so it stuff from shapeways.com. So we will see what works.
Until next time.
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