So I bought and built a 3D printer - (a Reprap Huxley), which means I can now do cool stuff like this!

These models are around 13cm long, and have been amazingly painted by a friend of mine who's an expert miniature painter. (Check out his site for more pics of the Fenris and Aeolus - there's some superb stuff on there)

So I was just wondering if anyone would be interested in getting some printed & painted FS miniatures?
Though it would vary with the desired size and complexity of the ship, the basic cost would be about AUD $36 for a similarly sized model, + AUD $15 for a basic-colours-only sort of paint job up to AUD $30ish for the kind of detail seen on the Fenris + postage.

PM me or post here if you're interested.

That is so awesome! How much did that printer cost?

$550 AUD - and that was on special! :S
Still, it's 2 digits smaller than the entry level industry printers.

Hell yeah! Now there's a way to showcase your work! Kudos to the painter, too - the paintjob is really well done.

Just wondering, what's the biggest size that can be printed in one piece?

The printable volume is 14x14x10cm, but since you can print in any orientation, the maximum size is a bit bigger than 14cm if you print diagonally (assuming your model fits nicely in that orientation!)

You can always split stuff up and print it separately - then glue or bolt it back together.

That's awesome! I'm not much of a freespace fan, but still... That looks awesome!

Wow, are 3D printers really coming down that far in price now? It might not be so unreasonable after all for them to start becoming commonplace. What's the per-model cost like?

Any plan for non-FS ships in the future?

I recently read about 3D printers after watching a show about it. Kind of like a replicator, can make things extremely customized at low cost and fairly quickly with minimal waste. Someday they might print buildings and new hearts. I wonder what material you buy for one though and how that works (you buy a powder maybe). I only heard about 3D printers from an educational show and reading online; never from any individual, so they must be rare. I read though that they are used for making prototypes in this day and age.

They are fed either solid bricks of material or perhaps a powder/liquid depending on the type. My college has a 36" cube one which melts bricks of 2 types of plastics. The whitish plastic is the product, and there is a blackish plastic that dissolves in a special solution which is used as a sort of on-demand mold. There is an entire class about SolidWorks and this machine. I've never seen it in action but I've seen what they make with it, it's pretty cool and the running costs are a lot less than what you might think.

Hunter wrote:Any plan for non-FS ships in the future?

Yeah sure - all I need is a model file, a desired size, and a textured reference pic for the painter if you want it painted.

Matthew wrote:They are fed either solid bricks of material or perhaps a powder/liquid depending on the type. My college has a 36" cube one which melts bricks of 2 types of plastics. The whitish plastic is the product, and there is a blackish plastic that dissolves in a special solution which is used as a sort of on-demand mold. There is an entire class about SolidWorks and this machine. I've never seen it in action but I've seen what they make with it, it's pretty cool and the running costs are a lot less than what you might think.

This printer actually does it differently - it has a big spool of plastic (ABS) filiament, which it pushes through a hot end that melts it into a very fine noodle. This hot end is attached to the movable print head which can move around in the 3D space above the print bed, so as it moves and extrudes, it lays down a layer of plastic, then moves up to do the next layer - repeat till finished. The powder based printers have a much finer detail than the extruders, though that comes at higher costs and other problems like draining the powder, cleaning models and recycling powder, as well as reduced model strength (the continuous noodles of plastic in extruder printers is much stronger than the sintering process makes - I've been making engineering components out of it, and the strength is very impressive! )

Vasudan Admiral wrote: Yeah sure - all I need is a model file, a desired size, and a textured reference pic for the painter if you want it painted.

Don't tempt me.

Ah yes that's right. I remembered my Prof. showed us the raw material, but I couldn't remember if it was a block or not. Yes, I believe ours is a spool-fed as well. What is the advantage of a 2-material printer like I described vs yours?

What kind of time does it take to print a full-size model with it? Does it need to wait long for each bead to cool between passes?

Well there's a huge variety of printers, and what you're describing sounds like it has one material to make the object, and a soluble material to make the support structures. The support structures come in handy when you need to print things with overhangs - they allow the material to be laid onto a lattice of support material rather than into thin air (which makes plastic spaghetti ). The advantage of soluble material is that when your print is finished you can soak the support material off rather than snap it off as you need to on mine. This would lead to nicer underside-surfaces on your objects.

If you start with a block of material and remove stuff, you've got a CNC milling machine, which is different to 3D printing, and has its own advantages and limitations. (Ie, milled stuff made of steel etc. is far stronger than anything 3d printing could produce)

Maybe you mean 'milled stuff made of steel etc. is far stronger than what 3D printing could produce for now'.

Yes, they use it for support structures, etc. One of the examples my Prof likes to show off is 3 concentric lattice spheres, and a fully functional mini-wrench, both of which were formed in one piece, no assembly required. Which in an of itself can save companies thousands.

I agree with Gary, I'm sure there will come a point where we can make 3D-printed objects with similar strengths to steel. I believe there are already 3D printers that beat steel on a strength/weight ratio which are starting to be used for weight-sensitive applications like airplanes. It's a lot cheaper to form a complex 3D structure that provides optimal weight usage using a 3D printer than with traditional casting or CNC methods.