New materials at Shapeways

Last week saw the long awaited advent of new 3D printing materials at Shapeways.

The materials are called Frosted Detail and Frosted Ultra Detail. Frosted detail boasts 0.1mm clearance for moving parts and 0.5mm minimum wall thickness. And Frosted Ultra Detail promises a very impressive 0.05mm clearance and 0.3mm wall thickness.

My first model for the Frosted Detail has been ordered! It's a little WIP Tesla Defense Tower for 1/1200th scale Victorian Science Fiction tabletop wargaming, and designed in a similar style to Spartan Games Dystopian wars models. The model linked to above has several parts sprued together, for easier painting prior to assembly.

The completed model will look like the model shown here . I've ordered two, one in Shapeways regular White Detail and the other in Frosted Detail for a side by side comparison.
Squid!

Another model in the same order, in Frosted Ultra, is a Small Kraken, this one is my Kraken, scaled down to half the size.

All being well, the models should arrive by the end of next week (May 6th).






More squid!

Frosted detail and Frosted Ultra Detail are both transluscent/transparent, and the support material is a white coloured wax. A while back, I created a model using the Kraken above, scaled down to 18mm and place inside a solid block. I called this Kraken in Crystal... so I took the same model and scaled it down even further Kraken in Crystal - small.











Funky stuff

The model pictured to the right is my 3 Strand Mobius - I've also taken this model, scaled it down and placed it inside a solid block - if all goes well the block can be polished to reveal the mobius spiral inside formed of the wax support material. The model can be found via this link Mobius in Pendant.

Little stuff.

And so to the next model, Euro 4 in 1 micro maille sampler - this is incredibly small, really, really small. The rings have an inside diameter of just 1.51mm (that's right 1.51mm!), and 196 rings make up a patch 34.26 x 9.98mm (as printed). Will it work or not? The rings might fuse together... the model has gone into production already, and should be delivered by about the 12th May.

And now the finale...

A 3x3x3 Twisty Puzzle

The current world record for the smallest working Rubik's Cube stands at 10mm... with this little beastie, I'm aiming at 6.2mm! Each side of the cube comprises of 9 2mm squares with 0.1mm spacing. The mechanism design is more-or-less the same as the original patented Rubik's Cube, so even if the cube is printable, I won't be able to offer it for sale.

Twin Rail Mobius - Reloaded

If you've seen my profile avatar, you might be wondering what it is.

I call it Twin Rail Mobius Pendant. The pendant is one of my designs that Shapeways 3d printed in stainless steel.

So why 'Twin Rail' and why 'reloaded'?

There's two rails with a mobius twist that form a circle. Three sets of these rails are stacked up and joined by a half-pipe. Reloaded is because this is an updated model that includes a ring on the back for a necklace.

The pendant is designed to take upto 31 6mm balls.

Here's a side shot.

Here's a video on YouTube showing how the balls move.

And another picture - this is how the pedant is supplied from shapeways.

You can buy one for yourself from my my Shapeways shop, included with the pendant is the rubber necklace with a bayonet clasp. Odering is handled by Shapeways and delivery takes upto 20 working days. The balls are not included, but you can add 6mm ball very easily, they just pop inbetween the rails. The price for the pendant is $43.30 and includes UPS delivery (local taxes may also be added depending upon the delivery destination)

More 3d printed chain maille!

Firstly I made a half persian 4 in 1 chain using 2mm anodised aluminium wire, coiled and cut with aviation snips. The rings turned out to be about 10mm ID giving an aspect ratio of 5. Getting the weave right was fairly straight forward. Once I got my head around how the chain was formed, I set about trying to recreate it as a 3d model suitable for 3d printing, this took maybe upwards of 20 hours over 8 days adjusting wire size, aspect ratio and the angles of the rings... but finally... it worked!

3D printed Half Persian 4 in 1 chain alongside coloured anodised aluminium.






The spacing between the rings of the 3d print works out at about 0.4mm (1.8mm wire and 9.9mm ID, AR5.5) whilst this may seem small, I scaled the chain down to 55%, 1mm wire and gaps around 0.22mm just to see if the rings would fuse during printing... they didn't :)

The Half Persian 4 in 1 chain maille sampler is available from my Shapeways shop.