3D Printing

[brent]

will pepakura files work for 3d printing

 

[rundown]

no they will look blocky and you would still have to clean it up like a pepakura model with bondo or diffrent stuff.

What you need is a solid model that is of a high enough quality.



You could clean up the 3d model with some 3d knowledge. Then it would be ok.

 

[Sniperbaas]

Actually, yes they will. I'll repost my pics of it... The problem (as rundown said) is that you need a rather precise STL machine to do it right. (Or a simplified model) Also, another problem involved is cost. Even if you try to honeycomb the model, it will still be rather expensive due to the cost of abs plastic. (at least it was for me...) So if you're making bobbleheads or keychains, it's a legitimate strategy... otherwise it may be might get extremely expensive... quite quickly... I can convert any models you want, but I can't convert them into a format where you can change the thickness of the model. (Thereby making them less expensive.) I'll post the pics of a slice of chevysrule's Jun helm, a slice of my jun helm, and a warthog in my gallery later tonight.





Cheers!



Edit: No disrespect meant towards you Rundown. I just have had a bit of personal experience here.

 

[Hugh Holder]

will pepakura files work for 3d printing

He's right it will be very faceted and blocky. You'll have to do just as much cleanup. I suggest that you have very good high res modeling skills or know someone that does. You'll also want to learn autoCAD and how different 3d packages use different scaling factors.



You will also need a LOT of $$$



Basic materials for the cheapest 3d printers will run you about $4 per cubic inch. So, you'll be spending almost $1k per material load (including build material and support if needed)



uPrint and V-Flash printers are two of the most affordable personal printers out there. The material cartridges for each of these printers will cost you about $800 - $1000. And that's just the plastic, not the printer itself. Look at spending close to $20,000 initially.



That's a lot of money to be dumping into making a single prop, even if it is going to be cast. If you're very sure of your product, and can produce mass quantities of it (that are in high demand) then I say it's worth it. Still, owning your own machine and buying your own materials will still be considerably cheaper than using an outside service.



Sites based in the US like quickparts.com quoted me around $1400 to build my ODST helmet.

Sites based overseas like shapeways.com (pretty nice) I can build it at $514 - That includes shipping. Shapeways is a good site for 3d printing hobbiests







To use these services though you need to watch your object volume (wall thickness) because they're very stingy about what can be made.



Bottom line - 3D printers will provide accurately shaped parts over several hours. At the end of the process you will still need to detail/sand/paint. So technically it's just taking the $80 you spent on printing cardstock/cutting/glueing/resining and making you pay five times more so you don't have to.



If you have any questions about rapid prototyping or 3d printing feel free to pm me

 

[Hugh Holder]

Actually, yes they will. I'll repost my pics of it... The problem (as rundown said) is that you need a rather precise STL machine to do it right. (Or a simplified model) Also, another problem involved is cost. Even if you try to honeycomb the model, it will still be rather expensive due to the cost of abs plastic. (at least it was for me...) So if you're making bobbleheads or keychains, it's a legitimate strategy... otherwise it may be might get extremely expensive... quite quickly... I can convert any models you want, but I can't convert them into a format where you can change the thickness of the model. (Thereby making them less expensive.) I'll post the pics of a slice of chevysrule's Jun helm, a slice of my jun helm, and a warthog in my gallery later tonight.





Cheers!

I'd like to see those Sniper!



He's also right. If you can provide or pull the object from the .pdo and get something like a wavefront (.obj) or another universal file format then creating wall thickness is very easy to do in Maya.



That's another thing, your pepakura file will need to be considered a closed surface. Essentially, you can't have any faces not supported by five other faces. This is a problem since most people working with 3d pep files are not closed. Subtle differences in thickness will change your costs dramatically so be careful. Different printing software will interpret this differently, just to make it more of a pain So keep that in mind.



I broke my ODST helm up into several small parts that a 3d printer would have no trouble calculating and use the least amount of build/support materials. It's still expensive...



Efficiency of your model is key

 

[Sniperbaas]

Okay, here's a warthog and two "slices" of Jun's helmet. (The better one is by Chevysrule)

I painted my helm, for the heck of it. B/C the drafting teacher was extremely nice to me, he let me print the helms for about $10.

Warthog

Chevysrule and my helm

My helm (Printed... I might make a keychain out of it. :lol)

The pics are all in my gallery.

I apologize for the poor quality of the pics, for they were taken on cameraphones...



Cheers!

 

[Shaymin Sky]

What class are you taking that you access to a 3d printer?

 

[Jay123way]

What class are you taking that you access to a 3d printer?

He said drafting.

 

[Shaymin Sky]

ooo, my bad. Thanks!

 

[Jay123way]

ooo, my bad. Thanks!

no problem I do it a lot too

 

[Sniperbaas]

Actually, I'm not taking a drafting class (otherwise I'd have learned how to model in Solidworks :lol). One of my good friends took a drafting class, and he introduced me to the drafting teacher. Luckily, the teacher is one of those cool teachers (he wears shirts stating the best way to teach kids is to "first crush their souls"), so he let me use the STL printer free of charge (I still had to pay for the plastic.) The warthog was printed off by my friend, (he modeled one in SW and printed both). He ran into the thickness problem, for the machine gun turrent shield was 1/300 of an inch thick :lol. Although you can't see it, the barrels were separate little pieces .



Though yes, a drafting class where they teach you CAD/CAM should do the trick. (Also, you might find a 3d printer in a machine shop, along with a cnc machine!)



Cheers!





Anyway, sorry for the thread jack... you can have it back now.