3D Printed Items

Hi All,Its a pity i stumbled on this on the day the prices went up… i like the look of what you have achieved, i may need to get my UG to work and invest in a domestic printer.. commercial ones are a bit to expensive …
CheersWaggie

Well the prices have gone up for all the OO scale stuff but the N scale is not changed. I will revisit each model and see what I can do to adjust to Shapeways new pricing structure to restore some sanity to the prices, but I have to confess my Mojo has gone a bit, so I wont be rushing into joining items with sprues and plastic loops.

I'm feeling a little bit guilty that I haven't spent time yet to optimise my models to try and get the pricing down on Shapeways new pricing methodology. Someone has bought a set of my church pews on Shapeways for US$25.04. I get the 4 cents :)




I think I can get a significant cost reduction if I sprue them and pack them together. Still won't be as cheap as they were before the price changes.

The process of optimising printing to suit the new Shapeways cost structure is slowly progressing.

Chimney pots for Scalescenes kits are the latest thing to get some attention. 

This set of pots for the Scalescenes Low Relief House Backs is reduced to about a third of the price by the addition of the connecting sprues.

Nice work Peter.

Optimising and reducing cost is all part if the business.

What's on the burner (or back burner) at the moment, or are you just enjoying the onset of Summer?


Marty

Marty, I am still trying to recover my mojo after Shapeways pulled the rug away with their repricing. I still have a lot of things that need "re-packaging" to get some sanity back in the pricing. I'm spurred on a bit by the fact that some people are buying things that I would consider too pricey. When the price change went through Shapeways many of my items ended up with me getting a zero designers margin, so it's even more upsetting that Shapeways is getting a lot more cash and I'm getting none. My own fault…. I should have gone in and reset my margins. I just thought that no one would be buying at the higher price.

One thing I am considering working up a model of is building frontages, terraced houses, shopfronts etc, which could provide a bit more 3D relief than the traditional card. I just need slightly more mojo to get started.

Yeah, the old mojo thing is hard to manage sometimes.
Have you tried shopping around for another printing company, Shapeways are notoriously expensive. I've been hovering on the edge of 3D printing for about 18 months now (still haven't bit the bullet yet) and lurking on the forums. There has been a significant discussion generated by their pricing "restructure" and there are more players than ever in the 3D printing market.
Granted that you margins are never going to be all that high or your volumes significant (don't get me wrong, I would be delighted to be proven incorrect), you could possibly do better with a local (NZ) printer and your own online store?
Just a thought..
Are the low relief houses going to be used on your layout? That should be inspiration enough! Especially as they can be completed and then put aside until you get your layout up and running again?

Oh… and I've just ordered one of your N scale footbridges too.  Should be here by Christmas!


Cheers

Marty

I did a bit of investigation for Shapeways alternatives and couldn't find one that was significantly cheaper. 3D printing companies that print with anything better than the extruded melted plastic are a bit thin on the ground here. It so happens though that I do know someone that runs a business that is printing in the same sort of technologies as Shapeways. His market though is high end prototype and his pricing can't compete with Shapeways and I then still have the cost of packaging, postage etc.

I've always been in this for the long haul and like most technology, things just get cheaper and cheaper. I'm looking forward to the day when it is the design that earns the money and the printing is just a minor cost.

Marty, very rude of me not to say thanks in my last post. The N scale footbridge has been one of my best sellers. The N scale stuff has not been hit by the Shapeways repricing as it's all printed in their frosted ultra detail material.

In one of your first posts you mentioned designing a website so tat you could sell a cad drawing to be printed at home a little like scale scenes but in the plastic world.

How s this coming along as I may have a domestic 3d printer and scanner coming along shortly

James

Hi Jimmy
My son owns a company that amongst other things develops websites. You'd think therefore it would be well underway, but life is full of these little ironies.

I own a Replicator 2X 3D printer and my experience has shown me that it isn't really suitable for printing  the higher detailed stuff that I have been selling via Shapeways. It was the Shapeways stuff that has been getting most of the time that I have available at present. Where the home 3D printers come into their own is with less detailed, higher plastic volume items. Once you ignore the cost of the printer, the material is relatively cheap.


The things that I have found useful to print are things like building walls. I've modelled walls for the Scalescenes small terraced houses for example. Printing is slow, but you don't have to watch it. I have many times said how much I hate cutting card.  I started a thread here http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic.php?id=12338&forum_id=101


Sad to say, I haven't finished putting together one of these yet. Shapeways design work having taken most of my spare time. It is something I will return to, but at the moment my free time is very limited.

Once you have your printer I would be happy to pass on to you free of charge printable files of things I have created suitable for printing at home. At present there aren't many. As you will discover when you get into it, things print best when they don't need any significant support material. Something like my 00 scale dining table prints quite well on a home printer. It's printed up-side down with the legs printed upwards with no support material. The dining chairs have a back on them, which means that whatever way you print it either the seat, the legs or the back will need support material. It's near impossible to print without breaking the model as you separate it from its' support.

Send me a PM when you are ready to print some stuff.

I received an email today from one of my Shapeways customers, Peter Meadows from the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. He enclosed some pictures of canopies he has been building using my components. He has gone the route of using my trusses and valances and scratchbuilding his own roofs. A cost effective solution because solid plastic roofing is still expensive to print.

He's given me permission to reproduce his photo's so here a couple of them.








He also sent me this link to a video of his layout made by his grandson that I think captures the atmosphere and magic that can sometimes be created in our hobby.  The video was made pre-canopies. Peter has another metre of canopy components to make up, so I'm looking forward to the next video with anticipation.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7Rj9fXgByEY

Work, a damaged shoulder and interminable house alterations have somewhat limited my ability to sit in front of the computer in the evenings and create new models for 3D printing. I have been able to get a little more done recently. One of the things I've been working on is classical columns. Not the easiest of things to make in card or plastic if you want to have the correct form of taper in the column. Easy to replicate though with 3D printing. The columns are available on Shapeways at various sizes, to allow you to make anything from a simple front porch for a georgian house, to an  imposing facade for a civic building.

I've put a couple together with a door and a couple of steps as a single printed item that can be stuck on the front of scratchbuilt building.



The columns have yet to make it onto my website www.modelrailwaystructures.com but can be found at my Shapeways shop by clicking on the link in my signature below. Updating the website is another one of those tasks that has got a bit behind.

Modern seating for use on station platforms etc are now available in my Shapeways shop in HO,OO and N scales.

Peter
Am I missing something here?hmm
You say that the N scale stuff is unchanged in price because of the different material used. So what about doing the 00 stuff in the slightly dearer material if it will reduce the overall cost?

Regards
Jim

[user=1339]The Bankie[/user] wrote:

Peter
Am I missing something here?hmm
You say that the N scale stuff is unchanged in price because of the different material used. So what about doing the 00 stuff in the slightly dearer material if it will reduce the overall cost?

Regards
Jim

Hi Jim
I don't want to try and confuse you too much with the Shapeways pricing model, it certainly confuses and surprises me at times.

Shapeways have  a cost calculated on the basis of the material used for printing, the space taken up in the printing machine and a price per part in the print job or a price per print job, depending on the material being printed.  The OO scale stuff uses a cheaper material but takes up more space in the printer. The N scale stuff can't be printed in the cheaper material, because that material can't be printed that thin. As the material volume and the volume of space in the printer is about one quarter for N than it is for the same object in OO that tends to bring the pricing down on N scale items even if it is a more expensive material.
But… whereas the cheaper nylon material has a per part charge, the more expensive material has a per job charge instead. The current per part and per job charges are US$1.50 and US$5.00.  So an N scale print is never going to cost less than $5.00 

I use a few tricks to make the nylon prints as a single part. For example 10 windows are printed with a nylon loop through them, so that Shapeways sees it as a single part. This saves US$13.50 on the cost of a set of windows, an amount that unless saved would have made them completely cost prohibitive. There is no cost saving by using the loop with the N scale windows, but I've now included it in that scale model because I fear that at some stage Shapeways will introduce the same costing method for that material as well. Adapting to the per part charge when they introduced it for nylon took a lot of time and effort, and I don't want to have to go through that again.

Hi Peter
 Confuse me? You wont have to try very hard.
 Perhaps you should have a look here:-  
 http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_listCategoriesAndProducts.asp?idCategory=1690
 Take a look at the pricing particularly at the bottom of the page on the stuff marked “Backorder”   
a conversation with them reveals that they reckon its a 30 day cycle and if you send them the money you can have one when the new stock arrives.
 I reckon it's a con since these things have been on backorder for about 4 months and it's why I don't have one. I think they are trying to flog off the dearer ones at the top of the list first before they release the cheaper ones. I'm a Scotsman, SWMBO is Yorkshire born and bred. That attitude means NO SALE in this part of the world.:hmm
 

 Best of luck finding an alternative supplier.
 

 Regards
 Jim
 

 PS I investigated Shapeways about a year ago as I need some custom fittings for tramway use.
 I also looked at Orr track. The result was that if use Shapeways and get them to print the pointwork in real Orr, (Gold) since they offer printing in metal, it would be marginally cheaper than the Orr track and the electrical contacts would be better.:mrgreen:

Nice to see you back in the saddle Peter. That doorway looks the business.

What's next?

Well Marty, I'm about half way through adjusting the modeling for all the different doors in my range. There are about 18 different door types and each type can be available in up to three or four different sizes. The remodeling will make them all capable of being scaled to suit 00,HO, N & S scales. HO was the problem with the previous versions of the models. Some sections were just too thin to print. It's all been a bit mind, numbingly repetitively dull. Change model, create the different sizes, scale each one to each of the different scales, upload to Shapeways, fill in all shapeways info for each one, then update the website for each one. I'm determined to finish it before moving onto something else.

The seats were a welcome diversion, they have been uploaded in 6 seat sets in OO, HO and N scales. Some one has requested them at 1:64 so I may have to start creating S scale pages on my website.

I want to focus really on things that can be added into your scratchbuilding or added to a kit that enhance what your making, but are also simple to use. Doors and windows have been very popular, hence my effort to rationalise those ranges. 
After the doors, the windows will get a complete revamp. But I'm thinking I'll tackle a couple of other diversions before that.

I knocked out this little model the other day. It's a planter for a model of Wigan Wallgate Station. This sits on the platform. If he buys it I'll make a whole $1.06. But then it's not about the money is it.

I've finally finished updating all my current range of 3D printed doors.


A useful information sheet can be downloaded from 

To browse through the doors with sizes and pricing go to my website page. 

Doors

Doors

View

Pricing shown on my website is for HO scale. At Shapeways you can select the scale that you want and the price is updated. OO and HO are similar in price. N Scale is normally cheaper than OO even though it is printed in a more expensive material.  S Scale and O Scale uses more material and is therefore more expensive.