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Hi all. Has anyone here bought from Shapeways? I mean as in gone to the gallery, picked out a model, and ordered it. Im very tempted by some of the stuff there, as Im looking for some ships to play Full Thrust with, and they have some great stuff there, a nice change from the flood of BFG and FSA ships.

My concerns are:

How well did the process go?
What was the quality you received?
What material should I choose? Im not going for super high detail or award winning quality, just something decent for at home gaming.

Any feedback you folks can give is appreciated.

It took 4 weeks to receive our prototypes.

I went with the frosted high detail, the highest level they offer, quality was what I expected, which means a good print but with all the stepping and lines on a printout I would expect. I would NOT use this model to paint on without a couple of hours of cleaning. Contrary to some belief these are not meant for painting or use in a game right away. Priming and painting does not hide the grainyness of the finish, its like a bad prime-job on some areas and little micro ledges on others.

The cheaper material you use the more cleanup and change to destroy your detail during the process you should expect.

I think Shapeways is of use to companies and those doing one off models, I dont think its good for those buying a ton of the same piece and hoping to use them on their models as the current trend seems to suggest.

I ordered some stuff..
Took like 2 weeks from start to finish.
Went with the high detail

out of the 6 sets of stuff I had on set of 5 "gyro jet rifles" mist cast. 3 of them were ok but 2 had a lot of flash in beteween them and basically was a glob of white stuff.