Inari82 wrote:I'm not too concerned with what people's morals are concerning shapeways and such, I'm just looking for a fair review.
What kind of morale quandary could exist with Shapeways? It would be like having a morale concern with using your Inkjet printer...
Generally at least once a month - though I use other services as well depending on what I am after.
Just after Thanksgiving.
Inari82 wrote:I ask this because the last review I read was just about a year ago, and I'm sure technology has advanced since then.
I'm looking at the designs by Dynath, so if anyone has gotten anything from him as well, that would be helpful as.
Probably 99% of the stuff I print myself is designed myself (or under contract by me for a specific project). I won't buy anything which I have not seen a printed example of. I also would recommend avoiding a lot of that specific designers work because the facets which are left in place will show up when it is printed. Things which should be rounded need to have more polygons added in order to prevent the facets from showing up as print artifacts. This will create an additional headache during the clean up process which could very easily be avoided with just a tiny amount of added effort to smooth out the mesh.
As far as the technology goes - not too many huge changes in terms of the resolution for print on demand services in the past year or so. The FUD material which they use provides an acceptable level of detail, provided that you understand that there is some clean up which must be done in order to get smooth surfaces. This is true with every printer I have used though, and it really isn't much more work to clean up a FUD printing versus one of the high dollar print jobs which I also use from time to time.
To be fair though, I have seen some metal castings which have almost as much surface texture as the FUD printings do as a result of heavy coatings of mold release (combined with high humidity casting environment).
