3D rendering and ordering at Shapeways & Co

Hi All,

Maybe someone can help me out, I need to create a piece that looks similar to a turbo laser from an X-Wing (or rather a part of it - see below). I have not done any 3D rendering at all, and could use some advice as to which software is easy to get a hang of and is accepted by all the 3D printing companies.

Secondly, I will probably not order it from Shapeways as I live in Germany and that just raises the postage and delivery time. Therefore I will likely order from Trinckle as they are based in Germany. So if anyone has had expirience with Trinckle your thoughts would also be much appreciated.

At any rate, the piece that I need to create is similar to the round fan-like part here...



I need this in about 4 different sizes and I need them pretty small (the largest about 5mm diameter), so I am assuming that changing the scale of a 3D render is child's play as opposed to scratch building them.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Those (on the original model) are heatsinks. Someone on the board should be able to supply you with replicas at 'actual' size, though if they are 3D printed, yes, they can be scaled & printed again.

If you are keen to try this yourself, the silhouette can be drawn in a vector or raster graphics program and 'extruded' in a 3D program. Shapeways has a piece of software for doing this. Others may as well.


-MJ

Hi Mike, thanks for your reply. I will check out Shapeways' software and see what I can come up with.

opal1970 said:

Hi All,

Maybe someone can help me out, I need to create a piece that looks similar to a turbo laser from an X-Wing (or rather a part of it - see below). I have not done any 3D rendering at all, and could use some advice as to which software is easy to get a hang of and is accepted by all the 3D printing companies.

Secondly, I will probably not order it from Shapeways as I live in Germany and that just raises the postage and delivery time. Therefore I will likely order from Trinckle as they are based in Germany. So if anyone has had expirience with Trinckle your thoughts would also be much appreciated.

At any rate, the piece that I need to create is similar to the round fan-like part here...

View attachment 598433

I need this in about 4 different sizes and I need them pretty small (the largest about 5mm diameter), so I am assuming that changing the scale of a 3D render is child's play as opposed to scratch building them.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Click to expand...

I don´t have any advice reg. the actual model you are looking for, BUT Shapeways has a factory in Eindhoven/ Netherlands, so you don´t have to worry about import fees/ taxes. Shipping is a standard 8 Euro

OdiWan72 said:

I don´t have any advice reg. the actual model you are looking for, BUT Shapeways has a factory in Eindhoven/ Netherlands, so you don´t have to worry about import fees/ taxes. Shipping is a standard 8 Euro

Click to expand...

Hi Markus,
Thanks for the tip. That does make Shapeways much more attractive.

I am not really looking for that entire piece off the X-Wing, but something similar to that particular area. I just drew up an example of what I would need. If I understand the process correctly it would be only a matter of making a STL file out of it.

Here's a photo of MoffEaton's replica X-wing, with a good look at the heatsink.

Mike J. said:

Here's a photo of MoffEaton's replica X-wing, with a good look at the heatsink.

Click to expand...

Thanks Mike, yes that gear-looking piece inside of the heatsink is very close to what I am going for. You also gave me an idea... as I need this in a very small print and it needs to allow light through between the ribs, it might be easier to break it up into components to print and then assemble the components.