New Shapeways Materials

Hey guys, you may all know about this already, but I just wanted to share a little information about some new materials that it seems Shapeways is undergoing test with. One is HP Strong and Flexible and the other is Hi Def Acrylate.




They currently are both on maker materials and only avaiable to designers but I suspect if tests go well they will be openly available soon. I ordered a part in both and I can see advantages (and disadvantages) to both of these materials.
First the Acrylate.


I really like this material on first observation. I haven't painted it or tried to clean up the support "stubs" yet, but my first impression is that the print lines are much less noticable than other materials. You can see the little nips where the support material was removed. I'll have to carefully go in with a file and see how hard to remove it is. Here are a few pics of my Hummer Bumper. (sorry the pics suck, I will try to get better ones soon.








Then the HP Strong and Flex. This is a grainy material but I don't think it's as grainy as the regular Strong and Flex. I will do some priming and sanding on this to see how well it takes handling. But it seems like it's going to be easier to get smoother results with this material. Again, bad pics. sorry,





I just wanted to let you guys know to be on the look out for designers being able to offer these materials soon. I don't know yet if they will necessarily be game changers, but they do seem to be heading the way of cheaper and better model prints. I'll post up more information if anyone is interested.


Thanks,
Bill

Interesting. The HP stuff is billed as being a faster cheaper process, but the pricing isn't much different from the white flexible stuff. I wonder how the HP material compares in graininess to the polished version of the white polyamide.

I'm ordering a test today - we'll see how that goes!

I ordered some parts out of the High Def Acrylate. Yes, the build lines were very fine but depending on how they orient the part in the printer, the stepping may be more or less visible and you cannot specify how the part is to be oriented. They angle the parts to work best with the generated supports. The bigger problem I had was pretty bad warping and deformation in the printed part. I ended up getting a refund and having the parts run again in extreme detail plastic. The High Def Acrylate is a lot less brittle than the ext detail plastic so it'll be better for thinner things like that bumper cage you had printed.

Yes, the acrylate seems to be sturdier than FUD but I did notice a very slight size difference between the two printed materials. I haven't pulled out calibers yet to see which is closer to the actual 3d model. But it is a very very minor difference.