It is my Fiancee's 30th Birthday mid October and I want to get her a 3D model that I have created 3D printed . I am however, new to all of this 3d printing thing, and will be outsourcing to a printing company. However, I have no idea what to do to a model in Blender to make it suitable for 3d printing. I would like to avoid as little backwards and forwards messing about with the company I use, so I am trying to gather as much info as possible before I begin.
Some of the main questions I have are :
Should the mesh be all one object, and should it be joined together , rather than different pieces "crashed" into eachother, and if so , then can simply booleaning them work, or does 3d printing require clean topology, quads, well spaced grids and all that?
Will the 3d company tidy my model up if there are issues, put in necessary supports etc or should I do this myself?
I am from Scotland, UK , can anybody recommend a good company I could use?
The object will be ornamental and needs to be smooth and detailed, I see they 3D print all sorts of mediums these days, so what should I ask for?
Is size a big limitation when considering a 3d print?
Any other tips and suggestions would be greatly appreciated :)
1. each part that is to be printed as one object needs to be solid, not parts crashed together
2. the company can clean it up but I believe you will find a fee charged for service rendered...
(".stl" is the file format that most softwares (slicers) use, so if you can check out that file format and what is needed to make a clean one...)
3. got no recommendations as to whether shapeway is available to you there...
4. tell them high quality (smooth and detailed) is priority, they will in turn tell you what that will cost...
5. size is a limitation as different machines have different printable areas, but shouldn't be much of a limitation to pro print service...
6. color is a limitation as many printers can only use one filament at a time, so if it needs to be specific color and such...
just started playing with 3D print myself so the above is from general knowledge of learning the process
hope this helps...
:D
Ok thanks Mark :) , I had a look at a company called i-materialise, they have an offer through CG Cookie too. They seem pretty good because you can upload your model, choose your size, material etc and they give you an instant quote that changes in realtime as you select different options. Plus they ship worldwide fairly competitively. Ill probably go with them as it seems that the UK is a bit behind in the 3d printing scene as I cant find many companys, and most seem to be for industrial production more than art.
One more question, should I add a solidify mod to give the model a thickness so it is hollow?
Thanks again Mark :)
as to the making it hollow, it depends on several things
1. how strong or sturdy the finished product needs to be...
2 how much material it will take to make it solid...
the typical idea is that you do want it to be mostly hollow, with enough "fill" material to make it strong enough... (the printer I'm working with makes a waffle pattern inside and is setup by a "percentage to fill" in the slicer software)
I don't know the process in blender to make it "hollow"
in ZBrush they recommend making a duplicate object and then shrinking it down inside the original to make the hollow when the smaller object is boolean subtracted from the original...
I made one hollow and it pretty much halved the printing cost when I uploaded it to the calculation page, so yeh , ill go with that I think as its ornamental and will never really be touched :) . Thanks Mark :)