Hi guys, yes, the hands come in Black Strong Flexible. I do not have the black version to show you, but it works exactly the same as the White Strong Flexible model shown on the opening post.

 

Knew I shoulda grabbed HA BB when I saw him for cheap...

 

I've never ordered off shape ways before. Can someone tell me the best option for these hands? Gray or white? Polished or not polished? (Is there a difference in durability between polished and not polished?)

 

Hi Tim, I hope you'll have a good experience using Shapeways.
I'd normally recommend normal White Strong Flexible. Polishing takes a layer off the top and tends to make joints looser, so you'll need to use super glue or similar to thicken the balljoints back up.

There is no difference in durability for WSF and WSF Polished. Same material.

Alumide (the gray you mentioned) can be sanded down smoother and it's slightly harder, but it's brittle and breaks easier. It also tends to have much looser joints due to a larger rate of shrinkage compared to WSF.

Hope this helps!

 

These are fantastic, looking forward to ordering a set.

Though, I am a noob when it comes to painting. Any ideas? Thoughts? Hints?

Much appreciated!

 

If you're new to painting, I'd say order them in Black Strong Flexible. That way they're basically the right colour, and all you'd need is to paint the middle segment of each finger. There's not much to painting that small. You could, before assembling, tape of the joints where there'd be friction, and buy a can of yellow spray paint and go over the middle segments only.

 

Sounds great. I've read around, do these need any sort of sanding? And what sort of spray paint do you recommend?

Apologies for the questions, but I have searched around quite a bit and just want to see what others are doing for ideas and thanks!

 

I ordered mine in white/polished. I painted them using acrylics, and they look great!

For the colors, I used Testors,
- mixed metallic silver with a little bit of gunmetal (to darken it a bit, so it would be a closer match to the silver on Bee). It's not a *perfect* match, since the silver on Bee's arms seems to have a bit of a brown-ish tone to it. But it looks pretty good in person.
- Darkened some yellow with a couple drops of black, so it would match the slightly darker yellow on Bee.

I didn't need to do any sanding. The joints were tight; some of the ball joints were pretty hard to assemble. But I was amazed at how strong the Shapeways plastic is.

One nice thing about painting the plastic is that it's very porous, so it absorbs the paint really nicely.

 

WOW, that picture is really neat!
Thanks for sharing!

 

Thanks so much! Awesome  

Agreed! And the tut was nice too!  

 

Glee!!! ^^ This is fantastic! I honestly was expecting to sell/toss my HA Bee because I didn't want to have to buy a second one just for the hand/arm!

If I may inquire... do you have any suggestions for replacement hands for HA Jazz? I ADORE the mold but the pincer claws...

 

Thanks for the compliments.  

 

I don't have HA Jazz on hand right now, but aren't the hands attached using a pin system? It might be risky/hard to remove them and install new ones.

 

Just got these in. They are nice, but are ridiculously loose. I haven't painted then yet, but I'm thinking of using Future for the loose joints, however I hope painting helps.

Great work Ariel and I will be getting future parts from you in the future!

 

O wow...that's FAAST. I'm jealous!

 

Well, here we go! Pretty damned happy with the result. Yellow matches better in person, but the flash threw it off here. I totally plan to do a coat of Future in the uh.. Future, but for now I'm really pleased, especially since it's my first paint job!

And, Bumblebee gives a thumbs up (actually two!) and a peace sign to Fakebusker! Excellent work friend!

 

I'm glad you like it MS. Rock on!