oh ok imma have to just buy it and try it. its about 20 bucks though lol... i tried dyeing a TF prime voyager optimus and no dice even with the acetone added. its a real shame TF plastics dont all dye since it would really help eliminate that pesky paint rub
I'm going to bite and order up the set b add on feet. Question: what is the average turn around/shipping arrival time? I've never purchased through Shapeways is why I ask. Thanks again for taking the time designing up these add ons enhancing our figs! Edit: Do you know why it keeps changing the shipping speed on me at checkout? It continues to change it from regular delivery to next day.
Thanks! Shapeways' standard estimated shipping date is usually listed as 7 days after day of your order placement. However, since last year they managed to speed up production times on their Strong Flexible Polished materials. So in reality, they often finish production in 5 days. For example, these sets in the pictures, i placed the order on march 1st and they shipped by march 6, so i got it march 7. I am located just 30 minutes drive from Shapeways' Dutch office, so if you are in the US, they will ship from Shapeways NewYork.
Yeah I figured it would come the New York location once I dug through the FAQ. But I don't get why the shipping speed keeps changing on its own. I've reached out to them through email and hope to get an answer within the next day. Because I'm not in a hurry to get set but it keeps flipping from $4.99 standard to $15.99 next day on its own, even when I changed it before getting to the PayPal payment page. But I will get the order placed once I get that sorted out. Thanks again. Cheers!
Shapeways Netherlands offers 3 shipping methods; DHL next day 7.8 euro PostNL next day 9 euro PostNL 2 weeks after production ; cheaper by a couple of euro. So...I wouldnt know why anyone here in NL would still choose PostNL. Silly option is still there though. Edit ; in case of doubt, I suggest contacting Shapeways NY on shipping options. I'm in NL so i dont have experience with their US shipping.
Yeah it lists all of the US shipping options from cheapest to the fastest and it keeps auto choosing the fastest shipping option. Weird.
This. It's like he's wielding antique sniper pistols, or something. Btw, will the OP make slightly larger white/cream dual shoulder cannons? i think the regular ones are a tad too small, plus they don't accommodate the new PE Hi-Q Powermaster figure anymore.
Ok, I might order these guns. What's the difference between sturdy black and sturdy white polished? I'm planning to paint the guns using this lovely Japanese black gloss paint. It has an enamel paint finish but it's an acrylic. You hardly see the paint brush strokes! Is there a big drop in quality? If not, I'll buy the black ones and then paint them, leaving the handles as they are.
Based on my experience with Shapeways' materials ( and estimation of ones I haven't had in hand yet): Both White Strong Flexible Polished (WSFP) and Black Strong Flexible (BSF) are based on the exact same white nylon powder. In fact, right off the print bed, they are the same. From there on, WhiteStrongFlexiblePolished becomes polished by the polishing process: BlackStrongFlexible, does not get polished, but goes straight into the black dye bath. The polishing process - as stated by Shapeways - can take off nearly 0.1mm of surface material. So keep in mind that '5mm' peghandles on Black Strong Flexible may be a be a tiny bit thicker than the polished versions. Here's a video of someone demonstrating a Bionicles mask in BSF. At the 7:20 minutes mark he demonstrates it on the figure, which gives you a good indication of how it looks with the toy at that toy scale: Pro's and Cons imho of each material WSFP: + As smooth as nylon printed material can be. + Available in white and other colors except black. + My design tolerances are made with the Polished material in mind. - Does not come in black. - Still not as smooth as ABS injection mold plastic ( I guess this applies if your mindset is expecting exact equal smoothness to ABS plastic ). BSF: + Shapeways dyes it black for you. No painting required anymore. + The sculpt detail remains a little sharper than on Polished versions. - In my humble opinion, it's just too grainy at the Transformers toy scale. This is a really big downside. - The tolerances might be a bit tight, due to it being unpolished. The rifles as seen in my pictures are brush painted WSFP, but sealed off with Tamiya TS-13 Clear (varnish). Yes, I know...we all wish for that super smooth piano black finish. However, based upon my experience so far, my advice would be to get WSFP and dye it black with Rit DyeMore 'Graphite'. If I would get another set of rifles, I would definetely do it this way. Brush or spray painting will always result into some paintrub at the 5mm peg handles. Also, any gloss paint or glossy varnish will still emphasize - and under some light angles - exaggerate, the little bit of grain which WSFP still has. But, imho, any of the Strong Flexible Polished versions look really good. Red Strong Flexible Polished arm fillers. White Strong Flexible Polished features the same smoothness of course : Shapeways's Black High Definition Acrylate looks great like ABS plastic, but the price is just prohibitive imo. Anyway, closing this post off with my promotional collage picture for the TR PMOP upgrade sets of mine:
Thanks for the information. I wasn't going to paint the handles if they were white. I've not bought, used or encountered Shapeways plastic, but I've seen them online. I don't know where to get dye, as I live in Japan, but I'll buy the white versions and maybe, in places, sand away some of the grain, if possible. I'll paint it with my wonderful Japanese gloss paint and show you the results. One idea I did have was to sand away the posts a bit and then paint them? Wouldn't that work?
If you ordered in White Strong Flexible Polished, in my humble opinion - sanding really isn't necessary anymore, because the polishing process is evenly distributed accross the surface areas. The internal structure of the material remains the same, so sanding will not make the material itself smoother than it already is. It's not like sanding down mold-flash from an ABS part. Painting it with the gloss paint will probably yield a similar result to the rifles as seen in my photo's here, provided you can avoid clumpy brush strokes. Still, if you might change your mind, I found this Rit DyeMore Graphite which ships to Japan for a reasonable price : Amazon.com: Rit DyeMore Advanced Liquid Dye for Polyester, Acrylic, Acetate, Nylon and More: Arts, Crafts & Sewing This is the Rit video I watched for dying my feet upgrade sets. Very easy. Goodluck and I'm anxious to see the results of other people as well
Thanks. For the handle, I meant that sanding would make it thinner, thus causing the final, painted handle to not scrape when inserted into a hand. Would this work?
Ps: - have you heard of primer? Someone used it on their 3d printed matrix of leadership at YouTube. - They also sanded it. However, that's probably more appropriate for larger surface areas than small toy guns. Thanks for the link to get the dye.
Ok, the 3D print in that video is like Shapeways' PLA material ( PLA 3D Printing Material Information - Shapeways ) ; this is closer to actual plastic than WSFP in terms of look and feel, but as the video illustrates, it contains many coarse build lines/print lines. PLA is really meant for quick prototyping of larger items or items which do not require small tolerances ; ergo, it lacks precision required for toy design & toy parts interaction. If you compare PLA material specs to their Strong Flexible Polished material, you'll see the accuracy for WSFP is way better : Strong & Flexible Plastic 3D Printing Material Information - Shapeways Please watch this video ; the dude engineered an interlocking mechanism and the tolerance issues he encountered, emphasize PLA's imprecise tolerances, even at that larger scale interaction: True, when I first saw PLA, the material look and relative sturdiness make it seem as an ideal candidate for our stuff. But as you may have noticed ; even the "5 mm" peg handles of G1 weapons actually differ quite a bit from 5mm peg handles nowadays. Also, to keep things as cheap as possible, several walls on the model are literally 0.8mm or 0.7mm thin. Small tolerances matter. And this guy's talking about tolerances of a full millimeter for PLA as acceptable. In some aspects of his design it worked, in others it doesn't - so I cannot rely on that kind of guess work for toy tolerances. I can't imagine my foot upgrade set with the ankle tilt rotation in PLA for example. No way that's going to work, because the actual rotation joint is less than 1 cubic centimeter. Hence, my design is made with the WSFP polishing process in mind, working with tolerances of tenths of a millimeter ; in short, the polished version as Shapeways produces the design, is really as it's meant to be ; sanding would either take away from the intended sculpt or even make walls and peghandles too thin. Hence, I can't really recommend sanding down the peghandles because the tolerances will be too big and then the fit would have to rely on the primer, the paint and the sealer/varnish. Even when letting those cure for a week or 2, the stress of interaction to those paint layers will make those layers crack and/or rub off. But indeed, for most of my brush painted stuff I use a primer as well, because WSF(P) is a porous material. I usually use Vallejo aerosol primer.
Cheers. I'll look for a primer and might buy that dye, but it's fast becoming really expensive just for a pair of black guns! Before I order, I'm going to check out a local Japanese hobby shop to see if they have any local dyes and primers and then if not, I'll order the stuff you recommended online. I'm a bit worried about wrecking my kitchen though. Will the metal pans, pyrex dish and/or the kitchen sink be negatively affected by being used to dye/get rid of the dye? Can i just wash them afterwards and use them for cooking food? Also, as my flat is rented, will the dye negative affect my drainage? I don't want some outlet outside to become dyed black or something. I suspect using cold water to mix with the dye after use would help.
Well... here in NL I get one bottle for 6,95 euro plus 5 euro for shipping. That's about 12,73 USD total. But yeah, I could've gotten the Renderform rifles @ 30 dollars + 45 dollar shipping costs to the Netherlands..... ( in fact, the price quote was higher, near 100 USD total ). Or... you could also get something like this Titans Return PowerMaster Prime "True Gun" Right by BackToLife on Shapeways But he charges almost 27 dollar for just one rifle.... Like the Rit lady did in that video, I boiled the water in a seperate old pot first. The actual dye bath will occur in a cheap pyrex roaster like this one ( mine is circular shaped ) - do not use any of your actual cooking pans/pots for the dye itself. : When the water boils, poor it in the pyrex roaster, then poor in the dye. Of course, prior to this, you should have made sure to meassure the water to dye proportion. A single Rit dye bottle is 205ML. I would suggest 300ML water. A dye bath of 505 ML total should be sufficient for those rifles. Then, I put the Shapeways items into a cheap sifter like this one to dip them into the dye bath and to lift them out again. Dip and stir them until you see them becoming black. Since the dye bath will be cooling down over time, you may want to reheat it in that old pot. The way I experienced it, the dye can be easily washed from the pyrex and most metals. (it's not a sticky kind of stuff ) Afterwards, I would suggest keeping the dye bath in an old bottle. It's reusable. Would be a shame to get rid of it.
Great! Thank you for sharing your photo's. I'm glad you are happy with the sets. Actually, I ordered another feet set today plus Rit DyeMore kentucky sky, because this time around, I want to try to come as close to the blue shade as possible - whereas it was a little too dark previously. I'll post the results as soon as it's done.
