No. Last time I checked all the affordable printers are filament extrusion printers, and their results require a lot of postprocessing to get a nice finish. Plus they can be big time sinks as you figure out how to get the best results from them. For the cost of a home printer, I can do 10 years' worth of print orders on Shapeways.
3D printing
- Thread starter PlanesPictures
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Depends on what you want. If you want to experiment, buy a printer. If filament printing resolution is high enough for you, buying also makes sense.
If you print 1-2 objects per year (like me) it becomes an expensive hobby and you might be better off using a commercial printing service.
If you print 1-2 objects per year (like me) it becomes an expensive hobby and you might be better off using a commercial printing service.
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I just wanted to chime in about the snarky remark about scratch building and 3D printing. I can tell you for a fact that there is a LOT of handwork for most 3D prints.... We get some 3D models from Sikorsky and they require a ton of work to get smooth and paint ready. Our skills are tested with each model from start to finish. Try it some time! A robot can only print what we tell it too and there are a lot of errors to correct most of the time.
It really does not matter how we come about the parts to make any model, whether from hand-carved wood masters, resin molds, 3D printing, or whatever, there are skills and crafting required, so YES - 3D is scratch building at its base level. As an artist and a modeler, it does not make any difference how one get's there.... just as long as we do - and the finished product looks.
Give me a 3D printed bunch of parts and frankly, sometimes it may be easier to carve it in wood than fill, prime, sand - fill, prime, sand -fill, prime, sand, fill, prime, sand....... but at least the bones are there.......
You get the picture!
It really does not matter how we come about the parts to make any model, whether from hand-carved wood masters, resin molds, 3D printing, or whatever, there are skills and crafting required, so YES - 3D is scratch building at its base level. As an artist and a modeler, it does not make any difference how one get's there.... just as long as we do - and the finished product looks.
Give me a 3D printed bunch of parts and frankly, sometimes it may be easier to carve it in wood than fill, prime, sand - fill, prime, sand -fill, prime, sand, fill, prime, sand....... but at least the bones are there.......
You get the picture!
merriman said:
The robot was following my instructions.
When a project contains a significant amount of scratchbuilding, I consider the project to be a scratchbuild. Some people use a definition where only projects that are made 100% from raw materials are scratchbuilds, I disagree with that definition.
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Hobbes said:
So...
Master to Slave: "Slave, build me a three-masted sailing ship model!"
Slave completes and presents model to Master.
The Master proudly states (in the voice of Obama) "I built that!" Then he marches 'his' creation to the local IPMS regional contest or client and proudly presents the work as 'his' scratch-built model.
I see.
When you surrender your motor-skills to robots, you lose those skills, as well as the people you would have passed those skills on to. Soon all 'model makers' will be people who only know how to select a menu of geometric shapes off a monitor, move a mouse around and then mash the 'enter' key when all the images fall into a pattern of their liking.
I well appreciate that the robots do our work faster, better, and cheaper than us. I just rebel against the willing abandonment of the Craft.
I'm all about attribution. Next time you present a robot produced item, don't claim it as your work, simply say, "hey, look what my robot made for me".
David
martinbayer
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merriman said:
That sounds a whole lot more like one of Trump's bombastic boasts though...
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That got to be a little personal, we are individuals and have our own 'code' or definitions for what we do. Those using printed parts have every right to do so without sarcastic comments and put downs. It takes all kinds after all and perhaps it is better to count to ten and rethink before commenting.
I call my post's my own but write with a keyboard and spellchecker, does that mean the words belong to the keyboard?
I call my post's my own but write with a keyboard and spellchecker, does that mean the words belong to the keyboard?
