One more printing resource

[RKapuaala]

I got this spam this morning announcing this site http://pro.sculpteo.com/en/. I registered and uploaded a model. Here are some of my thoughts on their offerings.

First, I really like the user interface with a couple of exception.
1st Exception
The scale of the models you uploaded are automatically converted to fixed point numbers. If your scale height is 52.2 mm it will be set to 522 mm. You can correct this after the upload, or change it to inches, cm etc. It is confusing at first but I like it in the long run so it's more of a benefit than an exception once you get past the horror of seing a 52.2 mm sized figure converted to a 522mm figure. Not to mention of the first impression you get when you see the price of a model before you realize the size has been converted. The first model I uploaded showed a price of 1700 usd.
2nd Exception
The materials data is very vague. They do not tell you what the layer thickness is, or the various minimum thicknesses such as wall thickenss, unsupported and supported wire thickness, minimum embossing thichness.
The closes material I could find for highly detail parts is called resin. It comes in clear, white or black, but is incredibly fragile and the minimum wall thichness is a heavy 2mm and is very expensive.
There are a few things I like about them.
The site is very quick. The tools you need to rescale your model are intuitive and work instantly. Navigation is very easy and the turn around time is incredibly fast (at least according to the delivery times they described when I tried to order one of the models I uploaded) 8 days start to finish.
I would have given them a try but most of the printing I do is for my figures and I really need the level of detail that Shapeways Frosted Ultra Detail provides and the site won't let me use anything more detailed than their plastic material that has the strength, but I'm afraid not the level of detail I require.

 

[RKapuaala]

I broke down and order a copy of a life mask of Lincoln I down loaded from the smithsonian. I'm having it done in black plastic because the resin option of too costly and fragile. I'm hoping beyond hope that their plastic is as high of detail as Shapeways is, but without a clear specs sheet it is hard to tell. It should arrive around the 18 of July if they can print it as fast as they boast. If this plastic model is not as good as Shapeways FUD then I won't be using them again even though the interface is really cool. They even generate a pdf of your model from 3 views so you can tell exactly how big it will be after printing.

 

[RKapuaala]

Well, so far they are not meeting their project deadline for delivery. I just got notice that the demand for their services is so high my model may be delayed. This makes no sense to me as presumably the item was already being printed before the high demand and since this 'high demand' for their services happen a week after my order was in I should have priority over any new orders. That gets them a bad mark in my book. A simple explanation that it is taking longer to print than anticipated would have been more believable. I'm hoping that the print quality makes up for this delay, but I some how doubt it.

 

[RKapuaala]

That was odd, they delivered last night, which was when they said they would deliver. I guess the warning was just a precaution against being late. Anyway the plastic material is abs. The detail is not bad for abs but not nearly as good as Frosted Ultra Detail at Shapeways and it costs the same as if I had it printed in Frosted Ultra Detail. The only consolation is that it came in 10 days as advertised and that the print was better than other abs prints I got from Shapeways.