Hi Michael,
Just got my models today from shapeways. There are some cool results. Some of these pics appear a bit "rougher" than they do in person to be fair to shapeways. The camera is about 2 inches away from the piece, and they have a "wax coating" that is leftover from the printing process that I havnt removed yet. We will lab these up a bit. If I produce anything that looks much better, I'll post it when I'm done.
The piece is roughly 2.4 x 2.3 x .3 inches in size. The pricing varies slightly with the materials we selected. $9.24, $12.90, $14.29 and $14.96. I am interested in their new "Stainless steel" print, but wanted to lab things up first as the price for that material is about 6 1/2 times more than the rest. This piece would be about $60.00 in that material.
I ordered one material that isnt shown here that is speced as "High Strength, less detail" and a neat byproduct of printing this small piece in that material is that the surface has a "texture" that also follows the surfacing of the model. It even prints the "Seam Edges" of the model! So you can see all the filets and everything. It really "Looks" like the MoI model. The texture is like feeling a "Screen" on a window.
OK Danny I'll see how that one comes out. Hopfully I dont ruin it trying different things!
Your alien would look pretty cool with that material :O
Depending on the size, you would want to "Hollow him Out" for the print as they charge by "the Amount of material used" not the size of the piece. So I dont know if you can Shell him or just Boolean a sphere out of his belly. I think I just read here that MoI handles that "boolean a small sphere out of a larger one and having an enclosed hole inside of another closed surface action. This will be handy with this type of RPT.
Actually Burr, you've probably come up with the first 'Safety Ninja Star' for those times something or someone is annoying you :)
I could do the alien, but I'm afraid that the arms and fingers are a bit flimsy.