The Elegant Dog, In ceramic

Hi all,
i really like to print this piece, The Elegant Dog, in ceramic, but i'm afraid that the 10cm version is too little and the printing process and glazing will broke it.
Is 10 cm from the point of the tail to the nose too small for printing the dog in this material?

Here the Dog, with all the parameters -> https://www.shapeways.com/shops/tarum
I placed it as first in the shop.



If do yuo think it's not possible, would it be possible with the 15cm version?
Many thanks to all,

Andrea Tarabella

Any chance you could bend the tail back to attach to the dogs body instead of being straight out?

I thinked about it, but i never seen a dog with the tail bended to the body when ***
i'm afraid that it will lost all the poetry

Only other think I can think of is docking (cut the tail off) the dog. Which I don't agree with doing to a real dog.

So, Tarum has produced this excellent sculpture of the Elegant Dog. Great work, I love it! And it has come out beautifully in ceramic 12903

My question is how does this sculpture conform to the published ceramic design rules?
1. If I could create a wet sandcastle shaped like this (and I would like to see someone try) could I move it without breakage? I do not think so. In wet or even moderately moist sand the legs would come off and don't even think about the tail surviving.
2. The chest on the 15cm model pictured has to be thicker than 15mm which is supposed to be the max thickness?

CS quote the design guidelines when rejecting models and the forums are peppered with links to these so-called 'rules' but every other 'It arrived' or 'Feature this' post contains a model that does not conform.

Good luck to the designers who get their stuff through, but please update these guidelines to reflect reality and tell us what we can really do.

Thanks.

The "wet sand" or "sandcastle" appears to be a too pessimistic metaphor for the "green" state indeed. Maybe something like "cookie dough" or even "salt dough" would be more appropriate to describe its properties ?
Still I hope that this does not turn into another sad "stag head" story now that the model is up for sale.

I know what you mean, and it's kind of my point.

I love the Dog model (and needless to say have something outside the rules I would like to print Heron. For me it is all part of SW refining their offering. If the guidelines are just guidelines, fine, we'll submit things and see if we can get them printed. But then in the rejection don't quote the guidelines as rules, since they are not. If the guidelines are actually rules, then they need to be changed to reflect the current state of play.

It is frustrating to have a model rejected for, let's say:
1. In ceramic, over 15mm thick;
2. In Stainless, being less than 3mm thick;
3. In any of the wax support materials, being rejected for no way to remove support material;

And then to see pictures of great designs which do not conform, often as Featured Items on the Blog.

Part of the problem may stem from the fact that shapeways does not do all the materials inhouse, so may be "at the mercy"
of their production partners when it comes to more demanding models. Or on a more positive note, materials and methods
may have improved to allow things beyond the limits stated in the guidelines, and shapeways simply does not yet feel
confident enough to relax the rules ?

Perhaps you are correct. I salute your positive outlook, lol!

I am woefully ignorant of how SW subcontracts its production - I would have imagined that using subcontractors would necessitate increased vigilance and control (including quality) by SW, and would have meant that more rigidly enforced design rules/guidelines were necessary than if everything were in-house and open to flexible interpretation.

Ultimately I just want to get some prints made. As you know, when you are designing you need to keep the specific material constraints in mind: the items I have wanted to print in stainless or ceramic never quite seem to suit the guidelines. But am I limiting myself unnecessarily? That is the question. And if they do print, will they print more than once (back to the Stag's Head)?

to be honest, i tried to push to the limit the ceramic materials with the Elegant Dog.
In the beginning i imagined this model in black glossy ceramic or in steel, but at the moment the metal materials were a bit expensive for me.
In the end i rendered the model with a glossy material, similiar to the feel of the glossy ceramic.
Probably my mistake was to work before reading the guidelines, because i noticed that many things were wrong, so i tried to fix the model as best as i could for the guidelines (i have fixed sculpting and renderings).
I knew that probably something would go wrong, expecially for the legs, and for the fact that the model is hollow inside, but i made those components more robust.
My first costumer bought in dyed plastic (the small version, not hollow), and after 2 or 3 "your model can't be printed" we decided to try the ceramic material on the bigger one. Theissue with the small dog is that Shapeways had some problems to clean the inside of the model and it were impossible with a small hole (i used his navel). In the end i closed this model and now it's fully printable, but me and my costumer (that really woth 3 thousand of thanks for the pacience) decided to try the 15cm version in ceramic.
After 2 or 3 re-order i was sure that some fixes were necessary, i always try to take the advantage of this because Shapeways always send some images and advices for let the model survive the next print.
In this case fixes were not needed and Grrrrbob as promised sent me some images of the Elegant Dog (15cm) in Avocado Green Ceramic


I have not much experience, but what i can advise is to try and re-try to print model if you believe that it can survive in a specific material

So I asked CS if I can print my Heron. and this is the reply:

So the dog and his tail will print, but the heron and his bill will not? If the legs were the problem, I would understand, but ....

Try again with a clone of the original heron that has a less pointy beak and less well-filled belly ?
(Both would make my avatar more at ease, and also it seems to me that the tip of the tail on that dog
is much more rounded in the photograph than in the original computer-generated image. )
At least that should give you an indication if service stopped checking after the first two issues...

Okay, now I understand (thanks Mitchell) that the Dog is NOT solid, therefore that answers my min wall thickness question, and I see that the tail as printed is not as 'pointy' as the render, so that's that.

I don't think the Heron can be easily be modified to be printable in Ceramic, so I'll have to come up with something else as my first foray into this material.