Greetings, I would like to hire someone to take my STL file and print a 40cm model for under $500. I welcome suggestions on finding the right person and the methodology to be used(breaking up into parts, etc). The full-size STL file(210MB) can be downloaded here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:25418 A screenshot is here: Any suggestions?
40cm tall would be a scale of 0.00446729216202421942445641430561 the volume as drawn would be over 4000cc. $0.125/cc is not likely to hapen. if you hollow it to 3mm thick and keep triangle counter under 1000000 you may get your price point
Commercially, a print at that size will be difficult to make happen at the price you are looking for. I suggest asking on the Makerbot or Ultimaker google groups if someone near you would be willing to print this. A home printer should use something near $50 or so in material to print at the requested size with a reasonable amount of infill, so you should be able to use the rest of your budget to rent machine time... a print that large will need to be broken up into pieces to print on a domestic machine, and the printing will take a whole weekend (at least) to print. If you go this route, make sure you find someone with a well-sorted & calibrated printer (ask to see some examples of both 'good' and 'failed' prints, to get an idea of what you can expect). A job this large is likely to be a bit over the head of a new printer operator; there is plenty of time for things to get out of alignment or otherwise go wrong.
Thank you for your suggestions. I understand that I need to reduce the resolution of the file to something that can be managed by the printers. The Unigraphics (Siemens) software can reduce the scale, but it apparently cannot reduce the resolution of the STL file. How can I reduce the resolution of the STL file?
You may be able to reduce the resolution of the STL file by using the decimate modifier command in 'Blender' http://www.blender.org/ http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modifiers/G enerate/Decimate