New Material coming!

Yes, there is a new material coming.... I can feel it in the air. Just saying....

So's christmas...

Oh, no, well before Christmas!

Ta da !!

"Tomorrow, we're launching a new mystery material,..."

Fair enough, you got me...

Just lucky I wasn't holding my breath from the first announcements.

You had me at "new."

"New material", "More materials", "Better Materials".... all favourite words I like to hear.

I'm thinking... because it would be ridiculously easy to add and people have been clamoring for it... it's going to be brass. Plain, unplated raw brass.

Brass it is!

Well now it's official.

I think Shapeways Claus will be good to you this pre-Christmas

Yep, already got my first order in!

Got my first brass only design in as well. I'm going with a pen blank I had done for brass/gold (http://shpws.me/oD9q) but is much cheaper to try with plain brass to test feasibility before plunking down more $$$. Fortunately I can sand/polish the surface on a lathe and then spray with a clear lacquer to prevent tarnishing prior to pen assembly. I think real metal blanks that are affordable will be a cool improvement to more standard wood/acrylic/plastic blank options.

I will reverify, but these prints should have a polyurethane coating. So if you sell in polished, no additional coating should be needed.

That's good to know. But now for the bad news?

I ordered that part in regular brass, FD, and WSF so I could get some comparison of brass to plastic materials. The brass and FD are already in production but the WSF got rejected for a disconnected shell problem. Funny thing is that they are all sourced from the same model (link in previous post). Does this mean that the error slipped through checking for brass and FD but was caught for WSF? Or are the processes different in some way that this is not a problem for brass and FD?



Is it likely that I'll be getting parts back with a bad gear???

First it looks like non-plated brass is NOT coated.

For your model issue. That is perplexing. Brass is not done in house so that would be a different model checker. But FUD and WSF are in house so it should go through the same checks. May be a question best for service.

I also asked them so I should have an answer by tomorrow. Since the order has moved on past the point of no return I can't cancel the order to be safe. Thought maybe someone here might have had a similar issue.

I can see how a wax or FD material deposition with UV curing can be different different than the powder in WSF for very slight detachments of shells. I had noticed some weird seams in that model that appeared to come out of nowhere. Why only one gear seems to be problematic is a (Tinkercad) mystery. It is highly illogical! I should try to fix it in netfabb or whatever.

Upwards and onwards!


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Followup update. The checking went through various people which is why it was not caught for all materials. As a result the FUD was also cancelled. I had the option to have the brass cancelled but gave the ok to have them make the part anyway since I mostly want to use the part for experimentation on a lathe and for finishing/sealing. If it is missing part of a gear that's no big deal.

I had uploaded the original design in .x3d format but does the Shapeways repair software that kicks in during the upload process work for .x3d format? Or does it only work with .stl format? I've been uploading in .x3d just so I can have color images that help to distinguish between various families of components in the store.

Well my part came back. It's rather nice but.... I ordered this as raw brass. It would appear as though it received at least a little bit of polishing and maybe gold plating? Or is raw brass polished a minimum amount to get rid of sprue points and other residual molding defects? And how would I know if it's gold plated? Is there any obvious way to distinguish between polished brass and gold plated brass (besides waiting for tarnish to develop)?

I'm a little bummed in that I was hoping to sand/polish this myself on a lathe to see how that might work out and to more precisely adjust the outer diameter to match pen kit hardware if needed. Unfortunately my calipers have a dead battery so precise measurements will have to wait. If all the dimensions turned out ok this part should look rather nice with a (gold plated hardware) metallo pen kit. There are a few artifacts in the background but I think they add a bit of character.

Silver objects (even 'raw' silver) are certainly polished to remove the (don't know the term) parts for the inflow of silver and outflow of gas, so I would imagine it would be the same for all cast parts.

Doesn't look plated to me, wrong colour and glossiness but that's not worth much...

I agree with you about the artefacts.

Good job!

The color is a bit reddened in that photo because there is reflection of the red of my cell phone case. Here's another photo, Note that I took the photos on the blue paper the thing was wrapped in so the colors are shifted far towards red. My guess is that plating would have reduced the variations caused by print layer lines in the background area. But it sure does look like it went through the standard polish process, I suppose.