15 inch print, tips please

Hi. I might make sculpture for print in 15 inch size height. It would be like one of my usual busts, so watertight, no loose parts etc. But, i would like to ask you for any tips for design in that big size.

Thank you

Is it shelled, hollow, like a chocolate bunny? If not that is your best tip to save money. -S

^ Chocolate bunny! Perfect way of describing that!

My tip would be that large flat areas can come out of the printer warped for Strong and Flexible Plastic. Also too, speaking of shelling, if you're going to do it in Strong and Flexible Plastic make sure you have a 40 mm hole somewhere so Shapeways can put other customer parts inside and therefore will charge you less machine volume charge.

Thank you all for fast reply. It will be hollow. But how thick should wall be?

What material are you planning on using?

white strong flexible

I've never printed anything that large before in WSF, but my intuition is saying something like 1mm with a lattice of 3 to 6 mm high gussets with 1 mm walls and a spacing of 6 mm in any weak areas of the structure.

Without seeing the shape (I'm still picturing the bunny) it is hard to say if modeling gussets is practical. I'd go 2 - 3 mm. Curious if it will be a volumetric shelling or just a face normals push. Good luck! -S

Yeah, I guess it would be good to know what software you'll be using. In Zbrush it's super easy to make strengthening gussets of whatever kind one could imagine and Meshmixer will automatically generate strengthening features.

It's going to be bust sculpture similar to those i already have in my shop. Im using ZBrush and meshmixer. I never needed to make any strengthening gussets on my designs. But i also never printed nothing that big . I uploaded one test bust with 4 mm thick walls, and it passed auto check on all features. I will try with 3 mm walls. Price for such print is mega expensive lol, will play around with this till i find best solution.

Yeah it's going to be super expensive no matter what you do. For a bust like your others I'd see if you can get away with 0.7 mm. If Shapeways can print it then great! If not they will tell you that the printing attempt didn't work and you wouldn't be charged in that case.

Are you shooting for full scale? Is a 15 inch bust full scale?

I don't understand what you mean by "full scale", sorry. 15 inch in height.

I would say that 15 inch isn't so much.

I have a model in WSF that is over 32 cm long (= ~13 inch), wall thickness is 1,2 mm and it isn't warped at all, despite huge disadvantage of big holes in surface:
https://www.shapeways.com/product/YPJBV8PGH/tatra-t4-0-scale ?optionId=59052900

Of course it depends on the size and complexity of surface (the simpler, the worse), but I would say 4 mm walls is way too much then you need.
Something between 1-2 mm should be ok.

Full scale means real life size. Half scale would be half the size of real life.

Wow, we have that trams in my City! (Zagreb). So cool model... Tnx for the tip. Will go with 2 mm then, i feel 1 would be to low for such large model.

oh, tnx for clarifying. No, it's not real life. Something in between real life and half scale.

Do you sell many of these? I made miniatures shop years ago and never made anything for it because I could never decide what would be good to make.

I see I see. Thanks. The reason I asked is I've thought before about making a full scale full color bust of president Obama.

That would be cool.

I'm not on Shapeways so long to make real statistics, but I'm selling around 6-8 models per month ... and I have around 60 models of trams in my shop (but these are 6 basic types, they have some derivates ... around 15 unique designs in 4 scales) - I don't know if it is a lot or not - definitely not enought to make living from it

Its definitely a lot about chosing the model - but as being Czech, propagate czech design, this - most widepread tram in the world with awesome design - was clear choice

Even though H0 scale is the most used in the world, best selling is N (becuase it is relatively cheap to print small models), even TT (which is widely used only in cetral and east Europe) sells better then H0.
Probably becuase some of these models are factory made in H0, but for me ... its not so hard to make another scale.


The worst thing is when you make some model like mine:
https://www.shapeways.com/product/F4STK8ZSR/2nd-class-coach- bmee?optionId=59702225
which wasn't on market and was asked by modellers for years,
and month after somebody starts to make it in mass prduction:
http://www.happymodel.cz/trix-15695-set-osobnich-vozu-rady-y -cd-v-epocha-2ks?locale=cs

sucks, becuase you have no chance to compete with injection molding neither in quality or in price.
But that happens