Hi!

Man, this is awesome. Read in engadget a guy made parts for his baby stroller for a fraction of the cost, that got me thinking.

I'd like to make some of my stuff work too. And I have some questions if you could be so helpful .

1 - Are there any 3D designers that work in Linux/Mac? With Wine? Irrespective of the Operating System (I have Linux, Mac and Vista), what would you recommend of a designer that would be easy to get started with?
2 - How do I get started? Go to the tutorials section?
3 - How do I compute the cost of the part to make?

Hi gp443,

Welcome to Shapeways!

Blender is popular free multi-platform design software, but it has a fairly steep learning curve though. There are also lots of tutorials for all things Blender out there.

Starting with Shapeways tutorials will give you a good idea bout what can be done and waht can't. It is also important to take note of the materials print restrictions. The Materials page shows the cc prices for the materials and the has links to the individual material pages. From the individual material pages, you'll also find design rules the you should stick to... some of the materials also have advanced design rules that show method or examples of how to bend the rules a bit or techniques that can be used to creat models with moving parts printed in-situ. The Materials comparison sheet also gives the prices, as well as showing the maximum print dimensions for each material.

NetFabb Studio Basic (free) is a great multi-platform utility for checking models for 3D printing. It can analyse a model, show and repair errors as well as having an excellent suite of measuring tools - model volume is shown, so to get an idea of the price for a model, just multiply by the Shapeways cc price.

Have fun!
Paul

Cool

I want to make something with steel (or some other hard metal), what are the minimum and maximum level of detail (say teeth on a gear) should I expect?

I'm not as talented in the html department, but here are the design rules for stainless https://www.shapeways.com/design-rules/stainless-steel and at the bottom there is a link for rules for designing under 3mm.

See, my big thing is that I'd like to know how detailed a gear like this will look in real life made out of something like stainless steel.

https://www.shapeways.com/model/36007/spur_gear_z_32_m_1_25.h tml?gid=mg

Are there pictures of finished products?