I think I'm going to get one of these printed up for myself, but first I'd like to show it to the group.

The main spar is a little over 1.25" (32mm) to the base, and I'm showing it on a titan base for referrence.

It's 6 parts:

base
main spar
secondary pylons x 3
center array

Since I have a terrible track record for casting things, I'm not going to try to cast this once I get it. However, I am willing to pay to have 2 printed, and will send it to anyone with a proven track record of casting who is willing to do the casting work.

I can't say I'd cast it very well, but I think it looks pretty darned sweet!

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

It needs to be in two pieces, the flat part, and the sticky-up part. Then it can be cast.

Well, as I mentioned in my first post, it is actually 6 separate pieces. Each piece that sticks up fits into a socket on the base and can be cast separately.

I did discover something interesting when I went to printapart's website. Apparently printing extra assemblies adds $20 to the price per extra.

That means that if any of you are willing to shell out that much for something like this, it might just be easier to print out a bunch rather than go through the trouble of casting.

HBow much would it cost as a single piece?  Hypothetically, of course.

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Duh, sorry.

There are a few issues with modelling PrintAPart output. First, primer doesn't interact well with the plastic, though I've heard there are some tricks to baking out the annoying waxy stuff. Second, it's very fragile - significantly more fragile than resin.

Regarding PrintAPart pricing, additional prints do seem to cost less than the initial print. Also, larger items cost less per volume than smaller items. For example, my recent Vaygr BC at a whopping 18 cc cost $50. Smaller items are around $10 per cc.

Apparently one piece vs 6 pices, the price differences are:

first assembly
$40 vs $32

add'l assemblies
$27 vs $20

rounding to the next dollar, of course.

I belive that the difference has to do with the fact that, when broken up into individual components, the entire assembly takes up a much smaller volumetric shadow. At the very least, if they use some form of layering technoligy (I believe they do), printing the individual parts would require significantly fewer layers.