thats fucking badass man

Yeah I think it'll be pretty sweet, also thanks for the badge finally poppin up xP

WHEN MY LEGS ARE DONE, I'LL LOOK INTO YOUR LITTLE VENTURE HURR.

:P.

But seriously. This sounds like.. an interesting idea. I'll have to see it in action.

I assume you are planning on going with a Z-Corp for the full color route, or are you fabbing in white and then painting? If Z-Corp, make sure to have a good look at the differences in color quality between their various models in PERSON; their pictures don't show it, but it's pretty severe. Also, have you priced out build materials for the figurine size you are planning on doing? It's likely going to be hard to recoup the cost on time/materials for only $100 each - service bureaus easily charge several times as much. Just curious on your approach for this in terms of a business mode, tool. I ask out of my concern for your familiarity with the printing technology, as I did an in-depth study of Z-Corp's (and others) printers a few years back with our local rep for some applications I was working on, and the nitty-gritty details of the different printers, processes, and limitations were pretty significant.

I have since used a Stratasys FDM printer for fabbing a number of mechanical prototypes in to ABS and have been very pleased with the quality and durability of the finished product (unlike the Z-Corp output which shatters very easily.) Once again the (monochromatic) build material cost tends to be quite high per unit of build volume so it tends to get limited use just for fit-and-function prototypes, where an error in a production run would cost many thousands of dollars to fix.

3D Printing stuff is definitely very cool, and about the closest thing to Star Trek's Replicator we have thus far. Just make sure that you ask all of the right questions, get an in-depth demo, have them print samples of YOUR files, and most importantly thoroughly understand the *limitations* that come with the particular process and printer you are considering. Understand how much the feedstock costs per unit of cubic volume, how long the built time is, how much power the machine consumes, what post-processing of the model is required (Z-Corp stuff DOES require post-fixing with an additional glue layer in many cases, FDM needs support structure removed or dissolved, etc) and how all of these things add up to surprisingly expensive output per object.

On top of that, I urge you to have a clear plan for how you are going to make the expensive purchase pay itself back in a reasonable time in your business model. It's easy to rush in to the purchase of new, cool toys (because they ARE cool!) but be sure to have a precise game-plan established for how they will wind up being beneficial to you in the long run! (Believe me, I've been there!!)

Regardless, best of luck to you on your endeavor! I look forward to seeing what you produce!

Haha yeah man thanks for the concern but Ive got it covered. Oh trust me Ive got wayy bigger plans for this then offering furry character figurines, thats just a little side thing for the fun of it I thought would be cool.

Its a zcorp 450, already met the consultant and ran one in person and the quality was perfect. Yeah just a little post processing is, well not even required but suggested in these new models of printer as they have a few edges to sand down sometimes, and theres a fixative u dip it in, but its nothing like the old 510's that required a heat fix, 2-3 sandings, and aditional glue layers x3

Also i got a 7 inch tall pretty detailed character figure quoted at around $23 in color/powder/fixative ext, but that was without some of the body cavity and base hollow which will take it down more.

Good deal, then. I look forward to seeing the results!

swag

oh....that could be cool.
you have been fairly quiet as of late.

been busy

when are you not?

When im dead :3

well, hopefully that won't happen any time soon.

is this the same 3D printing Im thinking of?
thats pretty cool!

Idk what 3d printing are you thinking of? :3

somthing like this??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw

Yup thats the one :3 Ill actually be getting the same printer he printed the wrench with

That's awesome! We might be able to do some business if your game for it.

Of course!

What do you have in mind

was thinking my company might have a few things we could get ya to do..
lol. and maby a model of my character along the way.. lol
well see. but its nice to know someones doin it.

Haha sounds good~ Just let me know, I can pretty much print anything

will you be able to scan too? and scale?

0_o custom phone case!!! I think the only limit with one of these machines is your imagination.

Yus we built a scanner, could easily do phone cases, charms... laptop cases idk x3 its true, u can just about make anything u can think of. Ive seen 3d printed bikes and skateboards

thats awesome.

As i said in my note this is very interesting to me! I do a lot of sculptural work that together with some elbow grease can be turned into some really nice stuff.

The main thing i have to ask is this. in the coloring process is the colors based on textures or material settings like diffuse coloring of the vertexes directly or does it also translate textual data?

also what model formats do you require? i can export to virtually any of the common professional formats but i do have the ability to work with DXF and CAD files to also .DAE

8========D ~~~~~<3