Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Figures and Details

For model railroaders, the chance to 3d print detail parts is a huge draw. Shapeways, for instance, has gotten swamped with railroad modelers making freight cars and locomotives as well as all sorts of detail parts. I'm no different. Resin printers, unlike the Makerbot, do a great job on smaller parts with high detail.

Here's two examples: first, three human figures, taken right from thingiverse.com: the Steampunk Girl, scanned from an attendee at the Emerald City Comic Con; The Great Fredini, who is responsible for many of the human scans on Thingiverse, and Michael Z, one of the World Maker Faire New York attendees. It's very fun to think I can print HO figures any time I want... and find figures with modern clothing and American-style poses!

Now that I'm making progress on the J.S. Roberts packing house, I realized I needed flats of apricots to put in front of the sulfur treatment rooms. Dried apricots and other fruits were treated with sulfur smoke to avoid oxidation and keep colors bright. Tall stacks of drying flats would be put into a box with a burning sulfur source, and left there for several hours. Making the drying flats individually would be hard because of all the parts and layers needed. They're much more reasonable for a 3d printer!