The Future is here

[Apache]

http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/newkitnews/l...

[garethj]

Could be....

I've had some parts made for a slot car I designed - the high detail parts were made from the same material as the guns in your link whilst the chassis and suspension parts were made as SLS which has a high impact strength but poor detail.

No tooling, parts delivered in a week (or actually a month for the high detail parts because Shapeways' machine broke) and the quality is excellent.

You need to be either pretty good on 3D CAD or have access to very high quality 3D scanner, and 3D CAD. I designed all my parts on CAD because I'm a bit handy with it.

It's a different set tools to traditional model making, but of course the skills are the same - attention to detail, careful measurement and an interest in the final product.

[Yertis]

I wonder if construction kits will go this way? For low volume models, like those we used to rely on Contrail or Rareplanes to vac-form,it wold seem ideal, like print-on-demand.

[dr_gn]

I wanted more realistic exhaust stubs for my recent Bf109 model, so I modelled them up in ProE and had them grown out of Nickel alloy in a laser sintering machine:



Amazingly good resolution - they are 1:32 scale, and are hollow.