1:540 USS Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey
This is my Discovery One form 2001. It's one of my favorite movies, and I always wanted a model of the Discovery. Ones on the market are big and very expensive, so I designed my own in 123D from Autocad. I scaled it to be 12 inches long and then sent it off to Shapeways to print.
It took about a week to receive the parts, but they were outstanding. I primed them and painted it in Vallejo RLM-2 with a water color wash. Fine wire was used on the Antenna for detailing.
There is a .070 carbon fibre rod running down the backbone of the ship for strength which slide into mounts at either end.
You can buy a copy at: http://shpws.me/GsUl
A very unique process and outstanding result(s). Could be the future of modeling...but I hope not.
I have Shapeways bookmarked, and they send me updates from time to time, but I've not used them for anything like this, but your approach is imaginative. A pal of mine from model club was looking for something odd for a dio that wasn't on the market as such, and I suggested he look at Shapeways for possible 3D printing, but I don't think that he ever came back to say he had sorted anything.
I can see this as an opportunity for cottage-industry companies to produce high quality, short run items at reasonable cost, which subjects might appeal to a lot of modellers outside the usual suspects. I think of some of the resin aftermarket sets I've used (or tried to), and I think anything must be better than some of those products.
Being an AutoCAD user since 1986 I have considered doing something like this myself and am glad to know the 3D print results were so good. 2001 is a great movie and your model of Discovery is very cool. Thanks for sharing.
I was actually thinking of drafting my own custom airplane on ACAD, printing the plans out and building it out of balsa like those Guillows models, which are great fun.
Very nice job, all this hi-tec 3D stuff is a fascinating process. Thanks for the post.
Scifi stuff is cool. Great build.