Shapeways 3D printed HO scale parts review

[sd40dash2]

This is a report on my experiences in purchasing and using 3D-printed HO scale detail parts from Shapeways. Parts purchased were the Vapor Caban stove (pack of 6) and the toilet vent (10 vents) caboose parts designed by Ryan Harris (fr8kar) .

The parts were printed in Frosted Ultra and Extreme Detail (one of each) within about a week after I placed the order. Shapeways support was helpful, personable and responsive and their website very well designed.

Once finished, the parts were quickly and properly packed in a small, sturdy box with air pillows, bubble wrap and a nice card. This protects parts like this from being crushed as would happen if they were packed in a bubble envelope. The box was shipped using a hybrid UPS/USPS/CP standard parcel post shipping method which has no brokerage fees and ships into the regular mail stream. This saves me from driving two hours to pick up parts at the airport in the city when the couriers attempt to deliver during the workday and nobody is at home. With this method, the order arrived in my local PO box in just 1 week from when the parts were ready to ship. That is the fastest shipping service I've ever had from the US to here (north of the 49th). A promo code for the Shapeways website I found through a google search provided free shipping.

The parts themselves were very well made and I am very satisfied with how they turned out. Under extreme magnification, of course you can see the manufacturing lines and such, but that is the same with anything that is manufactured! After seeing these in my hands, I have no qualms about using 3D prints for HO scale detail parts such as the ones I received today. Remember that these parts are otherwise not available. In the event the parts are already available from traditional hobby detail parts vendors, then the Shapeways format starts to lose its edge from a price, convenience and shipping cost standpoint.

I followed the recommended "Simple Green" household cleaner parts preparation and cleaning instructions to a tee, but there still seems to be some very fine crusty white film over some of the clear plastic parts. I was unable to remove this without eroding the parts and beautiful detail they contain. I did the Simple Green soak and scrub twice and it's still there. I painted a couple of the parts after further burnishing them with a small chisel blade and the paint adhered and dried without issue. Some hard-to-reach areas (such as the bottom of the stove top, visible from the open bottom) took a bit longer to dry. I am not sure if this is because the paint couldn't dry as fast in the somewhat enclosed area, or if this was an area not sufficiently cleaned. One week later, the paint dried perfectly without any issues cropping up and the stoves are ready to use.

Thanks are due to Ryan for offering up his time and skills to produce and share drawings, thereby allowing everybody to purchase these obscure parts which would otherwise not be available.

Photo of three of the Vapor Caban caboose stoves (they come in a pack of 6) after cleaning and painting (top-right stove not yet painted):

[12bridge]

The white areas are where the support wax touches. Unfortunately the only real way to get rid of it is to sand it. I am trying some Mr. Dissolved Putty to level those areas out.

Now that shapeways lets us control print orientation, it greatly helped lessen the white areas, but some places there is no way around it.

[onequiknova]

I've seen good and bad from Shapeways. It seems if the part has mostly flat surfaces, you get a pretty nice finish. I've had a half dozen 1960/70's vehicles printed in FUD and FXD, (vehicles are anything but flat), and the surface finish is pretty rough.

A couple examples...

First with a coat of primer to get a better look at the surface finish.

Begining the smoothing of the surface. I have found the majority of the roughness can be easily scraped off with various xacto blades and chisels. I'd say I do 80% of the work with blades, then finish it off with 400 grit. I have found no need for filler. A few coats of some acrylic primer throughout the smoothing process fills in any minor imperfections.


After it's done.

[fr8kar]

Thanks for posting this review and the photo. I had previously only seen this part in Black HDA; the FUD/FXD acrylic can actually render the detail a bit more finely and certainly in this case it looks great.

As far as the rough and crusty surfaces are concerned, I have found that acetone does a good job of removing the supporting wax residue from FUD/FXD parts, but I am hesitant to recommend it without warning of the potential damage that may be done if the part is exposed to acetone too long. A soak of no more than 120 seconds is typically enough to remove the residue and avoid warping and/or shrinking the part. If the residue is not completely removed, it is usually desiccated to the point where it is easily scraped off with a pick, chisel or knife edge.

This crusty surface occurs where the part touches or faces the printer bed, so I make every effort to choose a face of the part that is the least detail critical to face the printer, which is typically the bottom of a part or an interior surface that could be sanded to remove any scarring from the printing process. It's not always possible, so some parts have the rough surfaces you see on the rocker panels of onequiknova's printed automobile above.

Speaking of onequiknova's model, I agree with everything he said about how to clean up the parts and what to use. His experiences mirror my own.

Thanks again for posting the review. I'm glad you're happy with the parts. There are a lot of designers making great stuff through Shapeways. I think the printing process has been improved to the point where printed parts are now suitable for mainstream use. In a few years I expect to see larger parts produced in better detail at a lower cost. For now though, printing seems to be the most effective way to make parts that are otherwise too unusual or have too limited a potential for sales to invest in tooling.

[12bridge]

For my Shapeways cleanup, I use Acetone.   I soak everything for about 5-8 minutes, and have never had even a slight issue, with some prints down to .015".  

[ambluco]

I use Bleche-Wite Tire Cleaner and it does a great job. Then I send through a cycle in an ultrasonic cleaner. You can get them cheap on ebay.

Anyway, I've read many columns on cleaning FUD and it says when it's cleaned of the wax it tends to turn opaque white. The objects are definitely more opaque than before cleaning. When they arrive from Shapeways, they are translucent.

[fr8kar]

Sept 29, 2017 5:25:43 GMT -8 12bridge said:

For my Shapeways cleanup, I use Acetone.   I soak everything for about 5-8 minutes, and have never had even a slight issue, with some prints down to .015".  

When I was first getting started I read all kinds of different ideas of how to clean these parts including using Bestine, isopropyl alcohol, acetone and dish soap. I didn't have much luck with the Bestine, so I tried out the other things. Isopropyl alcohol seem to work the best but whenever I placed the cleaned part (which was a caboose cupola) on the Atlas caboose body that I designed it for, it was too tight a fit and the part ended up splitting. I tested out another version I hadn't yet cleaned and sure enough it fit.

So at this point I decided to experiment. I took some other parts that I had printed and soaked them for different lengths of time in acetone and isopropyl alcohol, keeping a log of what I did so I could repeat any successes. I noticed that shrinkage and warping were a problem for isopropyl alcohol even with very short soaks and that shrinkage and warping were less of a problem with acetone for soaks up to about 3 or 4 minutes. The parts soaked in acetone for 4 minutes tended to soften and distort not uniformly whereas the parts tended to retain their overall shape when soaked and isopropyl alcohol but the noticeable shrinkage was clearly a problem. I found some softening with parts soaked in acetone for 3 minutes but no apparent damage at 2 minutes. By the way, the tested parts were printed right at the minimum thickness for FUD, about 0.024" thick.

I tried out some other less aggressive cleaners including Dawn dish soap and Simple Green which is nothing more than a degreaser. No matter how long I soaked the parts in Simple Green there was no shrinkage or warping. The parts were generally clean of the printing wax using SG compared to Dawn. I started reducing the soaking time in Simple Green and figured out that any more than a minute or two was a waste of time. I also learned that if I am quick enough it doesn't hurt to dip parts that have any of the stubborn residue on them in acetone to dry it out and ease its removal.

I'm no scientist or scholar and I wasn't exhaustive in my testing, I just played around until I found what worked for me. I suppose it's possible to have good results with Bestine, isopropyl alcohol or any other cleaning agent or solvent you can come up with. Given Shapeways' lack of guidance or endorsement of any method on the subject of cleaning their parts, I think it's best only to recommend those methods which I have found cause no harm or distortion to the parts. Therefore the only cleaning agents I'll recommend are Dawn, Simple Green and - at exposures of less than two minutes - acetone.

[kentuckysouthernrwy]

Google "acetone smoothing 3D parts"...several articles and videos there that describe different people's experiences and methods they used.

I'm still studying all that before I jump into that hobby.

[Deleted]

Sept 29, 2017 11:10:32 GMT -8 fr8kar said:

Sept 29, 2017 5:25:43 GMT -8 12bridge said:

For my Shapeways cleanup, I use Acetone.   I soak everything for about 5-8 minutes, and have never had even a slight issue, with some prints down to .015".  

When I was first getting started I read all kinds of different ideas of how to clean these parts including using Bestine, isopropyl alcohol, acetone and dish soap. I didn't have much luck with the Bestine, so I tried out the other things. Isopropyl alcohol seem to work the best but whenever I placed the cleaned part (which was a caboose cupola) on the Atlas caboose body that I designed it for, it was too tight a fit and the part ended up splitting. I tested out another version I hadn't yet cleaned and sure enough it fit.

So at this point I decided to experiment. I took some other parts that I had printed and soaked them for different lengths of time in acetone and isopropyl alcohol, keeping a log of what I did so I could repeat any successes. I noticed that shrinkage and warping were a problem for isopropyl alcohol even with very short soaks and that shrinkage and warping were less of a problem with acetone for soaks up to about 3 or 4 minutes. The parts soaked in acetone for 4 minutes tended to soften and distort not uniformly whereas the parts tended to retain their overall shape when soaked and isopropyl alcohol but the noticeable shrinkage was clearly a problem. I found some softening with parts soaked in acetone for 3 minutes but no apparent damage at 2 minutes. By the way, the tested parts were printed right at the minimum thickness for FUD, about 0.024" thick.

I tried out some other less aggressive cleaners including Dawn dish soap and Simple Green which is nothing more than a degreaser. No matter how long I soaked the parts in Simple Green there was no shrinkage or warping. The parts were generally clean of the printing wax using SG compared to Dawn. I started reducing the soaking time in Simple Green and figured out that any more than a minute or two was a waste of time. I also learned that if I am quick enough it doesn't hurt to dip parts that have any of the stubborn residue on them in acetone to dry it out and ease its removal.

I'm no scientist or scholar and I wasn't exhaustive in my testing, I just played around until I found what worked for me. I suppose it's possible to have good results with Bestine, isopropyl alcohol or any other cleaning agent or solvent you can come up with. Given Shapeways' lack of guidance or endorsement of any method on the subject of cleaning their parts, I think it's best only to recommend those methods which I have found cause no harm or distortion to the parts. Therefore the only cleaning agents I'll recommend are Dawn, Simple Green and - at exposures of less than two minutes - acetone.

Simple green is the way to go, IMO.

[Artur]

Sept 29, 2017 11:10:32 GMT -8 fr8kar said:

Sept 29, 2017 5:25:43 GMT -8 12bridge said:

For my Shapeways cleanup, I use Acetone.   I soak everything for about 5-8 minutes, and have never had even a slight issue, with some prints down to .015".  

When I was first getting started I read all kinds of different ideas of how to clean these parts including using Bestine, isopropyl alcohol, acetone and dish soap. I didn't have much luck with the Bestine, so I tried out the other things. Isopropyl alcohol seem to work the best but whenever I placed the cleaned part (which was a caboose cupola) on the Atlas caboose body that I designed it for, it was too tight a fit and the part ended up splitting. I tested out another version I hadn't yet cleaned and sure enough it fit.

So at this point I decided to experiment. I took some other parts that I had printed and soaked them for different lengths of time in acetone and isopropyl alcohol, keeping a log of what I did so I could repeat any successes. I noticed that shrinkage and warping were a problem for isopropyl alcohol even with very short soaks and that shrinkage and warping were less of a problem with acetone for soaks up to about 3 or 4 minutes. The parts soaked in acetone for 4 minutes tended to soften and distort not uniformly whereas the parts tended to retain their overall shape when soaked and isopropyl alcohol but the noticeable shrinkage was clearly a problem. I found some softening with parts soaked in acetone for 3 minutes but no apparent damage at 2 minutes. By the way, the tested parts were printed right at the minimum thickness for FUD, about 0.024" thick.

I tried out some other less aggressive cleaners including Dawn dish soap and Simple Green which is nothing more than a degreaser. No matter how long I soaked the parts in Simple Green there was no shrinkage or warping. The parts were generally clean of the printing wax using SG compared to Dawn. I started reducing the soaking time in Simple Green and figured out that any more than a minute or two was a waste of time. I also learned that if I am quick enough it doesn't hurt to dip parts that have any of the stubborn residue on them in acetone to dry it out and ease its removal.

I'm no scientist or scholar and I wasn't exhaustive in my testing, I just played around until I found what worked for me. I suppose it's possible to have good results with Bestine, isopropyl alcohol or any other cleaning agent or solvent you can come up with. Given Shapeways' lack of guidance or endorsement of any method on the subject of cleaning their parts, I think it's best only to recommend those methods which I have found cause no harm or distortion to the parts. Therefore the only cleaning agents I'll recommend are Dawn, Simple Green and - at exposures of less than two minutes - acetone.

I have to agree with your findings. I bought an SD40 cab which I cleaned in acetone I didn't have time to work on the project so I left it sitting on my shelf for a couple months. I found the cab warped and the small see trough step in front of the cab door was cracked and sagging. For that reason I only use soap and warm water. I think acetone is slowly drying out the resin.