Desperate for help on 3d Printing...

Support Modeling
#1

Oh please someone help me T^T
I’m getting so frustrated at trying to print a model.

i’ve never printed anything before, and these models are little 1inch weapons from a game and it’s been a nightmare for 4 days now trying to get this to work.

LusakaCrystalPrint.blend (642 KB) (gotta zoom in, the model is small)

Texture image:

i tried one model before this one as a white plastic on shapeways, the model uploaded just fine, passed all the tests, and then i ordered it and a few days later they canceled the order saying it wouldnt work.

then i learned there’s a colored sandstone option, and every tutorial i find anywhere says to zip the x3d file and the texture into a folder and upload that. I can’t get any zip files to upload to shapeways whatsoever.

if i use just the stl or x3d files, it will sometimes upload themodel, or just error out and say check the model for errors.

it’s been days and i’m just so stressed trying to get this to work…
How do you get a texture to upload with a file on shapeways?

and what do i have to do if they just cancel my order even when it passed their tests? T^T

#2

Hi Razc. I have been using Shapeways for a number of years, and after looking at your model, it is probably being rejected for what they call thin wires. The robot checks for minimum wall thickness, which in your case would be just ok in WSF. Then when it gets to the machine the operator would reject it on thin wires. The handle is suspect and so are the blade connections, as they are known as “unsupported”. You need to thicken all these areas up. Minimum is >1mm. I would also apply scaling and rotation to the object before export. You can then check dimensions by putting a temp edge across any thin areas to check, with edge length switched on in the N panel. Another good trick is to use netfab basic. A free app to check the mesh, and quickly check wall thickness etc, although this wont preserve your uvs for the colored models.
Now for Colored sandstone it would need thickening up even further. Its a while since I printed a colored model, but I remember the format I used was VRML
I think there are a couple of exporters for that format in Blender. I cant remember which works, but one does. Looking at what addons I have enabled it seems to be “web3d /x3d /vrml2” one that works. If I remember correctly you just select export textures as well, and make sure you have that texture in the zip. You can manually edit the vrml file to make sure its reading the correct texture map in any text editor. Or simply import it back into blender to make sure it still has the texture map.
Any how hope that helps a bit. Remember Shapeways hate unsupported thin wires.

Cheers, Bogey.