3D printing

[Pinball UK]

Hi

Can anyone help on this? Has anyone ever had any 3d printing done? Did it work well? Can anyone put me in touch anyone who does it? I've got a plastic figurine I need reproducing as there are none available.

Cheers

Colin

 

[Wiredworm]

Part of the issue is that you don't just need it 3D printing but you also need the original part recreating as a digital model which invariably will mean some sort of 3D scanner.

Is the part you want reproducing likely to come into contact with the ball at any time? One issue i'm aware of with 3D printing is that for now the resulting objects can be pretty brittle/fragile.

 

[Cryptkeeper]

I have one in work (or I had one as its broke and I aint ringed fixing it!)
Its the older extrusion type.
The bits I printed were extremely strong. Nearly solid PLA (Edit ABS plastic) plastic so it would work for pinball no probs!

 

[Nedreud]

I agree with @Wiredworm about the fragility. A friend of mine has a small printer at work that his company was playing with. They made little miniature characters from the Minecraft video game as tests. The were very delicate and generally would suffer some form of damage if dropped. Would never survive a strike by a pinball. Great for prototyping though. Maybe a commercial printer would be able to use something tougher?

 

[Cryptkeeper]

Depends on the fill settings,
you can fill your piece to 99% if you like making it solid.
This takes longer/more material but in my experience hard as nails.

 

[BigIan]

Yeah it sounds like you may want 3d scanning as well as printing

which character do you need it may already have been scanned or recreated..

 

[lozpeters]

if you want strong 3D printed parts then you can get them printed in glass filled nylon. I use this at work and it is much stronger then the standard plastics

 

[Nedreud]

if you want strong 3D printed parts then you can get them printed in glass filled nylon. I use this at work and it is much stronger then the standard plastics

Glassfibre parts sound great! I was just passing on my experiences with a small-scale 3D printer. Plastic is so versatile and CNC technologies so widespread is should possible to get just about anything made at a reasonable price.

 

[Pinball UK]

Yeah it sounds like you may want 3d scanning as well as printing

which character do you need it may already have been scanned or recreated..

It's one of the badabing dancing girls from a Sopranos. I've tried getting them from everywhere, including direct from Stern, with no joy.