I finally cracked open my wallet and bought a 3D-printed Glitch from Shapeways, designed by the RPF's own Technoboots (See his original thread here).
It was delivered by UPS to my garage door (which I thought was odd. Why leave it there instead of my front door?) yesterday and when I got home from work I opened the box and got right to work!
![]()
As is common with 3D printing, the pieces have a grainy, striated surface. I didn't spring the extra $3 for the "polished" version.
![]()
Here are the individual pieces. You can see where I started with the glazing putty on the main box.
![]()
And everything glazed, ready for sanding.
![]()
And sanded. I used some 220 grit to gently knock off the surface glazing. I plan to do another coat of glazing and then wet sand with some 400 grit to get a nice smooth surface on all the parts.
I intend to use these parts to mold so I can have a resin copy to actually make my prop (Yes, I got Technoboot's permission to do so. He was very gracious about it.) The 3D printed material seems a little too soft and flexible to me to use for an actual replica, plus I'd like to make some other keytools with custom configurations and I don't want to modify or destroy the original to do so.
More progress to follow as the project moves along.
It was delivered by UPS to my garage door (which I thought was odd. Why leave it there instead of my front door?) yesterday and when I got home from work I opened the box and got right to work!
As is common with 3D printing, the pieces have a grainy, striated surface. I didn't spring the extra $3 for the "polished" version.
Here are the individual pieces. You can see where I started with the glazing putty on the main box.
And everything glazed, ready for sanding.
And sanded. I used some 220 grit to gently knock off the surface glazing. I plan to do another coat of glazing and then wet sand with some 400 grit to get a nice smooth surface on all the parts.
I intend to use these parts to mold so I can have a resin copy to actually make my prop (Yes, I got Technoboot's permission to do so. He was very gracious about it.) The 3D printed material seems a little too soft and flexible to me to use for an actual replica, plus I'd like to make some other keytools with custom configurations and I don't want to modify or destroy the original to do so.
More progress to follow as the project moves along.