A Series of Tubes

Well, I got another shipment today (well, it arrived on Friday, I haven’t been home in a while). Ripping open the Shapeways box, I discovered the beautiful second half of my Riven Dagger Order: the steel and gold-plated daggers.

They’re gorgeous. The level of detail is amazing, even the tiny little loop I put on the top (for necklace-wearing!) is preserved.

My goal for the gold-plated dagger is to get some form of tiny gold chain, and wear it as a pendant. The steel one is just an awesome thing to add to my collection.

Unfortunately, the edges are a little more wobbly-looking than I would like, but I did violate the recommended minimum thickness to make them, so I was expecting it. It’s not really enough to even see unless you inspect very closely. The other problem is the bumpiness, which is very prominent, giving the daggers a rough texture. They feel like they had cheesecloth pressed into them when they were still ‘wet’. I know this isn’t at all how the process of printing them works, but it’s what goes on in my head.

That being said, I am extremely happy with these. The rough texture makes them feel a lot more authentic, actually, considering that the Moiety were the ones making these, and I’m guessing they didn’t have the technology to really smooth out their metal. Again, I’m not putting them up for sale, but if you’re interested in acquiring one of your own send me a message.

Also yes, I appreciate the irony of a Moiety dagger made out of gold, Gehn’s material of choice.

I recently discovered an absolutely awesome website, www.shapeways.com. Upload a 3d model, give them some money, and they will send you a printed out, real-life version of your object. The best part is that you can print in a number of materials, including plastic, sandstone, steel, gold-plated steel, and even glass. You can then open a shop and sell your models for a markup, and actually make money.

There’s some pretty impressive stuff on the site. Check out the impressive models (some mathematical, some just interesting) by Bathsheba Sculpture, some awesome D&D dice sets, and a thriving puzzle-building community. The opportunities afforded by a service like Shapeways are virtually limitless. Custom figurines for board games, inexpensive prototyping, you name it. It’s true democratization of the manufacturing industry, and it’s only going to get better over time (as the costs of production drop, as they always do).

Finding out about this service, I immediately did what any respectable Myst-head would do, and launched Blender. After about 3 hours of work (and a somewhat frustrating cycle of uploading, being told there were problems with the model, fixing the problems, and re-uploading), I got a respectable-looking model of my prize, and had managed to get the price down to under $15. I placed my order.

Now, about 2 weeks later, I finally received part 1 of my shipment! Take a look:

As you maybe can tell from looking at the photos, the resolution at which the models are printed is extremely high. You can see places where faces differed in height by a fraction of a millimeter, and the the outside of the ring is clearly segmented into faces. Additionally, the model has a very rough texture, and feels somewhat fragile at the tip of the blade (where a bit actually broke off in shipment, as I expected to happen).

The dagger isn’t going to be put up for public sale, due to copyright issues, but if you’re interested in acquiring one for yourself, send me an e-mail and I’ll see what I can do.

That being said, I am so happy with this model. It came out really, really, well, and I anticipate many bills from Shapeways in my future.

More to follow!