Shapeways Announces New Multi-Color Plastc Material

Today Shapeways has announced yet another new material. This one could certainly see a ton of use. It is a full color plastic material. Like the popular Sandstone which many products on Shapeways are printed with, this material has extremely high resolution both in terms of detail of the material, as well as the color. Shapeways will launch this as a test run at first before making the material available to everyone. Here are a few basic specs of this new material:

• 2.0 mm diameter when there are two or more escape holes
• Clearance .5mm
• Interlocking and enclosed parts? Yes
• Multiple parts per model file? No
• Min supported wall thickness 0.7 mm thickshape-2
• Min unsupported wall thickness 0.7 mm thick

Further details can be fund at this article: http://3dprint.com/11840/shapeways-color-plastic/
Check out a few examples which has been printed with Shapeways' new multi-color plastic. What do you guys think?
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload...1-1024x682.jpg

Looks awesome but very expensive, I await the next garage tinkerer to take the technology and re-produce it on a smaller more affordable scale.

For me, it's too small still, if I'm paying for a colour model it sure is going to be bigger than 160mmx160mm :)
I hope someone figures it out soon, this is what we've all been waiting for.

What machine is Shapeways using for this?

Shapeways have 2 factory if I remember right and they use machines from hmm Stratasys.

I don't think Shapeways limits themselves to Stratasys machines, and I don't think they've got a machine that produces output like that. I'd guess they're using one of the new 3DS Pro-Jet plastic printers, which is supposed to produce highly detailed parts in full color: http://www.3dsystems.com/sites/www.3...volume-web.pdf

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com