Is this the right printer for me?

[DarthCrucias]

ty for all the input! i will def try this openscad. i also found another free one. that beta one sounds iffy for me for the moment. i dont want to get roped into having to give feedback while im trying to get my 'C-legs' under me ;-)

[curious aardvark]

The trick with openscad - and ryan uses it as well (guy who's printers forum we've hijacked lol) is to break things down into shapes.
If you can look at something and see it as simply a collection of squares, triangles, cylinders, cones etc - then openscad is definitely for you.

[DarthCrucias]

i should be able to do that. can you bevel and trim and curve edges and such?

[iplayfast]

Go through any tutorials you find on it. I think you will find it can do anything you need, including curve edges etc.

[DarthCrucias]

thx. i will do that. one more question, and if this should go in a new question in a different section, i can repost it:

as i am planning on eventually going into business selling the things i produce, are there any legalities i will need to deal with selling anything i draft myself that may be affiliated with major franchises, such as harry potter or hunger games? or are they likely to just write me off as a small time business selling logos?

[MagicDan]

Depends on the company. DC takes a hard line, as well as Disney. I've seen people get away with selling custom wood signs, but as a rule intellectual property laws come into play with any logos. It's against the law and you're putting yourself in a risky position selling those items. Selling similar items works, but don't put their logos on them. Business layers call it IP for short (Intellectual Property) and lately there seems to be a big push to protect it. We've had to take classes from the company lawyers where I work teaching us to find ways to protect the IP of the company.

[DarthCrucias]

how would i go about getting legal permission to produce things like that? try to contact the owner of the rights and get a royalty agreement or something? is there much chance of that working?

[MagicDan]

You should contact them directly for sure for permission, I don't know how costly the process involved to get a licensing agreement is though.

[Chayat]

You'll probably find that those rights have already been licensed away. If you wanted to recreate the wands from harry potter for example then it would be http://www.noblecollection.com/ that come after you as they have that licence. If you wanted to make a range of wands so that people could cos-play as Hogwarts pupils but you were not making any specific ones from the books or movies then you would be fine. The concept of a wand is suitably vague I doubt anyone could do anything to you over it.

I'm not a legal expert and you should possibly contact one if you want to do this thing seriously.

I have some Mass Effect inspired items on my Shapeways store, I'm not sure where I would stand if Bioware ever noticed me but if I had to remove them from sale I'd not lose any sleep.

[curious aardvark]

basically do what the chinese do and make wands that have nothing to do with harry potter - they just look like they do ;-)