Hmmm that's interesting to know. I have had quotes from them before and had some discussions from one of their sales people who, to be honest, came across badly. I have never had them make anything for me. It may be worth taking a look at again.
For those who don't have access to an sls machine, Shapeways.com will take your STL files, print in your selected material, and ship to you.
Simon,
Shapeways also allows for custom storefronts. This may be a way for your to allow customers the option of ordering printed items without having to handle that side of the work.
Hmmm that's interesting to know. I have had quotes from them before and had some discussions from one of their sales people who, to be honest, came across badly. I have never had them make anything for me. It may be worth taking a look at again.
There have been really nice advances in SLA as well. For a home unit I actually prefer SLA because liquid is less annoying than the powder. Also, less post-processing with SLA
SLA is awesome from those points of view and for accuracy but I haven't yet found any materials that are as close to being as useful as the gf reinforced nylons you get with SLS.
Check out some of the suspensions that have ceramics in them (bluestone and the like). SLS is nice because nylon is heat weldable, but in terms of making functional parts once you get out of the epoxy families that practically cold flow you can do some useful stuff with SLA. SLS probably has higher ultimate strength, but a lot of that also has to do with the level of fusion between grains - the fill level is normally only in the low 90 % IIRC, but they can "double lap" the laser and get closer to 97% dense.
SLS also has the advantage that the powder supports the weight of parts, so you can build floating in space, whereas SLA always requires supports. Big difference.
Hopper shells are a pretty challenging application, could be enough to swing it in SLS's favor. I'm definitely looking forward to one of them being the dominant tech, I'm pretty done with FDM
sorry for bad pic, I have the Crania anatomica as well as the anatomica de revolutis
Links to Kickstarter below
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...o-you?ref=live
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...lutis?ref=live
These were SLS and are nice and high resolution as well as very durable feeling.