info@protoshape.com (831) 429-8224 fax (831) 460-1242

Send the following to quote@protoshape.com:   Your contact information    Design File  Convert your design to an STL or DXF file and attach it.  If the file is too large for your mailer, ftp.protoshape.com is an FTP upload area that accepts anonymous login.   Dimensions  Please confirm at least one dimension of the part.  Mesh files are unitless, so do mention whether yours is measured in inches, millimeters, &ct.    Layers  What layer thickness is required?  We can advise here on request.   Quantity  We'll respond with a quote and estimated delivery time.  Payment is due on delivery.  All major credit cards are accepted, and personal or corporate checks. Protoshape guarantees nondisclosure.  Your design file and models will not be sold, given or shown to anyone, except NDA'ed persons directly involved in their production, without your permission.  If you need a nondisclosure agreement signed, please fax it to (831) 460-1242.

The main thing about Solidscape models is that they're small.   This process gives very high resolution and free geometry within a jewelry-sized build envelope, but for larger objects the cost rapidly becomes prohibitive.  (Flat parts are the exception: medals, coins, low reliefs and so on can be very good deals, if for some reason they can't be milled.)  More economical prototyping processes for larger objects include Z Corporation, Thermojet, and CNC milling.   If you have a big part, expect a big quote. Parts are delicate: the material is more brittle than a carving wax or an injection wax, and breakage is a constant risk.  Shipping, unpacking, hand spruing, and even the pouring of investment can break a model.   Avoid breakage by making robust models. It's a good idea, as you work on the design, to scale it to size and watch the cross-sections, making sure that they remain realistic.  Everything looks big on a 20" monitor!  A particular area of concern is prongs in settings; these are best modeled as blunt cylinders at least .5mm in diameter - up to 1mm is not too fat - and cut to their final shape in the metal. Another common situation is acute-angled edges and points.  Any sharp edge is liable to nicks and chips, while sharp points are likely to snap off.  The way to handle these features is to blunt them in the model, adding extra thickness and chamfers or fillets on the sharp areas, and plan to sharpen the metal casting.  (This is common practice even with handcarved waxes, because sharp edges and points often don't cast well, and when they do come out tend to bend and roll.  If, instead, they are cut to shape from a thicker casting, work hardening makes them much stronger.)   Plan for polishing. There will be some surface texture, no matter what layer thickness is used.  Raw models can be polished with alcohol, and of course cast models can be polished with a variety of techniques.  But you must make sure there's enough material to stand it, especially if dimensions are critical in the final product, and also make sure that all areas to be polished are accessible to tools.    Adding a sprue can be helpful. Adding a sprue, or even just a short stub, to the CAD model can be a good idea.  It will add a little to the cost of the build, but it saves handwork on the model, allows you to place the sprue precisely, and gives a clean joint.   Add support where necessary. Another way to stop breakage is to add support struts in the CAD model.  At left is a pendant whose bail might break off, but when a combined support and sprue is added, it's much safer.  Cutting off a support in the metal is quick and safe - much more so than trying to repair a crumbling wax. Below is a design that required an extensive gating/support structure: there's as much material in the supports as in the piece.  Notice that the sprue joints are placed in the most obvious and accessible areas, where they can be removed easily after casting.  Resist the instinct to hide them!   Design for metal If your design will need any modification after printing, you'll probably want to do it in the metal casting rather than the printed wax.  This wax is not a great modeling material.  This is especially true for models built with coarser layers, because their interiors are cellular rather than solid: if you break through the model's skin, it will be very difficult to regain a decent surface finish.

The standard file format for prototyping is STL.  Most CAD software can export this format, and chances are good that you can generate an STL file simply by using "Save As" or "Export" and choosing this file format.  If you don't see STL, look for DXF: this AutoCAD format can work too, provided it contains only meshes.  An STL (or DXF mesh) file consists of triangles that represent the model as a faceted polyhedron.  In some CAD programs you model directly using these meshes (FormZ, Poser) while in others you work with smooth surfaces, and convert them to meshes as the last step before prototyping (Rhinoceros, SolidWorks).  Whichever type you have, at some point, either while you're building or at export time, you'll choose how many facets, or polygons, the model will have.  Use plenty, so each facet is small.  If they get much bigger than the layer thickness to be used, facets will be visible in the part.   Use plenty of polygons. As the number of facets increases, so does the file size.  30 MB (about half a million facets) is a fairly large file, and much bigger than that can be hard to handle.  Up to 10MB is usual for rings, though a very complex one may need to be bigger. Above, the left sphere is a continuous NURBS surface. The center is an STL mesh with few facets, and the right is a mesh with many facets.  Your model should look more like the right. After exporting an STL file, check it by importing it back into your CAD software, and rendering.  In this way you can see immediately if the facets are too big, or if there are other problems.  Be sure to render without any smoothing or texture maps, so that you see the naked model, because that is what will be built!   View your STL file after generating it. If your software has STL checking features, please use them to verify your file, and repair it if there are defects.  We do our best to work with STL files as they're sent, but we can't put vast amounts of time into fixing them up.   Try to send a clean file, without naked edges or other defects. Unless your model consists of more than one separate part, it should be a single mesh.  Models made up of many intersecting meshes may render very nicely as graphics, but the Modelmaker does not handle them: it requires a single skin without naked edges.   Each part should be a single closed mesh. This doesn't mean it's impossible to build an object made of several intersecting solids, only that you must unite the solids before converting to STL, rather than hoping for it to happen afterwards.  If your solids have good integrity, it's usually possible to Boolean-union them together and then generate STL from the united result.