Saw this excerpt in an article about 3D printing. Does anyone make props with the intention of 3D printing?

3D Modeling Used to Remix Artwork at the Met

"The Theater of Disappearance, Adrián Villar Rojas, Metropolitan Museum of Art Contemporary Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas is the youngest sculptor, at 37, to receive the annual commission to create an installation for the roof of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rojas digitally scanned and combined nearly 100 works from the museum’s existing collection to create the 16 black and white sculptures that make up his rooftop installation, titled “The Theatre of Disappearance,” which, according to Adafruit, “looks like a freewheeling Bacchanalian fete.” Rojas and his team made good use of the Met’s Advanced Imaging Department to digitally scan and create 3D models from the collection, and also incorporated staff members and their families into the installation, which will stay on the roof all summer. Rojas describes his installation:"

I create 3D models for 3D printing at work, but not in Carrara, unfortunately.

What a cool job. I didn't know that you did that.

Not necessarily just Carrara, but I wonder how 3D printing will be used at the small end. For example, I live in a town with a lot of tourists. I wonder if the folks selling trinkets to tourists might take advantage of 3D printing and the news cycle. Probably not cost-effective right now, but the trend?

It's not my main function at work. We just needed some custom parts for special equipment and since I knew 3D modelling already it was easy for me to provide those skills. Which was how I ended up working on this project. In my field many ready-made parts are both very expensive and not customizable enough. So 3D printing is a natural solution. A lot of it is still prohibitively expensive for most everyday applications.

Even with the expensive modern equipment we've got at work, getting it to actually work properly is not an easy task. the engineers I work with have many issues with those printers and there are many times when the printers are out of order and have to be serviced by outside specialists (which, again, is very expensive - and these are high end machines which are not cheap to begin with).

But if eventually those issues will become less common and the printers themselves more common, then your idea might become viable. In my field we need to work with very high-fidelity and extremely high-durability materials, so that also impacts the price a lot (both due to the price of the material and the price of the machinery capable of working with those materials). For simple trinkets that would be less of an issue, but then the value of the end product would also be diminished by the quality of the materials.

All really good points. And the trinkets would probably have to be painted, adding even more expense. Maybe in a decade? Although time really is flying. Speaking of flying, a friend of mine was walking down the street and was hit by a drone! The world is hanging fast. (She is OK).

This article from 2013 makes the same points to deflate my trinkets notions about 3D printing. http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-know-i-do-it-fo-508176750

Why 3D Printing Is Overhyped (I Should Know, I Do It For a Living) Nick Allen 5/17/13

i been begging my dayjob boss for a 3d printer all year.

Did some research into it, one printer site recommends meshlabs to clean up the geometry.

shapeways.com

MistyLaraPrincess posted at 10:28AM Tue, 02 May 2017 - #4304096

Did some research into it, one printer site recommends meshlabs to clean up the geometry.

"Clean up" and "repair" is a broad subject. It is true Meshlab has some of these functions, however, its also true that its not generally considered for this work.

Netfabb, Geomagic, and Materialise are the industry standard. Netfabb was the only affordably priced one for individuals or small businesses; however, since it was bought by Autodesk it has been switched to a high priced subscription service.

i can't use subscription thingies, my compy (the girls, Lara & Rara) offline. my lil celeron winxp netbook can barely run chrome. >.<

I've heard mentioned that MeshMixer can do some corrections for printing, have not looked at that yet but its free.