Federation Commander

I have said before and will say again.

Everybody should get the best material he is comfortable paying for.

I don't want anyone to say somebody who buys black acrylate is a snob and I don't want anyone saying those who buy WSF are low-rent heathens.

Absolutely right! Just because I advise one material over another doesn't obligate anyone to follow my advice, not should anyone worry that I'd ever look down on anyone for going WSF or anything else.

It -is- possible to get decent results from WSF if you design to it. It's a matter of knowing its limitations and deliberately designing to account for them. I'll dig out some of my prints and see if I can get some pics.

I just got my Shapeways order in today and Oh my! these are really nice! I got the Fed CA, Klingon D7, F5, and Rom Skyhawk in the 3788 scale and all in the FUD material. There are some incredibly intricate details on these things, especially on the CA! The F5 is a tad bigger than the older version I have and the CA and D7 ane almost exactly the same size as the micro machine versions. The D7 compares quite nicely to the attack wing Ktinga as well. All in all Im sure Ill be ordering lots more of these as my budget allows. Im just sad that my painting skills arent going to do these lovely models justice.

Very happy to hear that you like them so much (I did the CAD model for all those)!

Nobody has posted pictures of an actual printed copy of the D-7 yet, so you could be the first if you were so-inclined. My own personal copies won't be with me for another week, at least.

Glad to hear of a satisfied customer.

Hope these work... my phone cam sux! Sorry bout the large size, I did resize these tho.

My pics dont really do these justice... there are so many tiny little details that are hard to see since the minis are clear.

Great to see pictures posted of the these in the high-detail materials!

I never noticed before, but the teardrop that the bridge bubble sits on is WRONG on the metal minis. Nice to see the Fed CA was done up right this time.

There are a bunch of things about the SL2400 metal mini that folks like me, Tony Thomas, and others griped about. It's too small. The boom "bulb" is misshapen, the command "hat brim" is too wide and not angled correctly, yada yada yada. We all wanted it to look as good as the old 4-piece lead "Gamescience"/Starline 2200 D-7 mini.

ADB did us a solid by releasing the "SL2450" D7K, which was Mongoose's high-detail D-7 model scaled down to legacy 1/3788 scale. That's a gorgeous mini and addressed the majority of the griping.

For 'lil ole me though, I still had that itch that I wanted a "as seen on tv" version, in 1/3788. Years later, I got to scratch that itch and it felt mighty satisfying.

One big advantage I've found with 3D printing is that if something is released with an error, it can be fixed. Bad models aren't weighed down by the cost of new masters and new molds and a second production run - the designer can fix the digital model and upload it to the stores page.

Wow! can't wait for the new versions of the Gorn CA and DN, the 2400 castings of the engines to the hull are God Awful. By the way I may be the minority here but I really prefer the older Gorn CA and DN engine mounts that were attach to the rear hull, this made the ship quite sleek and pleasing to the eye. I suppose the redesign of attaching the engines to the center hull was a cost saving design?

The redesign of the metal Gorns was done because many players wanted one-piece minis that didn't require fiddly assembly. There had also been many complaints about how prone the Gorn engines were to being snapped off at the attachments.

As Will said, it had nothing to do with cost and everything to do with doing what the vast majority of players wanted.

From an engineering point of view, it made more sense for the Gorn ships to keep the engines attached to the hull and not move them to the aft bubble. All the plumbing is in place, so why rip it out??