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Thread: Sandstone material for balloons?

  1. #1

    Default Sandstone material for balloons?

    With Shapeways' new pricing most of my WSF balloons doubled in price, which leaves them pretty expensive (e.g. $50->$95).

    However, it might be possible to redo them in "Sandstone" material, which is a little rougher and heavier than WSF, but the price would be closer to the old price in the $50 range. The bad part is the texture is rougher...but the good part is that it can be colored in the factory!

    Should I bother? Would there be any interest? (I won't be insulted if the answer is "no".)

    PS: I only did a mock-up to get rough pricing, so $50 is just a rough estimate, without basket.

  2. #2

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    Daryl, having assembled and painted some of your balloons, I'd have to ask: how much coarser would the grain be?
    In WSF, white glue and a light sanding were sufficient to have a nice smooth finish. This material could be prepared with gesso, perhaps?
    The one difficulty woud be the basket and lines: if the lines are too rough, it won't look good.
    Just my two cents.

    Eric

  3. #3

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Sulring View Post
    Daryl, having assembled and painted some of your balloons, I'd have to ask: how much coarser would the grain be?
    In WSF, white glue and a light sanding were sufficient to have a nice smooth finish. This material could be prepared with gesso, perhaps?
    The one difficulty woud be the basket and lines: if the lines are too rough, it won't look good.
    Just my two cents.
    Eric
    Thanks Eric,

    Sandstone is actually pretty descriptive -- it feels like it's made of unpolished stone, but not dramatically worse than WSF. I'd describe it as a WSF that doesn't flex. I'm not sure how well it will smooth out with outer coating, but sanding may remove the color, so wouldn't be recommended. (In fact, you'd want to seal it with some kind of fixative because the colors are water-soluble).

    As for the baskets and ropes, I'd keep those in WSF, so you'd have to buy the balloon in sandstone and the baskets & ropes in WSF. Fortunately, the latter are pretty easy to paint - much more so than a camouflage pattern or checkerboard on the balloon itself (which would now be part of the print).

  4. #4

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    Hi Daryl,

    Any chance of scaling your designs up and down to 1/200? Aside from possible cost saving it would increase the return a bit from your initial design work. And make the 1/200 camp happy. I'll attach a snapshot taken on the way back from the Front.

    A fast-building auto primer, available in rattle cans, should solve most surface problems, at least on models like the balloons, which don't have a lot of scribed detail.

    Nylon monofilament works well represent fine wires, shroud lines, anchoring lines, aerials, etc.. Hardware and sporting goods stores stock it for uses like fishing leaders. Suspended baskets, diving observers, etc. would still be best printed. Would be nice to mark the attachment points with dimples.

    Ron
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails WWI.42.jpg  

  5. #5

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    How much heavier than WSF is the Sandstone? Will the Ares bomber pegs be able to support it O.K.?

  6. #6

    matt56's Avatar May you forever fly in blue skies.
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    Default

    I, for one, in coming late to the game and being somewhat constrained fund-wise, would love to find balloons that were more "reasonable" in price. Having discovered Shapeways right before the price change, I couldn't acquire all that I would have liked (well, who ever can, really? ), and I was sorry to see your (to my mind) reasonably priced sausages no longer available.

    As a modeler of some skill, I wouldn't mind a bit more work in finishing a balloon model; and while I have yet to receive the couple of Shapeways planes I did order prior to the price increases (so I don't have first-hand experience of the WSF and other finishes), for a balloon-sized model whose detail can be relatively easily painted on, smoothing out the rough finish shouldn't prove too difficult. Ron's suggestions above seem spot-on, and the only thing I think would be a major factor would be the weight issues. I assume you would be using a two-part mold and pouring in the sandstone material? It seems to me I've seen some fairly light-weight sandstone-type molded items in craft stores and other retail places - are there various weight "choices" at your disposal from a materials standpoint?

    By the way, I'd love to paint a balloon in a pattern like that Ron has pictured above!

    Keep us posted on events - I love your Shapeways balloons and wish I had discovered them sooner...

    All the best,
    Matt Materne

  7. #7

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    Good news, sausage fans! I've been experimenting, and it seems I can still get a reasonably priced shapeways balloon design in WSF if I split the model in half. Their algorithm for determining the price charges you for empty space that they cannot otherwise make use of (like the empty space in a one-piece balloon, or the space between a biplane's wings), but it doesn't charge you for otherwise-empty spaces of 40mm or larger, like the empty space in a split balloon. Now, it will still take some rework to make it more usable -- such as adding gluing/alignment pins like you find on traditional models -- but it looks promising.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    In reply to earlier posts: I'm not sure about the sandstone weight, and I already had one in 1/200 [but removed it from sale at the same time as the others].
    Last edited by ReducedAirFact; 10-25-2014 at 11:01.

  8. #8

    matt56's Avatar May you forever fly in blue skies.
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    Putting a balloon kit together sounds swell, Daryl! I would have absolutely no problem doing something like that - keep us posted on developments (like I really need to suggest that, right?!).

    Way to think outside the balloon!
    All the best,
    Matt Materne

  9. #9

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    1:200 scale would certainly give the WW2 chaps some Blimps to fly over London, or those Dams.
    Rob.
    "Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."

  10. #10

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    Excellent solution, at least for observation and barrage balloon sizes. They get a bit bulky even halved when one graduates to the WWII sized patrol craft like the K-ships. See Clipper's postings on those. A Monogram "Goodyear Blimp" kit comes very close to the dimensions of a K-ship, even closer if you remove a bit of the length. If you want to try an actual 1/200 K-ship, I could loan you our vacuformed kit to scan and import.
    I think Sandstone is just Shapeways' designation for a relatively inexpensive and grainy ceramic material. There are also refactory casting materials with the same title. Hydrocal plaster would work very well up to blimp sizes, and it is extremely low cost. One could probably get away with a silastic RTV shell mold inside of a hydrocal mold box.
    Ron

  11. #11

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    Some people received their airplanes with bended wings. And for planes it never was a big deal - put it under hot water, reform bended part, and done! But, what if balloon arrives deformed? How easy it'll be to shape it back to fit to the other half perfectly?

  12. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by Пилот View Post
    Some people received their airplanes with bended wings. And for planes it never was a big deal - put it under hot water, reform bended part, and done! But, what if balloon arrives deformed? How easy it'll be to shape it back to fit to the other half perfectly?
    The test prints of WSF balloons I have received have all come in perfectly. I think a balloon is much less vulnerable to being warped during shipping because its shape is very self-supporting, like a sphere or (in the case of a split design) hemisphere, which is a very good structure for distributing weight load (as in the Pantheon in Rome).

  13. #13

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    That's good thing to hear!

  14. #14

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    would be interested in these once you get the kinks worked out

  15. #15

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    Can I assume you've scrapped the idea of "sandstone"?

  16. #16

  17. #17

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    Indeed, now that I know I can split the balloon and keep the price reasonable, I've gone back to WSF. (Though colored sandstone is looking good for ground targets!) I've done the "split" for the Caquot, now I just need to go back and do it for the Drachen, Avorio, and 1/200 scales.



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