Manufacturer: Fitz (3d-print)
Genre: Interwar
Comments: This model was built in Blender, and 3d-printed by Shapeways in their WSF (White Strong & Flexible) sintered nylon. The WSF material is (relatively) cheap, and it is capable of reproducing a reasonable amount of surface detail, but the surface is very granular, almost like fine-grained sponge. It's fine for wargaming purposes, but it's really not sufficiently fine for fine scale modeling.
This is a comparison between my own 3d-printed model (on the left, in low-resolution sintered nylon) and the Vickers I bought a few years ago from QRF (on the right).
Modesty aside, I think mine is better. The QRF model is about 1/112 scale rather than 1/100, so it doesn't fit in with the industry standard for 15mm gaming these days, but even leaving that aside I think the proportions and detail on my model are better than that of QRF's (admittedly old) model.
I'd really like to be able to afford to get it printed in high-resolution resin, and there's the rub: my model, even in the low-resolution nylon from Shapeways, is more expensive. And in hig-rez resin it's alarmingly expensive. Until the cost of 3d printing in decent resolutions comes way down, it's not really commercially viable as a direct competitor with cast metal or resin models.
If I had a stereolithography printer of my own, it might be a different story, but then there's the initial cost of the printer to consider (though they are getting cheaper), and the resin itself is not cheap.
