Has anyone tried this or even tried contacting these people for quotes yet?

Sandy

I talked to them last year. Unless you have money to burn, forget about stereolithography. Each piece costs a lot of cash. A sample project we talked about was a Rubik's Cube, the quote was in the hundreds of dollars, $275USD I think, but I'm not sure. A project like Dogic would cost a small fortune due to the number of pieces.

They're nice people, give em a call, maybe they've changed the price structure.

Jake

I've always thought that stereolithography wasn't the way to go for magic solids. Evidently the pieces are somewhat brittle. But I must admit, that 3d printer looks cool.

If you want to make more than 1 piece, you are probably going to use some type of mold. If you have a decent 2-part mold, then you are almost there. I tried one-part molds, but it's not good for some of the complex cube parts.

At work, we quite often purchase stereolithography parts. Just got one the other day. Besides cost, the other problem is material strength. They are quite brittle. We sometimes break them just by normal handling. The selection of plastics have improved over the years. Maybe someday usable plastics will be available. The parts do work fairly good for making slush molds for casting a handful of parts. Unfortunately, we do not have a SLA machine at work. We send out for them. Too bad though. I'd have great fun with one.

Doug.

If you do try to get parts made by Toybuilders you should go for parts from the Stratasys machine. They're a bit rough, but very durable and you can use them without casting. Just have them make all the part you need, then assemble them yourself.

On the other hand, if you want to cast it's worth getting parts that will give you the best surface finish. Use the Solidscape machine for such parts. Just be forewarned that the parts are very fragile (look at them wrong and they'll break). Also, you'll have a bit of a learning curve to get finishing and casting techniques down.

Either way be prepared to spend lots of money.