RedEye RPM (www.redeyerpm.com) has a large selection of rapid prototyping materials (15 in all) most are variations of ABS, Polycarbonate, Polyphenylsulfone, or Polyjet Resin. A slew of colors, transparent properties, and multiple finishes are also available. For the sake of time (yours) we will skip over the color/finish/material matrix as RedEye has already done a great job in creating one.
The first step I took was to download the Alibre Design add-on in the lower right hand side of the screen. The file size is relatively small at 1,844 KB and was a quick download. I ran the executable and successfully installed the add-on in under a minute. After restarting Alibre Design RedEye RPM was available as a menu item, as shown below.
Now for the fun part. I opened up Brainchild Enterprises latest project (Can you guess what it is?), shown below, and selected "RedEye RPM"/"Price Quote".
The quote results appeared on the left hand side of the screen and I was able to change between Rapid Prototyping materials to obtain updated cost estimates. This is a fair-sized part, approximately 8" x 9" x 1.5", with the following prices quoted: ABS $357-$364, PC $375-$393, PPSF (Manual Quote Required), Vero PolyJet Resin $470, Tango PolyJet Resin $602, PC-ISO $411, and "Tech Choice" $357.
I was impressed with the intuitiveness of using the RedEye RPM add-on within Alibre Design and the rapid quote generation times. No need to generate STL files or taking the time to uploading them to the internet during the quotation process, with the RedEye RPM add-on your files stay on your machine. For a true comparison I bypassed the add-on and went through the trouble of creating and uploading a STL file of the same part to RedEye RPM.....the results were the same!
Stay tuned for part 2 of this series where I will select a material/finish and follow through with a quotation. Recommendations?
Brainchild Enterprises offers Alibre Design Xpress for free and a 30day trail of Alibre Design Professional at: http://www.abrainchild.com/. Brainchild Enterprises is a design firm using Alibre Design Expert and is an authorized Alibre reseller. Comments in this post are of the sole opinion of Brainchild Enterprises. Additional information on Alibre is available at our website or at www.Alibre.com.